Currently £6 cheaper than ebuyer (in stock) the current Skylake excitement is that a new bios/utility release from Asrock for their Z170 motherboards, brings (apparently stable) BCLK overclocking up to an impressive 4.33GHz on the entry-level i5 6400 (using a fairly decent third-party CPU cooler and provided that you do well in Intel's so-called 'silicone lottery' that might otherwise keep your sample from reaching that speed - the 4.33 GHz figure is from Hardware Unboxed's group Skylake BLCK overclocking test; video review link in comments, below). Review sites have said that other motherboard manufactures, e.g ASUS, have said they plan to release their own bios revisions, for this (see update, below). Presumably these motherboard manufacturers know what they are doing and promoting, warranty wise, but overclocking still comes with manufacturer disclaimers and, in that Intel don't sell their non-K series as BCLK overclockable, and the huge frenzy of forum excitement aside, you might also want to consider the reassurance of spending more on an i5 6600, running at stock, as an alternative, even if Intel's supplied stock cooler is fairly noisy under load. For those otherwise excited, speculation is that a probably unhappy Intel will introduce a microcode update to Skylake production lines that prevents their non-K Skylake CPUs from taking advantage.
edit -the deal link takes you to novatech's website but this works: http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/processors/intelskylake1151/bx80662i56400.html
Below (and mainly in a later comment), I talk about why the i5 6400/Skylake is a good deal even without that potential intriguing BCLK overclock option (for me, it's because of the significant 1151 platform motherboard upgrades), but first, for anyone interested, I share what I have found about the BCLK feature.
Update 1: Also, please read my first post in the comments section, re temperature monitoring, or apparently the lack thereof after the "non-K OC bios" update (apparently people are insisting that with sensible settings you don't need a infrared thermometer, but I would like to borrow one!) you would want a fairly good CPU cooler (Skylake apparently doesn't take well to the heavier air coolers/over tightening) and, without being able to test temperatures, I wouldn't exceed the settings that the motherboard vendor recommends just because someone on a forum says go for it; I don't see the point in risking damaging your brand new CPU or reducing its life expectancy.
Asrock stated in a news release: ”Lab tests show that the once-not-overclockable Intel Core i5-6400 CPU can now be overclocked up to a 60% frequency boost with Sky OC on Asrock’s Z170 Pro4.” That motherboard is £92. It's unclear to me how they reached/measured the figure of 60% and what cooler they used; Hardware Unboxed benchmarks saw their i5 6400 sample manage a "31% increase", at "4.33GHz". Guru3d and other review sites still carry that 60% and Asrock graphs but most sites typically quote user figures of between 10 and 30% frequency boost, deepening on the CPU. The news sites mention that there is a test bios for MSI on the forums that enables the same non-K overclocking support but the advice is to wait for the full supported update from MSI).
Update 2 - there seem to be bios updates available on the forums for MSI Z170A XPOWER GAMING Titanium Edition. ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme, ASUS Maximus VIII Gene, ASUS Maximus VIII Hero, ASUS Maximus VIII Impact, ASUS Z170-A, ASUS Z170-Deluxe, ASUS Z170-E Non-K. Taking a look at one of the ASUS ones, there is the disclaimer that the bios might not be suitable for and might cause damage to a K-series i5 or i7 processor, so something to keep in mind if you're upgrading to a K-series model at a later date. It's unclear to me whether the bios updates are sanctioned by MSI and ASUS, or testers, as the downloads are from the forum, not the motherboard vendors. My preference would be to wait for stable, tested, verified releases.
Update 3 - "List of supported MSI Z170 models as of 18th of December:
Z170A XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM Edition E7968IMS.14U
Z170A GAMING M9 ACK E7966IMS.14T
Z170A GAMING M7 E7976IMS.19T
Z170A GAMING M5 E7977IMS.16T
Z170A-G45 GAMING E7977IMS.23T
Z170A GAMING M3 E7978IMS.A3T
Z170A GAMING PRO E7984IMS.16T
Z170A KRAIT GAMING E7984IMS.B5T
Z170I GAMING PRO AC E7980IMS.14T
Z170A TOMAHAWK / Z170A TOMAHAWK AC E7970IMS.33T
Z170M MORTAR E7972IMS.A2T
Z170A SLI PLUS E7998IMS.11T
Z170A-G43 PLUS E7970IMS.12T
Z170A PC MATE E7971IMS.A6T
Z170-A PRO E7971IMS.17T "
Again, this was a forum post with download links that weren't directly from MSI, so I won't post the link, here, would recommend MSI users who want to experiment, check for bios /beta bios updates on MSI's support page. MSI apparently included the understandable disclaimer: "Overclocking Intel non-K CPUs is not officially supported by Intel and the BIOS versions created by MSI unlocking this option are all beta versions. Intel may choose to disable this option at any time. At no point MSI can be taken responsible for disabling overclocking for non-K CPUs."
There is talk about the bios update and utility coming to cheap H170 motherboards but some suggest a hardware revision is planned. Most of the reviews using Asrock Z170 boards have been using the entry-level i3 6100 (which was overclocked to 4.7GHz - though it did well in games, it didn't do as well as expected, despite hyper-threading, though in user benchmarks it destroyed the non hyperthreaded G4400 Pentium, something also mentioned in the video review, link in comments below) and the budget i5 6400. I would be particularly interested to see how the higher binned i5 6500 does, at £159.98 (amazon).
For those not intending to BCLK overclock, the Skylake i5 6400 has the advantage over the older Haswell i5 4460 of better integrated graphics (the BCLK overclock disables integrated graphics, though I imagine most people contemplating overclocking will want to buy a graphics card, anyway) and brings the advantages of new features with the 1151 platform, which for me is the main appeal of Skylake. However, the older i5 4460 is still a good choice, because it beats the i5 6400 in some benchmarks, especially if you can't take advantage of the 1151 platforms new features. Digitalfoundry, though, do a good review on the extra frame rates achievable using faster memory with Skylake as compared with using faster memory with Haswell, but if trying to hit a tight budget, Haswell still has a lot going for it. My preference was for Skylake for the new features and, now, for the apparently stable BCLK overclock. There are known disadvantages to the workaround, which I mention in the post below.
