How many of you are going to get a Broadwell-E CPU?

Frank Jeagar · 4 Jan 2016 at 12:02

The Intel CPU updates for a while now have just been incremental so justifying the purchase of a shiny new CPU compared to the flagship of the last gen isn't worth it to me.

Sure you can get much better performance in some scenarios, primarily video editing and such, but that makes it depend on what you are using it for. I prefer to leave it and then get a nice second hand last gen flagship chip when it becomes outdated

Caracus2k · 4 Jan 2016 at 13:11

h4rm0ny said:
PCI-E lanes are the deal-breaker for me. If the 6850 does bump it up to 40, that's a BIG differentiator between it and the 6800 from my point of view.

I would put money on the main difference between the 6800 and 6850 being the amount of pci-e lanes on offer ala 5820 and 5930k.

The 5820k and 5930k both overclock to similar clocks on a average,the same is very likely to be true of the hex core broadwell-e cpu's they are 'k' cpu's so Intel know a lot of people are going to overclock then making the difference in stock clocks irrelevant for a lot of customers. So Intel will very likely deliberately hobble the 6800 like the 5820 to maintain a good distance between the 6800 and 6850. This also means that Intel will want to retain a 5820-5930 esque price gap between the 6800 and 6850 and given that we know the starting price for the 6800 has to be £300-320+ min at uk retail to avoid the 6700k from looking really silly then I really do think its unlikely that we will see a £800 ish ten core CPU this gen as there's not really enough gap left above 5930k ish pricing (for the 6850k) to fit in the eight core before getting to the 10 core at circa £800.

Intel may yet surprise me but I wont hold my breath....

faceman123 · 4 Jan 2016 at 13:16

Nope 5820k 4.5ghz all day long

Caracus2k · 4 Jan 2016 at 13:35

faceman123 said:
Nope 5820k 4.5ghz all day long

Same here.

Not holding out much hope that broadwell-e will be worth an upgrade. May pick up either a broadwell-e or haswell-e 8 core cpu or maybe the 10 core broadwell-e CPU in a few years if more software starts to take more use of eight + cores

Nice to have the option to do this however to eek a bit more life out of the platform.... which is an option you wont have if you buy a 6700k/z170 setup as kabylake will offer you yet another 14nm, 4c/ 8t CPU at the top end with basically the same cpu design as skylake but with an improved igpu that pretty much no one will care for if their buying one of the 'k' CPU's!

This is one of the major reasons I suggest an x99 setup over a 6700k/z170 setup

mmj_uk · 4 Jan 2016 at 13:52

The 6900K looks a great chip if it replaces 5930K.

We need to see pricing first though, I wouldn't be surprised if it's £800 with the 10 core model at £1500 or so.

ALXAndy · 4 Jan 2016 at 13:58

My 5820k does 4.6ghz and benches the same as a stock 5960x. It wasn't even hard and temps are excellent @ 64c hottest core full load on a Asetek single 120mm cooler.

As such I probably won't replace it for a few years, given yields have been so poor. I would like more lanes though so if something cheap came up I may consider it.

Cromulent · 4 Jan 2016 at 13:59

mmj_uk said:
The 6900K looks a great chip if it replaces 5930K.

We need to see pricing first though, I wouldn't be surprised if it's £800 with the 10 core model at £1500 or so.

If it were £1500 no one would buy it. They'd just buy a 12 core / 24 thread E5-2670 v3 Xeon instead which would be the same sort of price with more cores and better multi-threaded performance.

No I think it'll be £1000 max but at this time it is all speculation. I'm hoping it'll be more inline with the current top end Haswell-E CPU since if they increase the price too much people will just start buying Xeons instead.

mmj_uk · 4 Jan 2016 at 14:19

Cromulent said:
If it were £1500 no one would buy it. They'd just buy a 12 core / 24 thread E5-2670 v3 Xeon instead which would be the same sort of price with more cores and better multi-threaded performance.

