Broadwell-E Core i7-6950X Flagship Processor To Rock 10 Cores

[colinmcr]

I suppose the thing to see come bench results will be whether its worth the money compared to say a 14 or 16 Core Xeon that you could drop into your X99 for less money (non-retail ofc). I'm purely focusing on compute output though, before anyone mentions gaming. I'm sure no one in their right mind would buy this for a purely gaming stand point.

Manufacture was rumoured to start Q1 2016 anyone seen otherwise? I found an article at cpu-world which suggests March-April release.

 

[Caracus2k]

Current pricing on the top Intel chip at the moment looks like £800.

Given that there will be four cpu's in the broadwell-e lineup to the three in haswell-e and given that the second in line is an eight core with the lowest two being six cores it looks to me like the new 6950k will occupy a 'new' position with a higher cost with the second rung eight core costing similar money to the 5960x which it will effectively replace? Can't see them dropping the eight core below £600 if the want to price the whole lineup at £300 plus? I suppose this might leave enough room for an £800 ten core but Intel are not known of late for aggressive price cutting...

I predict

5820k new 'equivalent' 6800k (six cores/ likely 28 PCI-E lanes) - £300- £400
5930k new 'equivalent' 6850k (six cores/40 PCI-E lanes) - £400- £500
5960x new 'equivalent' 6900k (eight cores/40 PCI-E lanes) - £600- £800

then the 'new' ten core/40 PCI-E lanes 6950x - £800 - £1000

given 14nm production issues and shortages and lack of current competition at this Level for Intel I predict more likely to be higher end!

 

[shamus21]

For 10 Cores you just no Intel are going to hit you with a £1000 + price tag.

 

[chaparral]

For 10 Cores you just no Intel are going to hit you with a £1000 + price tag.

There been many people that had no problems with forking out 1k+ for each there Titan GPU's so I guess there a very good market for 1K cpu's

 

[shamus21]

There been many people that had no problems with forking out 1k+ for each there Titan GPU's so I guess there a very good market for 1K cpu's

Very true, manufactures will always price their products at what the customer is willing pay.

 

[Combat squirrel]

Random Q - will the 10 core work with ECC ram and still be able to overclock the CPU ? Im thinking 64gb ram, but I want the ram rock stable.

 

[Orangey]

Pretty sure you need to buy Xeon for ECC. Although it will be a salvaged Xeon, but with the features disabled...

 

[colinmcr]

I wonder with regards to pricing will they take into account what Zen could bring to the table, of course we have no clue how they will compare performance wise yet. I'd love to see AMD attempt to give Intel some competition, if anything to try keep prices sensible.

 

[Combat squirrel]

Pretty sure you need to buy Xeon for ECC. Although it will be a salvaged Xeon, but with the features disabled...

That's a shame, if it did support ECC that would be amazing - essentially an overclockable Xeon - I know it sounds odd but its perfectly possible to get 110% stable chips running much faster than they should.

 

[Dave2150]

Given that there will be four cpu's in the broadwell-e lineup to the three in haswell-e and given that the second in line is an eight core with the lowest two being six cores it looks to me like the new 6950k will occupy a 'new' position with a higher cost with the second rung eight core costing similar money to the 5960x which it will effectively replace? Can't see them dropping the eight core below £600 if the want to price the whole lineup at £300 plus? I suppose this might leave enough room for an £800 ten core but Intel are not known of late for aggressive price cutting...

I predict

5820k new 'equivalent' 6800k (six cores/ likely 28 PCI-E lanes) - £300- £400
5930k new 'equivalent' 6850k (six cores/40 PCI-E lanes) - £400- £500
5960x new 'equivalent' 6900k (eight cores/40 PCI-E lanes) - £600- £800

then the 'new' ten core/40 PCI-E lanes 6950x - £800 - £1000

given 14nm production issues and shortages and lack of current competition at this Level for Intel I predict more likely to be higher end!

Add at least another £150 to those prices.

 

[ukxenon]

Wonder if Intel know something about zen we don't

 

[Silent_Scone]

Yeah right..... because Skylake is the same price as previous generations.

Oh wait, 4790K was £270, 6700K is £390.

Intel's Extreme range pricing hasn't changed in decades, Humbug...

 

[Troezar]

Wonder if Intel know something about zen we don't

Exactly my thoughts. Why "give away" more cores at this point unless there is some 8 core competition looming? An interesting 12-18 months ahead on a few fronts...