Top comments
xigent
18 Dec 153#5
Or get the i5 6600 for £155 which is 3.9 GHz in turbo mode and leave everything working as Intel intended.
All comments (67)
Noclouds
18 Dec 152#1
There is speculation in the industry that Intel might, predictably, make a microcode adjustment to prevent the practice, in that Intel charge a big price premium on the K versions of their i5 6600 and i7 6700. Unfortunately the procedure disables the integrated graphics, so you would need to buy a graphics card. Locked into that 4.33GHz frequency (if your sample is able to reach that) you lose turbo and any other C-states and you see a dramatic increase in power usage (in one review, the figure was 18% more power than the i7 6700K running at stock (total system draw). I would set different profiles in bios, one for gaming/rendering, the other a default setting for general office and multimedia use. Select a boot up. I don't see that as a great inconvenience.
Though interestingly single core performance is faster than the i7 6700K, games that take advantage of multiple cores and threads still see the flagship Intel i7 6700K holding a small fps advantage in some games, at a much lower power draw. Still, the BCLK overclock significantly narrows the performance gap (in games), for only £140, allowing you to spend the £90 saved on a better graphics card.
update and this one bothers me a bit - one tester noted that he felt the only problem with the “special BIOS” being shared on the forums is that you can’t read out the core temperature, that it doesn't matter what tool you use, you will always see 100°C. He noted, however, that after clocking a lot of 6700K CPUs he feels he knows that anything below 1,40 Volt is fine with proper cooling. In reference to that, he hentions the X61 Kraken. He went on to say that even cheap and weaker air coolers can handle these CPUs at up to 1,40 Volt, more especially the i3 and Pentiums Skylake CPUs, as they only produce a relatively small amount of heat. A workaround would be to borrow (or buy and gift!) a cheap infra red thermometer (£10).
The source is a user named "der8auer", if you want to search for it; I'm reluctant to post the URL because the webpage has links to bios updates for MSI and ASUS that aren't, as far as I can see, direct from the motherboard vendors themselves. I am relatively risk averse and would wait for the reassuring security of updates direct from the motherboard vendors themselves. It seems to me that at this stage, despite a lot of users reporting great test results, things are still at the early testing stage. So, perhaps it makes sense to buy the CPU now, in the hope that Intel haven't yet updated their production line to prevent the BLCK overclock, and then wait until a stable/comparatively well tested beta bios is available from the motherboard vendors. Nothing is without some level of risk, the motherboard vendors always give that overclocking disclaimer and it seems to me at least as true, here, with the unsanctioned-by-Intel BLCK overclock, but I think that risk element is what sees more people going for the i5 6400, rather than a more expensive model. Also, the bang-for-your buck crowd like to spend as little as possible.
The problem for me is the i5 6500 is clocked 500mhz faster. Probably worth the extra £10-20. If you are buying a gaming pc disabling the CPU onboard GPU to overclock is hardly an issue. I doubt you would be over clocking the CPU unless you intended on gaming. Would intel honour the warranty if something went wrong using this new trick?
Agree disabling the GPU for everything would be a big step back. If you can do it just for games it might work well.
Noclouds to gummby
18 Dec 15#4
The cheapest I can find the i5 6500 from a UK vendor, full retail box with heatsink, rather than OEM without heatsink, and 3 year warranty and in stock is Amazon at £159 or, if it's another Amazon Skylake mislabel and you have to send it back, £163.97 inc shipping at CCL, in stock. Most of the reviewers and forums seem to have gone with the best bang for your buck option of the i3 6100 and the i5 6400, which I suppose makes sense in that challenge of what's the least I can spend, Tom? I would be keen to see a review of the i5 6500 in one of those Asrock motherboards or that one MSI motherboard.
Re warranty, though motherboard manufacturers routinely push overclock features and relative ease, Intel aren't known for their love of overclockers (sneaky workarounds, like this one), though I remember at one point they offered an insurance premium for owners who want to overclock, but that's for the unlocked K-series CPUs; Intel stand to lose a lot if people buy the cheapest i5 they can and BCLK overclock it, rather than shell out for a i5 6600K or i5 6700K. I would be very keen to see a long-term stress test of the i5 6400 with that BCLK overclock. My preferred option, at the moment, would be to go for a i5 6600 (with 2666GHz memory, re digitalfoundry and others findings) using the stock Intel cooler, which could be replaced a later date. When the warranty expires, I would apply a small BCLK overclock, provided the latest bios from whichever motherboard manufacturer supported it. Meantime, I am caught up in the excitement of this one, early days but the forums have gone bonkers! Could this mean a rush to buy before Intel introduce microcode to shut people out, I don't know. Christmas isn't a great time for me to be spending.
xigent
18 Dec 153#5
Or get the i5 6600 for £155 which is 3.9 GHz in turbo mode and leave everything working as Intel intended.
Noclouds to xigent
18 Dec 15#6
Where are you seeing the i5 6600 at that price. I have had the Intel i5 6600 in my Amazon basket for months now at £155, no stock, no stock, no stock. A few weeks ago they gave a stocking date, which was then shunted to 23rd December and I'm sure will be shunted, again, if they bother to give a stock date at all. Great if they deliver on their dates but I have bad so many let downs with Amazon and Skylake. It's not as if vendors elsewhere are having difficulties stocking that one.
The cheapest that I can find from a UK supplier on the i5 6600, retail box with cooler and 3 year warranty, in stock, is ebuyer at £175.
looneychoonz74
18 Dec 15#7
Still better off with a 4790K :wink:
eldaras to looneychoonz74
18 Dec 152#9
Mmm... That's a £100 more (:wink: back at you)
But since I'm feeling like topping you I'll say: a dual i7-5960X is still better. :smile:... forget the fact that each CPU is £800 :smile:
eldaras
18 Dec 15#8
I agree with some of the comments above, spend a bit more and get the 6500 if you can.
looneychoonz74
18 Dec 15#10
Ha,Absolutely!
