Broadwell-E Price points and ETA?

[TheMorningStar]

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?

 

[TheMorningStar]

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]

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.

 

[TheMorningStar]

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.

 

[TheMorningStar]

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.

 

[TheMorningStar]

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.

 

[TheMorningStar]

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.