Broadwell-E Price points and ETA?

TheMorningStar · 2 Dec 2015 at 23:17

Is it safe to assume that the launch prices of Broadwell-E will be fairly close to the current x99 range?

Also wondering if we have a tighter ETA than Q1?

Any new features on these CPUs? I'm pretty unfamiliar with intel kit, so unsure of the differences between Haswell and Broadwell. Is it just architectural tweaks and obviously the die shrink?

Orangey · 3 Dec 2015 at 07:13

Broadwell is just a shrink.

We haven't seen any boards yet so it prob won't be Jan.

As for prices, I think they will be higher at least for the 10core, but most likely they will shift them all upwards 10% or so.

ErikN · 3 Dec 2015 at 10:29

Didn't the two broadwell desktops perform really good, especially in games due to its, compared to haswell, large cache?

Also, 10% on haswell-e is likely. With the X version being much higher than the 8-core haswell. Guessing the fourth version they added will cost as the 8-core haswell+10%.

Yaayuh! · 3 Dec 2015 at 10:33

What do you have at the moment? I'm on X79 and was going to wait for Broadwell-E before upgrading to X99, however, i'm torn because of the fact Skylake-E could be as soon as Q4 2016.

HazardO · 3 Dec 2015 at 11:27

I'm on X79 too, going to wait for skylake-e as well.

TheMorningStar · 3 Dec 2015 at 11:31

Orangey said:
Broadwell is just a shrink.

We haven't seen any boards yet so it prob won't be Jan.

As for prices, I think they will be higher at least for the 10core, but most likely they will shift them all upwards 10% or so.

I didn't think we would be seeing a wave of new boards with existing being compatible, not that I'd complain.

I'm wondering if we will see a repeat of skylake, that being they retain their RRP for the initial wave and then creep up notably in the coming months.

TheMorningStar · 3 Dec 2015 at 11:48

Rossi~ said:
What do you have at the moment? I'm on X79 and was going to wait for Broadwell-E before upgrading to X99, however, i'm torn because of the fact Skylake-E could be as soon as Q4 2016.

I'm still on a PhenomII x4. I was going to jump on the Black Friday bundle but I didn't spot the price increase and thus didn't put enough money back into the bank, so gutted.

I'll have this system for at least 5 years, so the power savings of Broadwell-e on the smaller node are attractive to me given my system is an always on solution.

If I had your system I'd wait for Skylake-e myself, or Zen even. I'd expect prices to crash once competition is once again in play. Can't you get some really cheap retired server chips for x79 now? I'd hope to take advantage of something like that at some point if DX12 makes more cores over clock speed as desirable as we are lead to believe. A shame skylake-e will not be compatible with existing x99 kit from what I have read.

Jono8 · 3 Dec 2015 at 11:59

TheMorningStar said:
I'm wondering if we will see a repeat of skylake, that being they retain their RRP for the initial wave and then creep up notably in the coming months.

This is just due to supply issues I believe. They still crop up at RRP every now and then.

TheMorningStar · 3 Dec 2015 at 13:01

Yeah, totally. Intel really don't seem to have any control over retail pricing. I'm hoping that they have better production after the shrink now. I don't like the feeling of being fleeced, makes me not want to upgrade at all looking at the state of the market recently.
Recon I'll start putting my money with retailers that honor the RRP rather than those that are in it for whatever they can get. Will have to see how things are when I do the upgrade.

DragonQ · 3 Dec 2015 at 13:51

Rossi~ said:
What do you have at the moment? I'm on X79 and was going to wait for Broadwell-E before upgrading to X99, however, i'm torn because of the fact Skylake-E could be as soon as Q4 2016.

Well Broadwell was only out for a month or two before being superseded. Not sure if the same will be true of Broadwell-E...depends if Intel are happy to continue their 1-year-behind model for the enthusiast platforms, and that may well depend on AMD's Zen architecture.

Orangey · 3 Dec 2015 at 15:12

While current boards will be compatible if you start seeing new ROG etc boards that'll be Asus et al trying to capitalise on the new series launch.

ukxenon · 3 Dec 2015 at 16:18

and i hope that zen will be good to push intel

Sylver123 · 3 Dec 2015 at 23:06

DragonQ said:
Well Broadwell was only out for a month or two before being superseded. Not sure if the same will be true of Broadwell-E...depends if Intel are happy to continue their 1-year-behind model for the enthusiast platforms, and that may well depend on AMD's Zen architecture.

Intel won`t do that with Broadwell-E. Releasing them only to cancel them a couple of months down the line.