The 5960x is a beast of a chip, but £800.... Ouch!
Yup..... That's pokey enough to make a geek spoodge in his y-fronts :wink:
jez794
18 Dec 15#13
just read the comments and you lot might have well have been speaking elvish, congrats.
fishmaster to jez794
18 Dec 151#16
It's essentially Top Trumps. Who can go one better and garner a small win. Overclocking is largely redundant but it's about getting more out of the standard equipment. It's largely a bloke thing, get an engine see if you can get more power out of it almost needlessly. I haven't overclocked in years, as there's never been a need for me to do it. I was really in to it, there's an art to it if you want to make the biggest gains. Now I would estimate the majority of people just don't need to overclock. If you need to save £90 here or there I'd argue you just save your money and do the job properly in the first place. Once you get to a certain CPU processing level it's more about the graphics than the CPU if you game.
A friend of mine has shelled out £1400 on a gaming rig with 32" 1440p monitor. X99 chipset, M.2 ridiculous speed SSD, hex core Intel CPU, 16GB RAM, GTX 970. Does he need to overclock? Even if he did he gains nothing for gaming. Overclocking if you have to do it, is more of a budget thing these days I'd argue.
fishmaster
18 Dec 15#14
I'm not even sure that's the best Intel CPU there is. Anyway it's good enough if you need it I'm sure :smiley:
looneychoonz74
18 Dec 151#15
I'm happy with my paultry 4790k..... It does the job for now :smiley:
pimpchez
18 Dec 151#17
I am one of the ones that got it for 155 .just be patient it tool ten days to deliver
fishmaster
18 Dec 152#18
If you average it out, consumer CPU processing has largely stagnated since around 2009. You'd gain little from upgrading your present CPU to the latest generation. The real world gains you'd make are in the new I/O technology such as M.2 Gen 3, PCIe Gen 3 lanes, Sata Express, RST Capable PCIe storage ports etc. So you'd decide whether they're beneficial to you or not rather than looking at negligible CPU gains. So yes your current CPU is good enough I'm sure :smiley:
MrT2
18 Dec 15#19
Several times I've ordered things from Amazon that were out of stock and they've turned up in short order, yet remained out of stock on the page, I think some items get ordered in with as-needed quantities when people make orders.
salty234
18 Dec 15#20
I am curious why when your talking about blck overclocks around 0.5ghz+ and disabling the integrated graphics why anyone cares about the cpu being OEM or Retail. Based off the intel Heatsink being adequate for stock (which comes with the retail) but a restriction for OCing a chip due to it's adequate heat performance for intel specs it is hardly an OC ideal. Also if your pushing performance isn't a graphics card a necessity even a 650GT would help in a benchmark with a liquid nitro cooled cpu, it is all about maximising load performance across multiple components hence why the north bridge and south bridge become important in boundary OCing. Not to mention any gpu from the last 3 years is better than integrated on an i3 or i5.
Also those mentioning Xeon on chips, congrats you know your times tables, not core optimisation performance statistics and if you want to compare a £750 cpu vs a £150 you clearly need your girlfriend to tell you that the banana you bought is more than adequate to make a banoffee pie. I would opt for the i5 6500 if your planning to OC as it has already been binned slightly better in the Intel foundry it is slightly more likely to be lucky in the Silicon Lottery.
looneychoonz74
18 Dec 151#21
Absolutely.... you're spot on!
I'm quite suprised at how little extra the 'new gen' chips actually perform, it's definately not mindblowing, well not yet anyway...... I'm sure in another 5 years it will be worth taking the plunge, but for now I'll be sticking with what I have.
I was close to jumping aboard the skylake train, but after a bit of research, realised i'd be no better off.
It's all pretty fast moving though, as soon as you've upgraded and modernised it's not long before its 'old news' and last years tech.
I still wanna get my hands on a couple of Titans though :smiley:
piloteer81
18 Dec 15#22
True but then this is still likely to be much lower than a similarly priced AMD CPU, especially an overclocked one, which is what the likes of the non-K Core i3's and Core i5's are competing against anyway. Anyone into gaming doesn't really care about power consumption - it's a nice thing to have an efficient PC but if you're a gamer you just want the best bang for your buck, regardless of watts. If they didn't AMD would have gone out of business a long time ago.
fishmaster
18 Dec 15#23
I put a Titan in a customer's machine a few months ago who had some 4 or 5 year old AMD Athlon in it, I almost cried that it was paired with such a useless CPU. I did take a photo of the £899 Titan for the kudos and perhaps for the reason I can laugh at it in 10 years time.
fishmaster
18 Dec 15#24
I ignored you once you failed to spell Xeon correctly.
salty234
18 Dec 15#25
Good point now changed, I am a little drunk and got carried away ranting.
looneychoonz74
18 Dec 15#26
Nice...... You've installed the 'holy grail' of GPU's :smiley:
I've only been lucky enough to look at pictures of it online, whilst salivating and checking my bank account....
I'm guessing the customer will be making the most of all that bottlenecking? haha
I think the only AMD chip i've come close to getting was an Opteron 6344, but went the intel route.
fishmaster
18 Dec 151#27
He had the money to change the motherboard and CPU and RAM but didn't want to. He thought sticking in the best GPU would fix everything. If you go Titan then you need to balance things out so you often go big with everything else.
jez794
18 Dec 15#28
Very nicely explained, cheers
Noclouds
18 Dec 15#29
Don't misunderstand me, I like Amazon as much as the next person, or rather I like the ease of returns. But!
Amazon had a listing for the i7 6700K at a good-ish price. People were delivered the i7 6700, instead, despite the listed Intel box number being for a 6700K, the customer comments reflect the irritation. They did the same with one of their direct from Amazon i5 6600K listings, delivering a 6600, instead. Again, that's reflected in the customer comments. They since changed the listing to i5 6600, which they have in stock (at the time of writing, the price just went up from £180.01 to £186.79), which makes me further doubt they will deliver on the £155 listing. They also had listings for a 'Pentium' i5 and 'Pentium' i7, so goodness knows what the customers received. I don't like knocking Amazon, I pay for their Prime service and I am usually happy with it and the ease of returning things, it's just the wasted time and less than stellar packing materials that frustrate. If Amazon deliver that i5 6600 at £155, I will let people know but I have a bet with friend that they will just shunt the date, again, or go back to on order with no date.
Has anyone has success querying them on these things and getting them to deliver the same item that is also from Amazon directly, but haggling them down to the price of the no-show? I find them very polite but not desperately helpful. I know other vendors have been having problems with supply, so my gripe is mainly with incorrect listings and the hassle of returns!
Nehcrux to Noclouds
18 Dec 15#31
Ordered an i5 6600 for £155 yesterday from Amazon with an advised date of in stock on the 23rd and delivered on the 24th. Just checked and it's now being delivered Monday.
gr8h8me
18 Dec 15#30
My 3770k is still a great chip. 16gb ram, gtx 980ti and a predator X34 monitor and runs everything really well...atm when it stops I'll get i7 skylake
Noclouds
18 Dec 15#32
Thanks. I tried again. They say they will deliver on the the 24th. It will be interesting to see what they deliver! There are only two customer comments from back in Nov. Hopefully I won't be adding a negative. At least I have some time off to return it, if need be. :smiley:
drasim
18 Dec 15#33
I've heard odd stories like that from people who worked at an online custom Pc store. Customers trying to pair the latest Cpu & Gpu with a bog standard £15 case and power supply
Noclouds
18 Dec 15#34
Rants are good, I just had a long overdue TLDR about Amazon! Re your question about OEM, it's a good question in context, here. Whereas full retail box means you get the CPU in a nice box and a heatsink and full 3-year warranty, or whatever the full warranty length, OEM usually means you just get your component in an anti static bag, hopefully with some bubblewrap, in the case of a CPU usually no heatsink and usually a single year warranty. The PC builder then hopefully passes on that saving to the PC buyer, usually with just the one year warranty. I think your question is fair because there is usually little overclocking headroom with stock Intel coolers, so you'll be sticking that cooler in a cupboard, and Intel don't sell the non-K series Skylakes as overclockable, so how likely is it they will honour the retail box 3 year warranty in the event something goes wrong. I get slagged off for setting conservative overclocks but I want my builds to last and though the BCLK overclock is reportedly, apparently, stable, in this instance, I would like to see stress test results. Ideally we'd be having this conversation six months down the line, rather than during a time of bang-for-your-buck feverish forum frenzy, though by that time Intel might have employed microcode to stop the practice.
salty234
18 Dec 15#35
True an OEM cpu has only a 1 year warranty but I take it as a component that is so complex it is either going to break within the 3 months or break after 5+ years due to sheer age, at which point it's old enough to justify its original premium. I still have an OEM E6600 running everyday for close to 10 years and that was my cpu when I was learning to OC, and later learning to build watercooling loops. Deep down I wish I could of got extended warranty so when it dies I get a nice shiny Skylake replacement but that's just greed not logic.
Intel hates cannibalising its own market so they may will throw their toys out of the pram, however like the Asus X99 with extra OC pins, the main market is not hobbyists or enthusiasts, it's mass market consumers who fear entering a bios let alone tweaking settings.
geoffmiles
19 Dec 15#36
I ordered an i5 6600 from amazon a week before black Friday for 155, I received it on 4th or 5th December, I did have an expected delivery date when ordered. This was a retail pack with heatsink and fan.
Noclouds to geoffmiles
19 Dec 15#37
Thanks, I was surprised there was only two customer comments from back in Nov and the slightly wonky product description, made me additionally doubtful. If it really does arrive here on Thursday as they are telling me, or even several days after the busy Christmas period, it will redeem Amazon a bit, with me. £15 extra over the cost of a 6400 is worth a punt, I think, as against £36 extra from ebuyer, though I would get a kick seeing what I can get out of a 6400! Still doubtful based on past experiences but thanks for the reassurance! :smiley:
Nate1492
19 Dec 15#38
This is misguided.
You aren't seeing ghz gains in processors, but you are seeing massive energy efficiency gains.
Not only that, you're just wrong about 2009 entirely.
The 2500k was a great processor that has held up in ghz.
Now, your other point about I/O tech... This has been true for at least 15 years. I/O is generally the bottleneck for most consumer systems.
mugen6
19 Dec 151#39
Overclocking was all the rage in the late 90's and early 2000's back when PCs were slow as hell and squeezing every ounce of potential from your CPU was necessary for gamers and enthusiasts. Even doing basic tasks saved you precious time on an overclocked PC, with spinning hard drives being the obvious bottle neck. These days I can't tell the difference between an i3 and i7 for general "enthusiast" (non gaming) computing, as long as the machine has an SSD.
cubchai to mugen6
19 Dec 15#41
Maybe it's just you who can't tell the difference.
rev6 to mugen6
19 Dec 15#45
If you can't tell the difference between an i3 and i5 then it means the tasks you do don't require more power, so maybe text documents, browsing?
For those that do, we have i5's and i7's, 4/6/8 core CPU's.
blueflash
19 Dec 15#40
why aren't 4590 coming down in price? it seem apart from bit extra for motherboard if I'm building new PC I might as well go for new gen and ddr4 .
xigent
19 Dec 15#42
Amazon have 14 in stock at the moment at the price of £155
fishmaster
19 Dec 15#43
It's not misguided. Perhaps learn what average means? You're right about the power saving gains and I have referenced them many times in this forum. However who actually would upgrade their CPU for power saving gains? I'd actually quite easily argue that the public are being ripped off over these power saving gains, look at mobile processors for example and i7 is now just a dual core part and the difference between an i3, i5 and i7 is becoming marginal. The public however sees this tier system as a clear example of increasing CPU power which now not so much the case.
"Now, your other point about I/O tech... This has been true for at least 15 years. I/O is generally the bottleneck for most consumer systems."
