Intel’s (News - Alert) Broadwell CPU, which was recently released in June after about a six month delay due to problems with the new 14nm manufacturing process, represents the company’s fifth generation chipset. Since it was introduced this year, it appears that it has become the default laptop processor of choice. However, right on its heels is Intel’s sixth generation chipset known as Skylake.
As of this week, the first of Intel's Skylake processors are here. Intel has only released two desktop chips at this time, the high-end overclockable Core i7-6700K and Core i5-6600K processors and the Z170 chipset. Overclocking is the process of forcing a computer or hardware component to operate faster than the manufacturer-specified clock frequency.
While the Broadwell chipset was supposed to double the performance per watt over the Haswell chipset it seems that when both chipsets were put through several tests at various locations, it was almost impossible to reach conclusive results showing, at best a 10 percent performance improvement.
After only being out for a couple of months, is the new sixth generation Skylake superseding Broadwell with its promise of actually being significantly faster than the Haswell chipset? The Core i7-6700K has a default clock speed of 4GHz and a turbo frequency of 4.2GHz, while the Core i5-6600K has a default clock speed of 3.5GHz and a turbo frequency of 3.9GHz. Both are quad-core chips.
Along with a new microarchitecture and socket, there's also a new chipset called Sunrise Point, which is the basis for Intel's 100 Series of chipsets. These range from the H110 on the low end, with the most restrictive feature set, up to the Z170 at the high end, with all of the various bells and whistles.
Having been introduced with Intel’s Haswell-E processors and the X99 chipset last year, DDR4 memory is not really new. What is different is that this is the first time a consumer platform has offered the updated memory technology.
However, Skylake will still support 1.35V DDR3, which is sold as DDR3L memory. Due to the fact that the two memory standards use different slots we will most likely see one or the other supported on the motherboards.
Another updated feature of the Z170 chipset is that it will not be using the SATA interface to support storage. Instead the connection will be through PCI (News - Alert) Express, but again there will be a difference as it will include PCI Express 3.0 lanes.
Using PCI Express 2.0 lanes in the past was sufficient to connect Ethernet and wireless controllers, TV tuner cards, external sound cards, as well as other peripherals, but today more bandwidth is required making it the time for Intel to move on to PCI Express 3.0.
So far Intel has only released information on the three products mentioned above. The company is waiting until the full Skylake unveil which should happen on August 18. It looks like we will just have to wait another two weeks before we can get some clarity on the many unanswered questions concerning exactly what has been added or removed from Intel’s new chipset.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson