The Intel Broadwell-E Review: Core i7-6950X, i7-6900K, i7-6850K and i7-6800K Tested
by Ian Cutress on May 31, 2016 2:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Enterprise
- Prosumer
- X99
- 14nm
- Broadwell-E
- HEDT
The Market
At this point in time, Intel is primarily competing with itself. Because the enterprise market requires consistency, the HEDT platform is constrained to that three year, two product cycle, which maintains enough consistency in socket compatibility to keep the enterprise partners happy. When Intel has 95%+ of the HEDT and x86 enterprise market, rather than increasing market share to generate revenue, Intel has to convince users on older systems that their new products are worth the investment. That’s an easy sell in the enterprise market, as time is money and total cost of ownership for a system is typically well documented for cyclical updates.
For HEDT, making that case to prosumers can be difficult. It depends on budgets and how applications are developing, especially when a number of popular professional software packages are (where possible) trying to leverage PCIe accelerators. There will always be a strong market for CPU performance, and there will always be a market for HEDT, depending on the price. But at some point the HEDT and Xeon markets do collide, and the two main factors on this are price and availability.
As mentioned earlier, the newly introduced Broadwell-E Core i7 parts collide in price with a number of Broadwell-EP Xeon parts, which could suggest that Intel wants to push potential prosumers (especially the professional ones) more into systems made by enterprise and workstation partners. These systems are typically sold with appropriate support, and the two platforms differ by a few features. The question becomes about who is buying HEDT: a number of users reading this will be gamers, and will not be interested in workstation sellers.
It’s a strange balance that Intel is trying to strike. Everyone wants more – whether they need it or not is a different conversation – but most enthusiasts say they want more. Intel states that as a company, it supports the gamers and the enthusiasts who want to push their consumer platforms to the fullest, and something like Broadwell-E does that. However a prohibitive price might reduce the potential number of next generation enthusiasts who want to play at the high-end.
X99 Refresh Motherboards
Throughout this month many of the regular motherboard manufacturers have either released, announced, or teased newer "refresh" motherboards using the LGA2011-3 socket and the X99 chipset. We’ve got a base roundup of all the new motherboards coming out of Computex planned, especially as new models are being announced and shown at the show. A couple of these landed on our desk for Broadwell-E testing, such as the MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon:
The Carbon is a relatively new brand for MSI’s motherboard range, typically on the high-end models, and this one aims for a deep black aesthetic that is enhanced through the additional LED lighting.
We also have in the ASUS X99-E-10G WS motherboard, ASUS’ high-end workstation and prosumer based motherboard that also integrates an Intel X550-T2 10 gigabit Ethernet chip offering two 10GBase-T ports. We’ve seen this before on the ASRock X99 WS-E/10G, which used the X540-T2, and required eight PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU to provide enough bandwidth. We were only able to test the ASUS 10G board for a couple of days before leaving for Computex, and will have a preview up shortly.
ASRock also sent us their X99X Killer, although the courier tried to deliver on a day where I spent 30 minutes gathering stuff for the Computex trip. Go figure. It’ll be ready to test when I get back!
This Review
As with every CPU launch, there are a number of different directions to take our review. In our review of the launch of the consumer Broadwell parts, the i7-5775C and the i5-5675C we examined the generational update over previous architectures, and thus won’t repeat those tests here. We have had almost every high-end desktop CPU since Sandy Bridge-E in-house at some point, although only the latest have been through our most recent benchmark suite. Due to timing, we were able to test all four of the new Broadwell-E processors, and retest the three Haswell-E processors, however we have a more limited dataset for comparison to Ivy Bridge-E, Sandy Bridge-E and Nehalem/Westmere. It will be interesting to see how the CPU performance for the HEDT has adjusted over the last five generations.
The other angle is the recent release of Intel’s Skylake mainstream focused processors, such as the i7-6700K and the i5-6600K, which feature a higher single core frequency but fewer cores and fewer memory channels, or the mainstream enthusiast focused Devil’s Canyon processors released back in July 2014. These have been tested on our latest range of benchmarks, and should make it clear where the latest mainstream-to-HEDT crossover should be.
Test Setup
| Test Setup | |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-6950X (10C/20T, 3.0-3.5 GHz) Intel Core i7-6900K (8C/16T, 3.2-3.7 GHz) Intel Core i7-6850K (6C/12T, 3.6-3.8 GHz) Intel Core i7-6800K (6C/12T, 3.4-3.6 GHz, 28 PCIe 3.0) |
| Motherboards | MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon |
| Cooling | Cooler Master Nepton 140XL |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsX DDR4-2400 C15 4x16GB 1.2V |
| Memory Settings | JEDEC @ 2400 |
| Video Cards | ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB MSI R9 285 Gaming 2G ASUS R7 240 2GB |
| Hard Drive | Crucial MX200 1TB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to AMD for providing us with the R9 290X 4GB GPUs.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with GTX 980 Strix GPUs and the R7 240 DDR3 GPU.