What happened before 2000 then if we're really in to nit picking here? Bottlenecks have always existed. The arrival of SSDs in around 2007 started to address the most prominent bottleneck in a modern computer, which is the 61 year old (well almost 24 December 1954) hard drive technology.
There have been huge gains in I/O. M.2 Gen 3 allows massively increased sequential read/write times and more importantly massively increased IOPS (Input/Output Operations). Look at the X99/ Z170 chipsets they are feature rich in improved I/O, there's I/O coming out of your ears on those platforms now. M.2 Gen 3, Sata Express, RST Storage Ports, USB 3.1, even more USB 3.0 ports. Times have never been so good for I/O. Also UEFI has massively improved boot times. Until SSDs arrived we were in the slow lane. Also consumers then quickly realised that it's not more CPU power that you need, it's faster I/O. There's more than enough CPU power unless you're a professional user, i.e. rendering, encoding, scientific calculations.
Noclouds
19 Dec 15#44
In games where the CPU is the bottleneck, the improvements that the Skylake models brought was, in some games, comparatively striking compared to Haswell, Ivybridge and Sandybridge, especially when comparing lowest frames rates and stutter
(and especially when faster memory is used with Skylake, faster memory in CPU-bound senarios with Skylake, on a motherboard that can take advantage of it, showed marked improvements over faster memory with older i3/i5/i7 setups, markedly so with the non-K series, something that digitalfoundry and others covered recently.
It's difficult to compare directly between review sites reviews because of the different motherboard, memory, graphics cards and CPUs used and the tendency for most reviewers to cherry pick individual benchmarks with a game or program, to fit their personal take, and because in some cases the reviewer is trying to show the best performance metrics of the particular sponsor's product that they are reviewing. So the battle rages on in the forums. Also, in some cases, we have seen programs and games optimised to take advantage of new platform architecture features.
Leaving aside debates about CPU, to me what is much more interesting is what the successive new motherboard platforms have brought and the whittling down of bottlenecks, some dramatically so. With 1151/Skylake you have faster connection between the chipset and the CPU via DMI 3.0, the chipset gives you more PCI-E lanes, more USB3.0 ports, the new chipset supports 20 PCI-E 3.0 lanes (as against the 8 PCI-E 2.0 lanes possible on the Z97 chipset), bringing with it features like USB 3.1, onboard WiFi, Thunderbolt 3. The increase in PCI-E lanes means up to three x4 M.2 PCI-E 3.0 ports on a Z170 motherboard, meaning much faster storage, especially as prices start to fall. CPU and DDR4 memory use less power but what's more interesting to me is that you can use more memory with the new platform, which is very welcome with the M-ITX boards. There are many other updates and new features but those, for me, are the significant ones.
mugen6
19 Dec 15#46
Software developing. My team uses a mix of i3 and i5 and the build times are unnoticeable.
mugen6
19 Dec 15#47
Software developing. My team uses a mix of i3 and i5 and the build times are unnoticeable.
You are correct. I am the only person in the entire world who can't tell the difference. Perhaps you could refer me to your double blind study on this subject :sunglasses:
rev6
19 Dec 15#48
Because you don't require more performance doesn't make it pointless for everyone else that does, that's why there's choices, for budgets and tasks. Nothing else to it.
mugen6 to rev6
19 Dec 15#52
It's only gaming and video/photo editing that will yield a real world difference. Care to offer another scenario? Physicists or mathematicians? Not a big sample size. I'd take an i3 with an SSD over an i5 with a HDD without question, but then I'm not a gamer. Snappy performance is key - there should be no "waiting" for the PC to catch up with the user and an i3 with an SSD achieves that for 95% of users. Saying that I'm typing this on an i5 Skylake...
Nate1492
19 Dec 15#49
1) You need to read better and comprehend what is said before you go on a rant about something I wasn't suggesting.
Let me highlight what I said, and maybe you'll understand where you went awry.
I think you'll see it this time ;-)
I want to address one other comment you said directly...
I do not agree here.
Yes, boot times have greatly been reduced, there are tons of improvements that can be done on the GPU side of things, but unless software itself is generically improved in games, apps, and nearly everything... You will still see substantial gains with better CPUs.
Just take a look at how much of an improvement Skylake has been for gaming. It's substantial, check this out here.
We even see I/O gains with a better CPU! Check out those M.2 improvements.
Do you need to upgrade? That's the ultimate question. I think the answer depends on your current CPU.
If you have anything from the i5 2500k or up, you are perfectly fine staying with your CPU. Below the 2500k? I'd recommend an upgrade. This is essentially a recommendation to upgrade if your CPU is 5 or more years old.
I think that's a reasonable lifespan for a CPU and it feels like a customer improvement compared to the previous required upgrade time.
So, there have been gains, albeit smaller in terms of raw numbers, the TDP combined with marginal gains suggests there is still upwards room to make a PC faster just within the CPU.
Also, you have to realize just how important these power saving gains are. At some point, these power saving gains can be turned into performance wins. By reducing the amount of power required, intel is making their CPUs better. These will not be lost and can turn the 'Tick' processor upgrades into bigger wins.
If anything, we may see gigantic leaps in performance when Intel decide to push that.
Here's hoping AMD push Intel into 'Tick' performance gains rather than power.
eldaras
19 Dec 151#50
I envy your 4790k... I have an i7 950. It still works fine, but I'm getting tempted to change it for one a 6500 or go posh and get a 6700 (before someone asks... I work as software developer and I would use these to the max... not constantly, but when I'm compiling/starting up apps).
The benefit of the 950 is that I use it to heat my office :smile:.
eldaras
19 Dec 15#51
You obviously are not doing scala... that abomination can melt a cpu during compilation :disappointed:... If someone ever offers you to work on scala just smile and wave... while walking away as fast as you can.
rev6
19 Dec 15#53
Encoding/rendering. Having more power will also help with virtual machines.
