Core i7 6950X / 6900K / 6850K & 6800K Processor Review

Posted on: 05/31/2016 08:23 AM

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disappointed in the prise hopefully it is just this one chip that is the bad overclocker

Posted on: 05/31/2016 08:42 AM

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Damn man, to see the 8370 up there like that in gaming. My CPU is right around that mark too. Basically little gain for high price. And new CPUs requiring Win 10 lol. I will be upgrading to Skylake or something at some point I guess, because I don't want Win 10 right now.

Anyway, my CPU just needs a 1080. CPU power is so overrated for gaming sometimes.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 08:46 AM

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Nice review there.


imgupload

Posted on: 05/31/2016 08:58 AM

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How come you always get poor quality CPU`s Hilbert, don`t intel like much

Posted on: 05/31/2016 09:06 AM

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Hey what can I say .. at least I achieved 4.4 GHz on all cores, it just required many volts with our sample. Perhaps with few BIOS updates temps will stabilize a bit better.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 09:34 AM

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Nice one HH,just that price for 6950x,I expected around $1000 for that one,but that price I think is close to Xeon

Thanks,Jura

Posted on: 05/31/2016 09:38 AM

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I have to say that IMO the review sucked, especially in video game department, instead of doing a proper last gen vs new gen comparison so people with previous Gen could see if its worth upgrading, we got top of the line Intels compared vs low cost AMDs that not really in the same price/performance category.

Honestly, I have absolutely no idea now how fast 6800K vs 5820K in video games and if its worth upgrading, if it can be as easily overclocked to 4.5Ghz and how hot its compared to 5820K.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 09:51 AM

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Thanks so much !

Posted on: 05/31/2016 09:56 AM

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Hi HH

Assume are have tested ES sample or did you tested retail sample? If its ES then I would expect poor OC

Thanks,Jura

Posted on: 05/31/2016 09:58 AM

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Seems you didn't try pushing uncore which is helpful for memory bandwidth and better L3 performance. I heard Intel was going to "unofficially" support Uncore overclocking with BWE.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 09:59 AM

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when i woke up this morning i did not see this one coming... honestly HH how long have you been sitting on this one... good one
Great review as always, although the price tag OC performance on the big guns are disappointing, still a six core upgrade on a one of those brand new X99s would be something from my old companion mobe, when ever such a combo may arrive here, if it ever arrives here knowing where here is and never forget the insane price tag it is gonna show up with for the whole package.
still for every day use and gaming i don know is it worth it to choose an X99 over a Z170 combo specially noting that 6700K can go head to head with the big size over priced brother.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 10:00 AM

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This may be an upgrade path for me if it supports win 7, cos of weird hardware limitations I'm stuck there for now (firewire soundcard). Good review, HH, cheers, but that OC performance is a bit... meh.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 10:03 AM

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I have to say that IMO the review sucked, especially in video game department, instead of doing a proper last gen vs new gen comparison so people with previous Gen could see if its worth upgrading, we got top of the line Intels compared vs low cost AMDs that not really in the same price/performance category.

Honestly, I have absolutely no idea now how fast 6800K vs 5820K in video games and if its worth upgrading, if it can be as easily overclocked to 4.5Ghz and how hot its compared to 5820K.

Dude, if you wanna compare performance there are plenty of sites and software for that, giving the time HH was given for the review and effort i guess the benchmarks are more than enough to give you a clear view on over all performance comparison.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 10:07 AM

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Ok. Now I am interested. Which would be the best option out of these to get? As in well either of the 6-core cpus I guess.

Great review.

Could be my next upgrade step.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 10:11 AM

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So no need for me to upgrade my i7 3820 when it is only used for gaming then.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 10:11 AM

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Ok. Now I am interested. Which would be the best option out of these to get? As in well either of the 6-core cpus I guess.

Great review.

Could be my next upgrade step.

The 6800K has the sweet spot if 6 cores are enough for you as well as 28 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes (opposed to 40). Being a K model you'll have the six cores at 4 GHz in no time eliminating the per core disadvantage.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 10:16 AM

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Where does this info come from?
I didnt see about win10 req in this review.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 10:19 AM

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Ok. It seems so. I don't need 40 lanes for sure, since I will be back to single card configuration. And the price difference between 6800K and 6900K is huge.

