http://valid.x86.fr/cache/screenshot/cbav7z.png I'm not worried...

They do. It's not only the CPU, you have to take the chipset into account too! The P and Z sersies from the Sandy era are obsolete when it comes to USB 3(.1), amount of PCI lanes and implementation of newer tech like M.2 etc. Some might argue that you wont need it now etc but in the future you will, and if the same (crystall ball I know) happens again with the 2-5% increments in performance you'll be damn happy with modern features like M.2 etc.

I would say definitely not, still running Xeon W3570 (soc 1366) on 4ghz and stock voltage, there is no game or application at the moment that needs more that that or is struggling with it. My other two machines are on 2700K and 3770K, same here, why would I want to upgrade when I can comfortably run at 4,5ghz? Features like M.2 mean nothing to me and 3.1 is too far away in the future. SATA is still 6gbs, so I am good, PCIe - running one card almost all the time, so PCIe lanes are again something that I dont care about that much. All marketing tricks from Intel aside, most of the people, probably 90% of them are perfectly fine with CPU and chipset that is 4-5 years old. I don't see myself upgrading in the next 2-3 years, the only part that gets frequently upgraded is the VGA.

I have that upgrade bug quite often, but then I look at available components, at their prices and make decision not to upgrade. Performance bump is simply too small to justify such price. I got Fury X because it more than doubled my HD7970 performance. Got 2nd SSD because it is something what gives objective and subjective boost. If nVidia went forward and enabled multi threaded CPU PhysX on default (as promised), I could have buy i7 long time ago. Now they made another promise, PhysX FleX should run on DirectCompute, wonder how that will end. With my CPU Fury X, which happens to be AMD card accompanied with not so CPU efficient drivers can do 120fps+ on 1080 in most of games (Gameworks excluded). So no objective/subjective reason tu upgrade that old i5. I think intel releases those minor updates (yes, those are like tweaks not real upgrades), because people spend money on 2~5% improved IPC and 5~10W lower power consumption per generation. Well, USB 3(.1) is nice to have, but not really needed, I use FW + eSATA for externals. inside I have to admit I have only 2x intel 6Gbps SATA ports, but I have only 2 SSDs. Then I have pseudo 6GBps SATA from Marvell there too as reserve. Unless someone is willing to spend a lot, his cards will still run in 16/0 (one) or 8/8 (SLI/CF) in PCIe3 as those CPUs are not having 32/40 PCIe lanes dedicated. And actually unless you are at least 50% sure that you'll need some feature, you should not care about it. Otherwise you are going to pay for stuff you'll never need. I have seen it way too many times.

Exactly, look what happened with TunderBolt, I spent over $300 for Asus z77 board to have the TB, that is already dead.

They do. It's not only the CPU, you have to take the chipset into account too! The P and Z sersies from the Sandy era are obsolete when it comes to USB 3(.1), amount of PCI lanes and implementation of newer tech like M.2 etc. Some might argue that you wont need it now etc but in the future you will, and if the same (crystall ball I know) happens again with the 2-5% increments in performance you'll be damn happy with modern features like M.2 etc.

If you're going to update your system every 3 or 4 years, why future-proof it? Future-proofing is for people who actually use the hardware for quite a bit longer than 3 or 4 years.

Question is how high you'll have to OC it to be worth while upgrade over your 2600k. And how high it will clock with different ram, and will there be performance difference based on timing, type too? If intel wants me, they'll have to bring 6-core i5. I can wait till 8-core Zen is here and if that fails, I can then see what intel offers. But I care little for 14/10nm and its lower power consumption, I want that performance.

6-core i5 is probably not going to happen soon, unless DX12 does some significant magic tricks which is doubtful. Sandies are gonna go strong for a few more years if you ask me. I have absolutely no intention on upgrading. Sandy @ 4.6GHz 24/7 is very good performance if you ask me.

We all remember the 5ghz Haswell and 5ghz Broadwell 🙂 This seems too good to be true, especially the voltages used but let's keep our fingers crossed that these chips really do overclock better than previous generations.

This. My 4670k needs 1.205 for 4.2Ghz and ~1.3 for 4.4Ghz, and 1.3 AVX2 on air is no-no. Even with an H100i it ran hot, especially now in these hot summer days. Oh silicon lottery, why do you always fail me so. Skylake is the same, a lottery.