If you don't need more than an i3 that's absolutely fine :smiley:
It depends, I've seen bigger gains than that and smaller gains in terms of game FPS. It depends on the game or app.
Some of the gains are well over 50%. Some are only 10%.
But on a whole, sure, I'm happy with that graphic.
And I've already stated I wouldn't recommend an upgrade if you have a CPU from that last 4 years. The 2500k/2600k is a good processor that has remained competitive for 4 years. Every once in a while, Intel put out a chip that's quite amazing during a Tock phase, the 2500k is that.
But if you don't have any CPU, it's well worth getting a new CPU/Mobo/DDR4.
rev6
20 Dec 15#56
Some games really do benefit a lot from a more powerful CPU. If talking purely core performance here and not extra features sockets give, I agree that a 2500K is still good today. Overclock it as much as possible and you should be good for another year or two.
Noclouds
20 Dec 15#57
There are some good game play benchmark tests out there between Skylake, Haswell, Ivybridge and Sandybridge, including this one from digitalfoundry
Interestingly, digitalfoundry later showed a greater advantage when pairing Skylake up with faster memory, something only minimally seen with earlier generations where shelling out for faster memory was seen as largely not worth it, for gaming at least.
Noclouds
20 Dec 15#58
Some suggestion that the BLCK "non-K bios" update knocks out the CPU temperature monitor. Aside from just keep to suggested voltage setting using a recommended third party cooler, I would like the reassurance of borrowing (or buy and gift!) a cheap infrared thermometer (£10).
fishmaster
20 Dec 15#59
You've summarised what I already said.
Noclouds
20 Dec 15#60
MSI apparently have "non-K" bios updates for their Z170 motherboards, now, too.
Noclouds
22 Dec 15#61
A new group test from digitalfoundry, showing a non-K series i3 6100 BLCK overclocked to 4.4GHz, up against previous generation K-series i5 CPUs (as shown in their earlier video and elsewhere, selecting fast-ish (in this case clocked at 2560MHz) but still relatively affordable memory is an important part of the result with Skylake, especially for some reason with the non-K Skylake chips).
Not talking about memory here as there's not a direct comparison showing what DDR4 overclocked can do here in the video, but it just shows how much core performance (or IPC) matters in DX11 games.
Noclouds
22 Dec 15#63
In their earlier i3 6100 review, they show why using faster DDR4 memory as against slower DDR4 memory makes a surprisingly large difference in games, far more so than they and others had seen using faster DDR3 memory in games with Haswell, where the differences were comparatively small.
Nate1492
24 Dec 15#64
That's fresh, because you summarized what I said.
To summarize. You said it wasn't worth upgrading and nothing has changed since 2009. I corrected you and said 2011. You replied with a summary of my post. I clarified your image and agreed. You then, ironically, said my post was a summary of yours. And this post.
![Fresh Breakfast Meat Box (Using code) @ Campbells Meat [Haggis / Lorne Sausage / Bacon / Black Pudding & More]](/images/topics/208684_1.jpg)
![[Xbox One] Q. u. b. e: Director's Cut on Deals with Gold](/images/topics/208716_1.jpg)
Opening post
edit -the deal link takes you to novatech's website but this works: http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/processors/intelskylake1151/bx80662i56400.html
Below (and mainly in a later comment), I talk about why the i5 6400/Skylake is a good deal even without that potential intriguing BCLK overclock option (for me, it's because of the significant 1151 platform motherboard upgrades), but first, for anyone interested, I share what I have found about the BCLK feature.
Update 1: Also, please read my first post in the comments section, re temperature monitoring, or apparently the lack thereof after the "non-K OC bios" update (apparently people are insisting that with sensible settings you don't need a infrared thermometer, but I would like to borrow one!) you would want a fairly good CPU cooler (Skylake apparently doesn't take well to the heavier air coolers/over tightening) and, without being able to test temperatures, I wouldn't exceed the settings that the motherboard vendor recommends just because someone on a forum says go for it; I don't see the point in risking damaging your brand new CPU or reducing its life expectancy.
Asrock stated in a news release: ”Lab tests show that the once-not-overclockable Intel Core i5-6400 CPU can now be overclocked up to a 60% frequency boost with Sky OC on Asrock’s Z170 Pro4.” That motherboard is £92. It's unclear to me how they reached/measured the figure of 60% and what cooler they used; Hardware Unboxed benchmarks saw their i5 6400 sample manage a "31% increase", at "4.33GHz". Guru3d and other review sites still carry that 60% and Asrock graphs but most sites typically quote user figures of between 10 and 30% frequency boost, deepening on the CPU. The news sites mention that there is a test bios for MSI on the forums that enables the same non-K overclocking support but the advice is to wait for the full supported update from MSI).
Update 2 - there seem to be bios updates available on the forums for MSI Z170A XPOWER GAMING Titanium Edition. ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme, ASUS Maximus VIII Gene, ASUS Maximus VIII Hero, ASUS Maximus VIII Impact, ASUS Z170-A, ASUS Z170-Deluxe, ASUS Z170-E Non-K. Taking a look at one of the ASUS ones, there is the disclaimer that the bios might not be suitable for and might cause damage to a K-series i5 or i7 processor, so something to keep in mind if you're upgrading to a K-series model at a later date. It's unclear to me whether the bios updates are sanctioned by MSI and ASUS, or testers, as the downloads are from the forum, not the motherboard vendors. My preference would be to wait for stable, tested, verified releases.