Thanks for the input I will be upgrading later this summer so 6800K it will be most likely.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 11:04 AM

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Very nice review HH good work again.Its a pitty if its true you can only use these newer cpu's on win 10.I'm running windows 10 on my second system from the beginning and i'm not really impressed.But all in all there will come a time we shall have to lay windows 7 to rest but not for now.(for me)

If the cpu's supported win 7 i would consider buying a 6900K immediately.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 11:27 AM

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Out of curiosity, does anybody know if AMD's Summit Ridge will be competing against any of Intel's Haswell-E line up?

Posted on: 05/31/2016 11:30 AM

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Awesome review. A rarity among CPU reviews in that it includes gaming benches at 1440p. In another thread where we were discussing CPU performance at high resolutions, guru 'vase' made the insightful comment:
cpu workload of 3d games is a combination of processing game logic / calculations (not affected by any graphical changes like resolution or other parameters) and drawcalls (not affected by resolution itself!).
-> if you cap your fps at a point that is always in the "delivery zone" and raise or lower the resolution there is no impact on the cpu (given you can max the capped fps at all those resolutions)
if a graphical option changes the amount of objects to be rendered on the screen (mesh increase ..etc.) then drawcalls are increased and cpu load will raise even for same fps.

=> resolution increase in a static fps environment dont shift a load, they are just more taxing to the GPU which may result in the GPU reaching 100% utilization and a resulting fps decrease -> followed by CPU utilization decrease because less fps means less drawcalls.

I think we've reached the stage where 1440p GPU performance can now reveal more of a CPUs potential for bottlenecking than before at high res. Of course this wont be much apparent when most of the CPUs tested are all high end and close to one another in this review (indicating GPU reached its limits), but the AMD processors are weak enough to demonstrate high res bottlenecking. And of course things can vary dramatically from game to game. Just wish we had more variance in the Intel chips used, ie, mainstream 2500k, 2600k to get a fuller picture. Still, thanks for a great review.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 11:46 AM

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Ok. Now I am interested. Which would be the best option out of these to get? As in well either of the 6-core cpus I guess.

Great review.

Could be my next upgrade step.
Having a 3770K, you might as well wait until the end of the year to see if Zen is what everyone is hoping. Clock for clock not too far from Skylake, decent clocks, and 8 cores at the price of Intel's 4.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 12:20 PM

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Didn't see this coming. Came from work, brother-in-law says something about new CPU's released and I was like "are you on about? Not that I know of".

It seems he visited Guru3D before myself today. ha!




Another very well known review site couldn't even go beyond 4.1GHz. And most sites manage about an OC of "only" 4.3GHz.

So I would say Guru3D got a pretty normal or even good sample.

Posted on: 05/31/2016 12:36 PM

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Nice review Hilbert

Shame can't be said about the actual product lol

I think the performance is about what everyone, if they we're being honest, expected. Its about as impressive as desktop Broadwell was and wow what a lot of money for that 10 core! £1400 at OCUK! Even the 6800K is £380 at OCUK whereas the 5820K is currently going for £320! Can't see many other than peoples who truly need it for Workstation builds. Even as an enthusiast I'm not going to shell that out for it as much as I'd love to say I have a 10 core lol

Overclocking looks like it sucks unless you get lucky, or if you have a pot and some Ln2 to play with.

Looks like TTL got lucky with his, managed 4.4GHz at 1.301v, however his uncore was nothing special just 3100Mhz. Possibly helps explain why his temps where so good compared to others

Hilbert, what was your uncore running at during the tests?

Posted on: 05/31/2016 01:01 PM

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Wow, the prices are just insane. I was thinking to replace my trusty 3930K with the 6900K and expecting a similar price I paid for the former, but man, €1100+ for this version? What's Intel smoking?

I really hope AMD can knock it out of the park with Zen at much lower price tags so these prices will finally come down to affordable levels again.