Sandies are gonna go strong for a few more years if you ask me. I have absolutely no intention on upgrading. Sandy @ 4.6GHz 24/7 is very good performance if you ask me.

Idk how Skylake gonna perform but lets take a praise to Broadwell IPC. For instance, this is Sandy i5 at 4.6Ghz vs Broadwell i5 at 3.6Ghz http://www.dodaj.rs/f/S/wE/3NDjSBst/2/500x1000px-ll-190ba31643.pnghttp://www.dodaj.rs/f/1L/qa/1D3446MZ/500x1000px-ll-ed0ebefc42.pnghttp://www.dodaj.rs/f/11/FF/1fm6TrZo/untitled.png

If you're going to update your system every 3 or 4 years, why future-proof it? Future-proofing is for people who actually use the hardware for quite a bit longer than 3 or 4 years.

agreed. I upgrade every 5-7 years.

Well if this is true, it's about time Intel threw us a freakin bone of a decently overclockable performance chip. Now make it a six core. I'm beginning to give up on the whole enthusiast gig as is.

I'm still very happy with the 2600K, it's old but still a very fast CPU that performs brilliantly but 4 years, you know? It feels like upgrade time but frankly I don't really need to. If it can reliably get to 5Ghz on decent air cooler I'll probably feel motivated enough to invest in the new chip.

I don't think you need to upgrade from a 2600K unless you're running applications that are pushing it to it's limits & you're waiting for stuff to finish/complete all the time. 2600K is fine for gaming. I don't think you'd miss all the M2 SSD's (SATA 3 is fast enough for most uses), and you also don't need DDR4 for anything either I reckon. Why not wait until your CPU is slowing you down, then upgrade to a new platform, that way you can save the money & get something even more impressive further down the line.

I don't think you need to upgrade from a 2600K unless you're running applications that are pushing it to it's limits & you're waiting for stuff to finish/complete all the time. 2600K is fine for gaming. I don't think you'd miss all the M2 SSD's (SATA 3 is fast enough for most uses), and you also don't need DDR4 for anything either I reckon. Why not wait until your CPU is slowing you down, then upgrade to a new platform, that way you can save the money & get something even more impressive further down the line.

This should be the norm, but when people have too much money or "too much of an obsession" (to put it kindly), the opposite happens. Just look at the smartphone market.

Please god someone tell me Intel haven't just added 1 extra pin to the CPU and socket to make everyone upgrade their motherboard's too??? Why on earth is this 1151 and not just sticking to 1150 Z87/Z97??? Why do we need that extra 1 pin for and please don't tell me that allows for DDR4 support because that HAS to be total BS!?

Please god someone tell me Intel haven't just added 1 extra pin to the CPU and socket to make everyone upgrade their motherboard's too??? Why on earth is this 1151 and not just sticking to 1150 Z87/Z97??? Why do we need that extra 1 pin for and please don't tell me that allows for DDR4 support because that HAS to be total BS!?

Just because it has one additional pin doesn't mean the layout of the existing pins is the same. Those pins can be re-arranged as the internal layout is resigned. In that case no, you can't use the same socket, even if the end pin count ended up the same.

A 6 core i5 would of been a big hit i think, well maybe 2-3 years ago. If you offered me a 6 core i5 now i'd say No Thanks i'd rather just buy a cheap Zen with 8 cores and 8 HTs because 16 cores for little money with Win 10 & DX12 should be unbeatable Bang for Buck. Yea might not be as fast as Intel chips but if the loads are going to be shared out evenly across all 16 cores then i don't see how Intel will compete. I doubt even that CPU speeds will matter once we are into DX12 fully. As long as you have enough cores to spread out the workload and never hit 100% usage then i think you'll be golden. (Gaming i'm talking about, don't care about anything else)

A 6 core i5 would of been a big hit i think, well maybe 2-3 years ago. If you offered me a 6 core i5 now i'd say No Thanks i'd rather just buy a cheap Zen with 8 cores and 8 HTs because 16 cores for little money with Win 10 & DX12 should be unbeatable Bang for Buck. Yea might not be as fast as Intel chips but if the loads are going to be shared out evenly across all 16 cores then i don't see how Intel will compete. I doubt even that CPU speeds will matter once we are into DX12 fully. As long as you have enough cores to spread out the workload and never hit 100% usage then i think you'll be golden. (Gaming i'm talking about, don't care about anything else)

Yeah, except DX12 only scales to about 4 cores.

