Intel Skylake Core i5-6600K & Core i7-6700K Review

👤by David Mitchelson Comments 📅05-08-15
Conclusion

So, are the new Skylake CPUs a worthwhile investment? Well that will almost certainly depend on your current configuration. A move to Skylake from Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge will be advantageous while those still using Haswell may find the benefits quite marginal.

We first saw DDR4 with the Intel X99 chipset but now with Skylake, mainstream users can take advantage of the benefits that dual-channel DDR4 brings with bigger capacities, bigger bandwidth and faster frequencies.

In this review we have examined the new, unlocked Core i5 and Core i7 flagships – 6600K and 6700K. Throughout the benchmarks it’s clear to see a consistent trend of improved performance against previous generations. The 6700K with its 8MB of cache and higher clock speed tackled the wide-selection of testing very well, revealing great performance in a variety of different scenarios.


Ratio-based overclocking with previous generations of Intel processors has taken much of the fun out of overclocking but we’re pleased to report that full range Base Clock (BCLK) tuning granularity is back – allowing a greater number of variables available to modify the clock speed. Both our retail Skylake CPUs achieved good results when overclocking was applied. Very little voltage is required and this translates to low temperatures. The 6600K and 6700K were able to reach 4.7GHz – 34% and 17% respective overclocks.

We’re pleased to see that Intel has introduced the 6600K and 6700K at similar price-marks as previous launches. The 6600K being £199 GBP / $243 USD and the 6700K being 269.99 GBP / $350 USD. Bear in mind though, that a new LGA 1151 motherboard and DDR4 dual-channel kit are also required – making this quite a costly upgrade path for consumers.

Intel’s Skylake Core i5-6600K and Core i7-6700K offer a generous boost in performance over the previous generations of processors and we are pleased to see that in the overclocking arena more control has been handed down to the end-user.

VIDEO REVIEW – VORTEZ TV


Pros
+ Good performance boost across benchmarks
+ Both CPUs overclock well, especially 6600K
+ Overclocking is flexible – BCLK adjustments
+ Overclocking realises significant performance improvements
+ iGP offers improved performance from previous generations

Cons
- New socket/motherboard and memory required


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