No I think it'll be £1000 max but at this time it is all speculation. I'm hoping it'll be more inline with the current top end Haswell-E CPU since if they increase the price too much people will just start buying Xeons instead.

The Xeon is clocked much lower and you can't overclock it though, it'd be rubbish for a gaming system, worse than the 6-8 core i7's probably.

I hope the 10 core model is £800-1000 as that would mean 6-8 core would be even much more affordable but I'm a bit skeptical with them adding the new model (4 instead of 3), I think the Extreme part might command a heavy premium as it would have to be a flawless chip.

smilertoo · 4 Jan 2016 at 14:25

Intel can easily have the low end 6core the same price as the mainstream 4 core if the supporting hardware makes the x99 system more expensive, most users still require a system that's faster with few threads.

Cromulent · 4 Jan 2016 at 14:52

mmj_uk said:
The Xeon is clocked much lower and you can't overclock it though, it'd be rubbish for a gaming system, worse than the 6-8 core i7's probably.

I can't speak for anyone else obviously but the reason I care so much about the 10 core Broadwell-E chip isn't so much for gaming but for doing things like video rendering and such like. The types of games I play are not really all that resource intensive but I do a lot of video encoding (I do it daily) so the more cores the better as far as I am concerned.

Overclocking is nice (I have 4.4Ghz running nicely on my Sandybridge-E at the moment) but I'd swap that for more cores in a heartbeat.

ULP · 4 Jan 2016 at 18:51

A lot of folk seemingly suggesting it will be $1000... so should it not ought to be the equivalent here in UK... 600/700.. thats what I'd be willing to pay..

Also on sandybridge 3930k clocked to 4.4.. used for 3d rendering. So has potential for decent upgrade if the price is right and has good overclock ability.

Mattus · 4 Jan 2016 at 20:09

The geek in me wants one - but the pragmatist says it's likely to be expensive, fairly hot, and not enormously beneficial for everyday workloads (apart from encoding!)

thefish · 4 Jan 2016 at 20:44

It all comes down to price for me

csrogue · 4 Jan 2016 at 21:36

Im still on my i7 2700k 4.6. Wont upgrade till it impacts performance for me in games and so far its fine. Not sure how much benefit a new cpu would give me at the moment.

Still looks great and if the prices get to a reasonable level might be tempted.

cadmunkey · 5 Jan 2016 at 00:26

Would love one as I haven't upgraded for a while, but like everyone else I'll be waiting on the price. If it's over £600 I'll wait.

Sylver123 · 5 Jan 2016 at 01:36

I might upgrade but only if it is faster clock for clock than Haswell-E and overclocks just as good.

YB2ndBEST · 5 Jan 2016 at 01:54

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I do want... but we'll see

Mart1ns · 5 Jan 2016 at 02:37

I'm assuming it will be insanely expensive, but 10 cores, damn

Caracus2k · 5 Jan 2016 at 09:11

Sylver123 said:
I might upgrade but only if it is faster clock for clock than Haswell-E and overclocks just as good.

It's the same design, as haswell-e, just on a smaller design. Expect 'per clock' performance to be very similar! Benefits are less power for same clock overall, less heat and a smaller die size (mainly a benefit for Intel re cost) and new 10 core sku for consumers.

Recent cpu process shrinks don't suggest that there will be any appreciable increase in overclocked clocks either....

Caracus2k · 5 Jan 2016 at 09:22

ULP said:
A lot of folk seemingly suggesting it will be $1000... so should it not ought to be the equivalent here in UK... 600/700.. thats what I'd be willing to pay..

Also on sandybridge 3930k clocked to 4.4.. used for 3d rendering. So has potential for decent upgrade if the price is right and has good overclock ability.

$1,000 dollar us + vat and the rest equates to circa £800 as per the 5960x which was launched at $1,000 well $999 actually... In bulk

http://m.hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/73809-intel-core-i7-5960x-22nm-haswell/

Given that broadwell-e consists of a similar two hex core and one Oct core lineup as haswell -e as well as a new 10 core expect a new higher premimumum price for the 10'core!