Update 3 - "List of supported MSI Z170 models as of 18th of December:
Z170A XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM Edition E7968IMS.14U
Z170A GAMING M9 ACK E7966IMS.14T
Z170A GAMING M7 E7976IMS.19T
Z170A GAMING M5 E7977IMS.16T
Z170A-G45 GAMING E7977IMS.23T
Z170A GAMING M3 E7978IMS.A3T
Z170A GAMING PRO E7984IMS.16T
Z170A KRAIT GAMING E7984IMS.B5T
Z170I GAMING PRO AC E7980IMS.14T
Z170A TOMAHAWK / Z170A TOMAHAWK AC E7970IMS.33T
Z170M MORTAR E7972IMS.A2T
Z170A SLI PLUS E7998IMS.11T
Z170A-G43 PLUS E7970IMS.12T
Z170A PC MATE E7971IMS.A6T
Z170-A PRO E7971IMS.17T "
Again, this was a forum post with download links that weren't directly from MSI, so I won't post the link, here, would recommend MSI users who want to experiment, check for bios /beta bios updates on MSI's support page. MSI apparently included the understandable disclaimer: "Overclocking Intel non-K CPUs is not officially supported by Intel and the BIOS versions created by MSI unlocking this option are all beta versions. Intel may choose to disable this option at any time. At no point MSI can be taken responsible for disabling overclocking for non-K CPUs."
There is talk about the bios update and utility coming to cheap H170 motherboards but some suggest a hardware revision is planned. Most of the reviews using Asrock Z170 boards have been using the entry-level i3 6100 (which was overclocked to 4.7GHz - though it did well in games, it didn't do as well as expected, despite hyper-threading, though in user benchmarks it destroyed the non hyperthreaded G4400 Pentium, something also mentioned in the video review, link in comments below) and the budget i5 6400. I would be particularly interested to see how the higher binned i5 6500 does, at £159.98 (amazon).
For those not intending to BCLK overclock, the Skylake i5 6400 has the advantage over the older Haswell i5 4460 of better integrated graphics (the BCLK overclock disables integrated graphics, though I imagine most people contemplating overclocking will want to buy a graphics card, anyway) and brings the advantages of new features with the 1151 platform, which for me is the main appeal of Skylake. However, the older i5 4460 is still a good choice, because it beats the i5 6400 in some benchmarks, especially if you can't take advantage of the 1151 platforms new features. Digitalfoundry, though, do a good review on the extra frame rates achievable using faster memory with Skylake as compared with using faster memory with Haswell, but if trying to hit a tight budget, Haswell still has a lot going for it. My preference was for Skylake for the new features and, now, for the apparently stable BCLK overclock. There are known disadvantages to the workaround, which I mention in the post below.
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All comments (67)
Though interestingly single core performance is faster than the i7 6700K, games that take advantage of multiple cores and threads still see the flagship Intel i7 6700K holding a small fps advantage in some games, at a much lower power draw. Still, the BCLK overclock significantly narrows the performance gap (in games), for only £140, allowing you to spend the £90 saved on a better graphics card.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqWNyhjhE6I
digitalfoundry - "Core i5 6500 4.5GHz BCLK Overclock vs i5 6600K/i7 6700K Gaming Benchmarks."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrfTcXQlsbs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbyGapxiGLQ
update and this one bothers me a bit - one tester noted that he felt the only problem with the “special BIOS” being shared on the forums is that you can’t read out the core temperature, that it doesn't matter what tool you use, you will always see 100°C. He noted, however, that after clocking a lot of 6700K CPUs he feels he knows that anything below 1,40 Volt is fine with proper cooling. In reference to that, he hentions the X61 Kraken. He went on to say that even cheap and weaker air coolers can handle these CPUs at up to 1,40 Volt, more especially the i3 and Pentiums Skylake CPUs, as they only produce a relatively small amount of heat. A workaround would be to borrow (or buy and gift!) a cheap infra red thermometer (£10).
The source is a user named "der8auer", if you want to search for it; I'm reluctant to post the URL because the webpage has links to bios updates for MSI and ASUS that aren't, as far as I can see, direct from the motherboard vendors themselves. I am relatively risk averse and would wait for the reassuring security of updates direct from the motherboard vendors themselves. It seems to me that at this stage, despite a lot of users reporting great test results, things are still at the early testing stage. So, perhaps it makes sense to buy the CPU now, in the hope that Intel haven't yet updated their production line to prevent the BLCK overclock, and then wait until a stable/comparatively well tested beta bios is available from the motherboard vendors. Nothing is without some level of risk, the motherboard vendors always give that overclocking disclaimer and it seems to me at least as true, here, with the unsanctioned-by-Intel BLCK overclock, but I think that risk element is what sees more people going for the i5 6400, rather than a more expensive model. Also, the bang-for-your buck crowd like to spend as little as possible.
--- They are sold out --
here it is boxed at £151 before D&D
http://www.play-asia.com/intel-core-i5-6500-4x-3-20ghz-boxed/13/7096rz
Agree disabling the GPU for everything would be a big step back. If you can do it just for games it might work well.
Re warranty, though motherboard manufacturers routinely push overclock features and relative ease, Intel aren't known for their love of overclockers (sneaky workarounds, like this one), though I remember at one point they offered an insurance premium for owners who want to overclock, but that's for the unlocked K-series CPUs; Intel stand to lose a lot if people buy the cheapest i5 they can and BCLK overclock it, rather than shell out for a i5 6600K or i5 6700K. I would be very keen to see a long-term stress test of the i5 6400 with that BCLK overclock. My preferred option, at the moment, would be to go for a i5 6600 (with 2666GHz memory, re digitalfoundry and others findings) using the stock Intel cooler, which could be replaced a later date. When the warranty expires, I would apply a small BCLK overclock, provided the latest bios from whichever motherboard manufacturer supported it. Meantime, I am caught up in the excitement of this one, early days but the forums have gone bonkers! Could this mean a rush to buy before Intel introduce microcode to shut people out, I don't know. Christmas isn't a great time for me to be spending.
The cheapest that I can find from a UK supplier on the i5 6600, retail box with cooler and 3 year warranty, in stock, is ebuyer at £175.
But since I'm feeling like topping you I'll say: a dual i7-5960X is still better. :smile:... forget the fact that each CPU is £800 :smile:
The 5960x is a beast of a chip, but £800.... Ouch!