 

[Caracus2k]

Exactly my thoughts. Why "give away" more cores at this point unless there is some 8 core competition looming? An interesting 12-18 months ahead on a few fronts...

my guess is Intel aren't going to 'give' anything away... they have seen NVIDIA get away with changing a massive premium for an 'elite tier product and realise that they can open up a whole new (higher) price point for a 'prosumer' CPU

 

[pmc25]

Probably hedging against Zen being 8core.

Zen will almost certainly use the same socket (and to some extent boards) for desktop, apu, non-custom server and non-big apu server. So there'll definitely be more than 10 core Zens available before the end of 2016 methinks. If they can clock them high enough, I'd expect the initial launch to top at 8 cores ... but maybe they'll choose to compete directly with Intel's halo product and have the top SKU at 10 cores from the get-go. Either way they should be able to hugely undercut Intel on price (Samsung /GF 14nm is immensely cheaper, has way fewer electrical problems and ought to have much higher yields).

 

[spot35]

Given that there will be four cpu's in the broadwell-e lineup to the three in haswell-e and given that the second in line is an eight core with the lowest two being six cores it looks to me like the new 6950k will occupy a 'new' position with a higher cost with the second rung eight core costing similar money to the 5960x which it will effectively replace? Can't see them dropping the eight core below £600 if the want to price the whole lineup at £300 plus? I suppose this might leave enough room for an £800 ten core but Intel are not known of late for aggressive price cutting...

I predict

5820k new 'equivalent' 6800k (six cores/ likely 28 PCI-E lanes) - £300- £400
5930k new 'equivalent' 6850k (six cores/40 PCI-E lanes) - £400- £500
5960x new 'equivalent' 6900k (eight cores/40 PCI-E lanes) - £600- £800

then the 'new' ten core/40 PCI-E lanes 6950x - £800 - £1000

given 14nm production issues and shortages and lack of current competition at this Level for Intel I predict more likely to be higher end!

This is the most likely in my opinion. A nice easy way to introduce a new top end and by proxy allow for a higher price tag.

Those hoping for an 8 core 5930k replacement will more than likely be disappointed. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

 

[rtho782]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I have a server hosted at a datacentre with a Xeon E5-2640v3, so 8 core Haswell-EP 2.6ghz.

I thought that I'd be able to transcode a load of stuff to x265 really easily with this, but handbrake doesn't seem to use more than about 70% CPU, so I feel like I could do just as well with a 6 core.

 

[pmc25]

This is the most likely in my opinion. A nice easy way to introduce a new top end and by proxy allow for a higher price tag.

Those hoping for an 8 core 5930k replacement will more than likely be disappointed. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

No chance. 14nm is way too expensive and low yield. The cheapest 6 core will probably be pushing £500. Have you seen the price of Skylake??

 

[Caracus2k]

No chance. 14nm is way too expensive and low yield. The cheapest 6 core will probably be pushing £500. Have you seen the price of Skylake??

Given that broadwell-e is just a die shrink of haswell-e with no indication of anything else changed I cant see them charging £500 for the base model as its not likely to clock much/any better than haswell-e (witness regular haswell to broadwell giving no overcooking advantage from the die shrink).

With regular broadwell desktop socket you had the benefit of an much improved igpu over haswell and some potential power savings.

With haswell-e to broadwell-e if the CPU performance follows the benefits will be more maximum cores on the high end sku and perhaps lower power consumption across the board.

Cant see Intel charging a circa £200 premium for the six core '6800k) if the sole tangible benefit is lower in power consumption.... (unless they up the pcie count to 40 ala 5930k .... But then they would struggle to differentiate it from the '6850k' which will also be a six cores cpu according to reports
..)

 

[pmc25]

Given that broadwell-e is just a die shrink of haswell-e with no indication of anything else changed I cant see them charging £500 for the base model as its not likely to clock much/any better than haswell-e (witness regular haswell to broadwell giving no overcooking advantage from the die shrink).

With regular broadwell desktop socket you had the benefit of an much improved igpu over haswell and some potential power savings.

With haswell-e to broadwell-e if the CPU performance follows the benefits will be more maximum cores on the high end sku and perhaps lower power consumption across the board.

Cant see Intel charging a circa £200 premium for the six core '6800k) if the sole tangible benefit is lower in power consumption.... (unless they up the pcie count to 40 ala 5930k .... But then they would struggle to differentiate it from the '6850k' which will also be a six cores cpu according to reports
..)

It's about cost to them, not features or performance for the consumer. They won't take a haircut until Zen is out in volume. There's no way the bottom SKU could be so cheap or that would imperil sales of the lower cost (but now very high price) Skylake i7. Skylake and BW-E should fall in price later in '16 when presumably AMD will have reasonable inventory ... until then, no way José.