I'm still very happy with the 2600K, it's old but still a very fast CPU that performs brilliantly but 4 years, you know? It feels like upgrade time but frankly I don't really need to. If it can reliably get to 5Ghz on decent air cooler I'll probably feel motivated enough to invest in the new chip.

I'm right there with you broseph 🙂

noone needs to upgrade a 2600k to be honest.

Well with that rationale, noone needs to upgrade their gtx680 either.. still runs fine right? Its not a matter of need.. with higher end hardware, unless you're mining or going for high bench scores, it rarely is a matter of need.

They do. It's not only the CPU, you have to take the chipset into account too! The P and Z sersies from the Sandy era are obsolete when it comes to USB 3(.1), amount of PCI lanes and implementation of newer tech like M.2 etc. Some might argue that you wont need it now etc but in the future you will, and if the same (crystall ball I know) happens again with the 2-5% increments in performance you'll be damn happy with modern features like M.2 etc.

This this this. New chip is great, but there is more to it than just that 🙂

Yeah, except DX12 only scales to about 4 cores.

What does that even mean? I thought Win 10 and DX12 was meant to scale across all cores, i mean wasn't all this meant to be the big improvement over previous OSes. Doesn't Win 10 introduce real multi-threading across all cores? Of course the software used has to support it as well but that's what i thought anyway. I saw a video on YT showing a Xeon on Win 10 with 14 cores playing a AAA game and the CPU load was like 20% shared evenly across all those 14 cores and 28 threads.

What does that even mean? I thought Win 10 and DX12 was meant to scale across all cores, i mean wasn't all this meant to be the big improvement over previous OSes. Doesn't Win 10 introduce real multi-threading across all cores? Of course the software used has to support it as well but that's what i thought anyway. I saw a video on YT showing a Xeon on Win 10 with 14 cores playing a AAA game and the CPU load was like 20% shared evenly across all those 14 cores and 28 threads.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm/4 Star Swarm isn't even a really GPU heavy game and it only scales to about four cores. The 3DMark benchmark shows similar results, 4 cores, after that it stops scaling. Also what youtube video did you see? and what game? There are no AAA DX12 titles yet. Games don't automatically use the DX12 API on Win10. They need to be written from the ground up to support it. Aside from a special UE4 build, Star Swarm and 3DMark I don't think there are any other DX12 applications, let alone a AAA game.

Idk how Skylake gonna perform but lets take a praise to Broadwell IPC. For instance, this is Sandy i5 at 4.6Ghz vs Broadwell i5 at 3.6Ghz http://www.dodaj.rs/f/S/wE/3NDjSBst/2/500x1000px-ll-190ba31643.pnghttp://www.dodaj.rs/f/1L/qa/1D3446MZ/500x1000px-ll-ed0ebefc42.pnghttp://www.dodaj.rs/f/11/FF/1fm6TrZo/untitled.png

So it's basically faster than a stock Broadwell i5, albeit not by much. Not sure about how you feel, but having a 4-year-old processor that's still kicking ass and taking names is aces in my book really.

Yeah, except DX12 only scales to about 4 cores.

I believe it was 8 cores. And in that case do note that hyperthreading could potentially make a difference in i5 vs i7, simply because having one thread ready to go is a great thing when your CPU is not functioning at its full capacity (because the workload doesn't require it). This can be observed in i3 processors. I was baffled when I saw how much difference hyperthreading makes on a dual-core. Intel was very smart to include HT in desktop i3s since regular gamers constantly buy them. Not to mention that those i3s outperform AMD's octa cores quite severely in quite a number of titles. But if it only scales to 4 cores.. We won't see 6-core i5s for sure. i5s are enough for enthusiast gaming anyway. If scaling stops at 4 cores they will remain that way. We'll see. I honestly can't wait to see what changes with DX12. One thing I know for sure: MMOs are going to benefit A LOT from this. If devs choose to implement of course.

I'm still very happy with the 2600K, it's old but still a very fast CPU that performs brilliantly but 4 years, you know? It feels like upgrade time but frankly I don't really need to. If it can reliably get to 5Ghz on decent air cooler I'll probably feel motivated enough to invest in the new chip.

Totally on board with you. I feel that itch to upgrade the platform but I cannot find a single proper reason to spend the respective amount of money.

Are you sure that games have to be built from the ground up? I thought I had heard that engines like unity and some games are going to incorporate dx12 surely that is just adding it in not building the game again.