I can see their point when they did it with the mainstream Broadwell because they were also in the process of launching mainstream Skylake therefore making mainstream Broadwell a waste of time releasing them anyways.

Methanoid · 3 Dec 2015 at 23:38

Coming back to the original question.. Pricing? No ideas... ETA? March 2016 I read on several sites... I'm waiting too!

TheMorningStar · 4 Dec 2015 at 01:20

Damnit, March? Oh well I can get my monitors Januaryish at least.

Anyone know what kind of memory support Zen is shipping with? See I may swop to zen as I'm AMD at heart and I'd like the RAM to be compatible, so do I put 32gig over 4 or 8 sticks (for a fully populated look) havent heard anything about Zen going with quad channel or if like x99 they only support a certain amount at highest speed.

I'm wondering about the pricing as I believe I have heard that intel sell at fixed price brackets and the next gen just bumps into the same slot after they have run stock down of the retired chips, What would be really sweet is if the rumored 10 core ends up sitting in the current 8 core bracket and as price is closely related to die size and there's just been a die shrink.. etc etc. I'm debating the pros and cons of the current x99 offerings, 40 lane six core for multi gpu and m.2. 1440p eyefinity at high fps is my aim so those extra lanes will come in handy especially if i do keep this system for 5 or so years with potentially a few gfx card upgrades etc, etc.

Caracus2k · 5 Dec 2015 at 15:13

Pricings' all speculation at this point but the safest bet is the the two six cores processors and the eight core coming in at roughly the same price point as the current line up with a £999(+) price point for the ten core.

Why? Well it would make sense for the lowliest six core to cost a bit more at rrp the the 6700k so that translates at £300+ before any increases due to potential shortages.

The next cpu up in the broadwell-e lineup is also reported to be a six core CPU and so its reasonable to assume that the differences from the base sku cpu will be the same as haswell-e i.e 40 pci-e lanes vs 28 and a small bump in stock clock speeds. As such we can expect a '5930k' ish price of circa £450 exc and retail pro e inflation. Next up is the eight core replacement for the 5960k now i think Intel' has two options here price it so it comes in at about £600 allowing for a traditional circa £800 price point for the ten core or maintain a £800 circa price point allowing for a 'new' price point of circa £1000 for the top sku.

I think Intel will go for the later option for three reasons

1) no competition at this level until at least much later in the year when and releases zen

2) traditionally the enthusiast 'x' cpu has commanded a significant price premium over the next rung cpu more than £200

3) the fact that Intel have moved from a three sku lineup from the past three generations to a four sku lineup suggests a new top end price is in the offing

pmc25 · 5 Dec 2015 at 16:30

Zen will be DDR4. I'd expect the decent boards to support much higher speeds than x99 (more like skylake boards). Doubt it will be more than dual channel as the bandwidth is already more than big enough with higher speed ddr4. Though who knows ... perhaps if AMD go with the same socket across all their APUs, FX chips and their equivalent of Intel's E(X) chips, some of the boards may well support 4 channel even if some of the chips don't.

I'd guess April for any volume in the channel for BW-E.

TheMorningStar · 5 Dec 2015 at 20:04

Zen has the 64 PCIE lanes or something like that doesn't it? I know it doesn't really matter, but on a base system you intend to keep for half a decade or more, you know you're gonna be good for bandwidth for a decent amount of GFX generations. Not sure if any of those will be internal for the APU etc, not really been keeping up with them being so far off. I know they are hitting with DDR4, no idea about quad channel though, would be nice for a little boost, they could do quad over 4 ram slots though couldn't they? I'd imagine they'd do that with most boards with the capacity you can get these days. Was thinking about a RAM drive see if I could get the shader cash on there or something.

If it's april I may just end up going for a "cheapo" 5820k and re evaluate my choices between Zen and Broadwell-e when they are both in play but if the win10 upgrade has timed out I'm unlikely to dump an extra £100 on a win10 pro key.

Gazb · 5 Dec 2015 at 22:39

I'd expect the default/stock memory speed for Broadwell-E to be higher than the 2133MHz of Haswell-E, especially as there are a lot of X99 motherboards supporting up to 3333Mhz.

I do wonder if Broadwell-E will suffer from the deliberate low supply from Intel like they did with Skylake.

TheMorningStar · 6 Dec 2015 at 01:37

I don't think that was deliberate was it? unless they were testing the markets price tolerance, perhaps.

Faster RAM support would be nice, I hear it's hit and miss if the chip can take the rated speeds. Not really what you want from an enthusiast chip really. I was surprised to see quad channel only suported upto 32gb and only 64gb (I think) in single channel but it's opened up in the server chips. Bad one for video editors and the like I would imagine.