Thank you to ASRock and ASUS for providing us with some IO testing kit.
Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with Nepton 140XL CLCs.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU.
Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200 SSDs.
Thank you to G.Skill and Corsair for providing us with memory.
Thank you to MSI for providing us with the GTX 770 Lightning GPUs.
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with PSUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with PSUs and RK-9100 keyboards.
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SAAB340 - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
If possible, can you have a look in to RAM overclocking as well. I believe the memory controller in Haswell-E isn't particularly great. The one in Skylake is way better. I wonder if Broadwell-E has improved there?I know RAM speeds in general don't make that much difference but in certain applications it does.
StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
I'm still happily cruising with a 3930K. The 5930K was the twice the price of the CPU alone for what I paid for my 3930K, but it certainly doesn't offer twice the performance and the 6850K looks to be more expensive again.My 3930K still has a few years of life left in it, hopefully AMD can bring Intel's prices downward.
Witek - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
@SteveoLincolite - agreed, I am still on 3930K for more than 3 years now, and I would be happy to switch to something faster, but 6800K is essentially same speed, only faster in specialized workloads, and probably 2 time more costly. Going from 6 to 8 cores, only gives me 30% boost, for almost 4-5 times the prices. The 10 core one is a joke.3930K (and it overclocks easily too - 3.2GHz -> 4.2GHz with water cooling non stop in my setop), is still the best value out there probably.
prisonerX - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
It cracks me up that people pay say $300 for a mainstream i7 which is 65% graphics which they don't use, but employ that same silicon for a few more cores and the price is $1000+.People belittle AMD for not having the fastest silicon and then touch their toes price wise for whatever scraps Intel throws them. Particularly funny since mainstream processors were 5% slower in the last generation. It's like people are suffering Stockholm syndrome or something.
Alexey291 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Well it's little wonder that the cpu market is slowing down since there are no actual products worth buying from a mainstream purchasers' point of viewEden-K121D - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
People on Haswell are well and good until something extraordinary comes out of intel/AMDMichael Bay - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
When the most exciting thing about a platform refresh is a goddamn usb3.something type-whatever port, writing is on the wall.beginner99 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Exactly. It's not slowing down because of smartphones or tablets but because 5% performance increases takes 10 years for the average user to be worth an upgrade.Ratman6161 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
To take that one step further, for the average user it isn't even 5%. They aren't doing anything with the machine that isn't entirely adequate with what they have. I don't consider myself to be the average user by any means, but my i7-2600K system i built in the spring of 2011 is still more than fast enough for anything I do let alone spend money on a 6700K let alone any of these.mapesdhs - Thursday, June 9, 2016 - link
Indeed! This week I need to put a system together for handling SD video. I have at my disposal a whole range of SB/SB-E i7s, but they're overkill, so I'm going to reuse the parts from my brother's old PC instead, a P55 with an i7 870 which, at 4.2GHz, is still rather good (people forget it was a particularly low latency platform for its time, with boards that really did push what features one could include, some good innovation with slot spacing and other things). My own general tasks system, a 5GHz 2700K, I can't see becoming obsolete for a long time, it handles everything with ease (scores 880 for CB R15).And this is the key problem: it's the very tasks that would benefit the most from real performance and feature improvements where newer products have helped the least, baring in mind the upgrade costs involved and the lack of feature enhancements over the years (how long was it until Intel finally added native USB3 to the top-end chipset?). Given the cost, the gains of the latest top-end CPUs over what was available in 2011 just aren't worth it, which perhaps explains why I see comments even from X58 6-core owners saying they'll stick with their setups for now). Meanwhile, for anyone on a budget who doesn't want to consider 2nd-hand items, it's hard to ignore the value of AMD's current 4c and 6c offerings (heck, the PC I built for my gf is an old Ph2 X4 965 and it's more than adequate), given that really, for response and feel of a normal PC, having an SSD is more important than having the higher IPC of a costly Skylake vs. an FX 6300 or something.
I was shocked at the launch price of the 6700K, and I didn't think Intel would make the same mistake again, but they have. One of the main things I do is offer free upgrade advice for prosumers on a limited budget (typically self-employed artists); atm, the 6950X is so expensive that I'd recommend a 2-socket XEON setup instead without hesitation. 3 years ago this wasn't the case, back then there was a solid rationale for (example) an AE user on a limited budget to build an oc'd 3930K. Today though, what Intel is doing will only help reduce the enthusiast market even further, and I was told by a high street shop owner that the top-end items are the ones which provide the best margins (he said his store couldn't survive on the mainstream level sales). There will be long term self-reinforcing consequences if Intel doesn't change direction. Perhaps Zen will achieve that; certainly many seem to hope it will.