- Improvement over Devil's Canyon
- 4.2 GHz stock performance
- Top quad core performance
- Not entirely overclocking friendly
- Very hot when overclocked
- Premium quad core pricing
SANDRA – Memory Bandwidth
For a quick confirmation of memory bandwidth, the memory was manually changed in the BIOS to compare frequencies. A bug was discovered here though. You see, as memory frequencies were changed in the Advanced Memory page, the system would fail to boot at anything other than 1866 and 2133 MHz. Making changes in the Advanced Frequency page actually works. Not sure why the disconnect between the two.
The higher timings penalize bandwidth between the DDR4 and 6700K. We might be looking at the final limitation of the revised integrated memory controller in that respect. Keep in mind that the DDR4 ran at CAS 15 and DDR3 at CAS 9 in the BIOS. However, when increasing memory frequencies, the bandwidth climbs to over 27 GB/s which is great for moving large projects in and out of RAM.
PCMark 8
PCMark 8 can give us an idea of the CPU’s influence on overall system performance in a number of every day tasks. When matched with a capable video card and the GIGABYTE Z170 gaming motherboard, Skylake looks pretty good scoring 1,000 points higher. Some of those internal tweaks are beginning to show, giving us a good idea of the strengths of the new platform. Something that didn’t seem apparent earlier on in testing.
Gaming
Maxing out every last game setting on multiple displays is something else to experience. Overall, gaming performance with a capable graphics card attached is very close between systems. This is of course mainly due to the graphics cards doing most the work. You won’t see this performance with the integrated graphics of course.
Is Intel Skylake Hotter Than Devil’s Canyon?
The simple answer is no. The Intel Core i7-6700K idles and works at much cooler temps than the Core i7-4790K, which is pretty cool, pun intended. However, its temperatures climb under load, making it as hot as the hexacore Intel Core i7-3960X or 5960X, yet nowhere near as hot as the Core i7-4790K, but slightly more temperate than the older Core i7-4770K.
Idle power consumption of the 6700K test system is around 76 Watts, 4790K around 90 Watts, and 5775C around 55 Watts.