Is Intel Skylake worth buying?
Recently they have found a bug in the skylake series which freezes the processor on heavy workload. Is it still worth buying? And if yes how will this affect me in daily usage?
Posted Jan 15, 2016, 4:57 AM UTC
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It depends on your current CPU, 3rd/4th gen intel then no, not worth it.
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I have a core 2 duo LGA 775 socket...
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If you can hold out for the price to settle, the skylake chips are a bit expensive right now due to supply and demand. But yeah sensible upgrade in your situation.
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I just rebuilt with a 6700k and I love it. I've also seen a story on the bug you're talking about. The story only referenced it freezing under HEAVY workloads in Prime95 and not daily usage. I stress tested with Aida64, Realbench, Cinebench, etc. and have not had any issues. For me it was worth it as I previously had an FX 8350 but if you've got a decent Intel processor from the last couple of generations I'd say hold off. I ended up paying $419 for the 6700k too.
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wow i am planning for exactly the same configuration... i7 6700k and Maximus VIII Hero Alpha... i am more interested in the motherboard how is it what is your review for it?
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The motherboard is awesome. The UEFI is nice and clean as you'd expect from ASUS. Although I kind of wish I had waited for the Maximus VIII Formula which came out 01/14/2016. Just for the cool armor and led bling. I know not much of a review but you won't be disappointed in the board. The PCIe slots are strong plastic and the ROG Logo is RGB and can be changed using ASUS's Aura software.
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The only reason I would go Skylake is if you have a Haswell K-line and want to get rid of the #%*@ing FIVR.
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FIVR
Whats wrong with it? Issues with overclocking or something else?
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Yeah. It's a pain in the ass to tune and since final step-down is on die, getting a real internal voltage reading requires a tapout on the motherboard - which a lot of boards display wrong.
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hey did you crossfire hd7970 + r9 280? is that even possible.. i just saw your flare...
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The drivers will hook up any two cards running the same processor. The R9 280 series is basically a relabel of the 7900 series. You can even upgrade newer 7970s into a 280X by flashing the VBIOS, although mine is too old. The same goes for the HD7800/R9 270 lines.
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If you are upgrading from an i5 or i7 Haswell chip there is little to no need for it. If you are making a new build and you have the money to do so they sure go for it, don't expect a big performance impact tho.
Onto the freezing subject. Correct me if I am wrong but i believe they have fixed the problem, if not the problem with the Skylake CPUs freezing will pretty much never affect you, doesn't matter if your gaming or editing.
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i am currently on core2duo E6750 and i had a decent dg33fb motherboard but that no longer works now.. so i am looking for new desktop... ELI5 how does a bug in processor gets resolved by a bios update?
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The BIOS will probably do something along the lines of telling Skylake, "Hey CPU, if you encounter this rare scenario and the output is nonsense, don't freak out, just return this standard error and then move on."
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The bug was on some Skylake chips on Prime 95 of all things. So research the cpu before you buy,and right now there is a supply and demand markup on the skylake K processors. Honestly if you're fine with Haswell get it before boards and cpu's get scarce and expensive,or if you're already on Haswell don't bother upgrading.
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I have an i3-6100 (lowest skylake you can get) and 8gb ddr4 and absolutely love it. With a GTX960 I play fallout 4 maxed out, arma 3 maxed out, and CS:go maxed out(dual 1440x900 at 60fps monitors) i dont get 60 fps on arma or fallout but is very playable usually 45-50fps, csgo I get 175-200 on average. The fast ram makes up for some. I bet a i5 would be a screamer for gaming.
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The bug is able to be fixed with a BIOS update and shouldn't affect 99.99% of users anyway unless you do nothing but run Prime95 :P
Yes, it's still worth buying as it's a 5-15% performance improvement over Haswell and brings along goodies like DDR4 and support for NVMe PCIe SSDs, USB 3.1C and 4 extra PCIe lanes.
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Recently they have found a bug in the skylake series which freezes the processor on heavy workload.
Where did you read this? Please provide the URL.
Intel confirmed that there is a bug which freezes when the processor is under heavy load in Prime95, not "processor freezes" not "processor freezes on heavy workload," not "processor freezes on load."
Get it right.
Teach your brain to take in the whole story instead of distilling it into something more simple because it's too much work to pause to let it understand the whole thing.
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i read the whole thing but i had doubts since its related to computing numbers especially primes. so if some game tries to compute stuff like projectile, or some hashing algorithms using some logic related to primes... etc would that crash the system? i know the prime95 might be using some rare calculation logic which might not be used by other programs... so i wanted to be absolutely sure if people who have bought skylake are facing any serious issues due to this. i generalized the statement coz it might be a specific usecase in which the bug occurs but there might be cascading effects on other computations as well...
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i read the whole thing but i had doubts since its related to computing numbers especially primes. so if some game tries to compute stuff like projectile, or some hashing algorithms using some logic related to primes
Give me a specific example of how a game would need to calculate a Mersenne prime. Feel free to get as technical as you can. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering so dealing with complicated and arcane subjects were a norm for me.
I have no problems with your doubts about Skylake, DDR4 or anything. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
i generalized the statement coz it might be a specific usecase in which the bug occurs but there might be cascading effects on other computations as well...
What I have a problem is, someone taking something out of context, distilling it, then presenting it as fact when it's actually pure conjecture.
I don't like it when people shorten things which end up being spread as rumors. This creates unnecessary confusion and noise for the community.
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well Mersenne primes can be used to calculate random number generation which i think every programmer might need... and a game dev might use some fancy lib which uses this method of generating randoms ... also it is definitely useful in cryptography (ECC, CWC) but this all boils down on the usage.. some dev might opt for using Mersenne based implementation some would opt for pseudoprimes... anyways i was not trying to spread any rumors .. i generalized coz the logic in question to generate primes can be used by n number of programs/libs/etc... the issue was detected for Prime95, who knows which programs/libs etc is using this logic to get things done. generalizing the statement does not mean that it is out of context...
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Hold off on Skylake. It costs too much right now and DDR4 RAM is still expensive. Once the cost of the CPUs go down, then consider buying them. You will probably have to wait for Zen to come out before Skylake goes down in price.
The RAM isn't that bad, maybe 10/15 bucks more per every 8GB.
It's the combination of actual processors and the Z170 boards that are all more expensive than their 1150 predecessors that makes it add up. But then again your comparing the latest technology with a dead chipset at the end of its life.
Personally I think the new offering of Z170 boards is really nice. Your getting faster PCIE with the Z170 boards which means a lot of your thinking of moving to M.2 storage plus it opens the door for faster GPUs down the line. USB C support as well. Plus 1151 will be the socket for the new Kaby Lake refresh so you have the option to upgrade to that. And the new fractional increments on the base clock for skylake make it kinder to the OC enthusiast.
If your looking at a new build and can afford the extra 100 - 150 bucks for skylake don't buy 1150. DDR 3, Haswell and 1150 are dead and you'll just be buying into something with no upgrade path.
yes i am planning on a asus maximus viii hero alpha seems decent enough its got u.2 ports as well. any other board you might recommend?
Zen will be from AMD and next lineup from intel is kaby lake and cannon lake both are still grouped under skylake however cannon lake is supposed to be 10nm... 10 nm simply incredible...i wonder how low they can go...