Considering the price bracket and the extra 4 cores, the 4790k is still not that far behind it going head to head.
http://www.game-debate.com/cpu/index.php?pid=2115&pid2=2103&compare=core-i7-5960x-8-core-3-0ghz-vs-core-i7-4790k-4-core-4-0ghz
Xeon E5-2698 v3 which is a 16 core monster with Hyperthreading. 16 physical and 16 logical cores = 32 threads.
http://ark.intel.com/products/81060/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2698-v3-40M-Cache-2_30-GHz
A friend of mine has shelled out £1400 on a gaming rig with 32" 1440p monitor. X99 chipset, M.2 ridiculous speed SSD, hex core Intel CPU, 16GB RAM, GTX 970. Does he need to overclock? Even if he did he gains nothing for gaming. Overclocking if you have to do it, is more of a budget thing these days I'd argue.
Also those mentioning Xeon on chips, congrats you know your times tables, not core optimisation performance statistics and if you want to compare a £750 cpu vs a £150 you clearly need your girlfriend to tell you that the banana you bought is more than adequate to make a banoffee pie. I would opt for the i5 6500 if your planning to OC as it has already been binned slightly better in the Intel foundry it is slightly more likely to be lucky in the Silicon Lottery.
I'm quite suprised at how little extra the 'new gen' chips actually perform, it's definately not mindblowing, well not yet anyway...... I'm sure in another 5 years it will be worth taking the plunge, but for now I'll be sticking with what I have.
I was close to jumping aboard the skylake train, but after a bit of research, realised i'd be no better off.
It's all pretty fast moving though, as soon as you've upgraded and modernised it's not long before its 'old news' and last years tech.
I still wanna get my hands on a couple of Titans though :smiley:
I've only been lucky enough to look at pictures of it online, whilst salivating and checking my bank account....
I'm guessing the customer will be making the most of all that bottlenecking? haha
I think the only AMD chip i've come close to getting was an Opteron 6344, but went the intel route.
Amazon had a listing for the i7 6700K at a good-ish price. People were delivered the i7 6700, instead, despite the listed Intel box number being for a 6700K, the customer comments reflect the irritation. They did the same with one of their direct from Amazon i5 6600K listings, delivering a 6600, instead. Again, that's reflected in the customer comments. They since changed the listing to i5 6600, which they have in stock (at the time of writing, the price just went up from £180.01 to £186.79), which makes me further doubt they will deliver on the £155 listing. They also had listings for a 'Pentium' i5 and 'Pentium' i7, so goodness knows what the customers received. I don't like knocking Amazon, I pay for their Prime service and I am usually happy with it and the ease of returning things, it's just the wasted time and less than stellar packing materials that frustrate. If Amazon deliver that i5 6600 at £155, I will let people know but I have a bet with friend that they will just shunt the date, again, or go back to on order with no date.
Has anyone has success querying them on these things and getting them to deliver the same item that is also from Amazon directly, but haggling them down to the price of the no-show? I find them very polite but not desperately helpful. I know other vendors have been having problems with supply, so my gripe is mainly with incorrect listings and the hassle of returns!
Intel hates cannibalising its own market so they may will throw their toys out of the pram, however like the Asus X99 with extra OC pins, the main market is not hobbyists or enthusiasts, it's mass market consumers who fear entering a bios let alone tweaking settings.
You aren't seeing ghz gains in processors, but you are seeing massive energy efficiency gains.
Not only that, you're just wrong about 2009 entirely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynnfield_(microprocessor)
If you said 2011, Sandy Bridge, I'd have at least thought about it for a bit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge
The 2500k was a great processor that has held up in ghz.
Now, your other point about I/O tech... This has been true for at least 15 years. I/O is generally the bottleneck for most consumer systems.
For those that do, we have i5's and i7's, 4/6/8 core CPU's.
"Now, your other point about I/O tech... This has been true for at least 15 years. I/O is generally the bottleneck for most consumer systems."
What happened before 2000 then if we're really in to nit picking here? Bottlenecks have always existed. The arrival of SSDs in around 2007 started to address the most prominent bottleneck in a modern computer, which is the 61 year old (well almost 24 December 1954) hard drive technology.
There have been huge gains in I/O. M.2 Gen 3 allows massively increased sequential read/write times and more importantly massively increased IOPS (Input/Output Operations). Look at the X99/ Z170 chipsets they are feature rich in improved I/O, there's I/O coming out of your ears on those platforms now. M.2 Gen 3, Sata Express, RST Storage Ports, USB 3.1, even more USB 3.0 ports. Times have never been so good for I/O. Also UEFI has massively improved boot times. Until SSDs arrived we were in the slow lane. Also consumers then quickly realised that it's not more CPU power that you need, it's faster I/O. There's more than enough CPU power unless you're a professional user, i.e. rendering, encoding, scientific calculations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDo-j00vUtw
(and especially when faster memory is used with Skylake, faster memory in CPU-bound senarios with Skylake, on a motherboard that can take advantage of it, showed marked improvements over faster memory with older i3/i5/i7 setups, markedly so with the non-K series, something that digitalfoundry and others covered recently.
It's difficult to compare directly between review sites reviews because of the different motherboard, memory, graphics cards and CPUs used and the tendency for most reviewers to cherry pick individual benchmarks with a game or program, to fit their personal take, and because in some cases the reviewer is trying to show the best performance metrics of the particular sponsor's product that they are reviewing. So the battle rages on in the forums. Also, in some cases, we have seen programs and games optimised to take advantage of new platform architecture features.
Leaving aside debates about CPU, to me what is much more interesting is what the successive new motherboard platforms have brought and the whittling down of bottlenecks, some dramatically so. With 1151/Skylake you have faster connection between the chipset and the CPU via DMI 3.0, the chipset gives you more PCI-E lanes, more USB3.0 ports, the new chipset supports 20 PCI-E 3.0 lanes (as against the 8 PCI-E 2.0 lanes possible on the Z97 chipset), bringing with it features like USB 3.1, onboard WiFi, Thunderbolt 3. The increase in PCI-E lanes means up to three x4 M.2 PCI-E 3.0 ports on a Z170 motherboard, meaning much faster storage, especially as prices start to fall. CPU and DDR4 memory use less power but what's more interesting to me is that you can use more memory with the new platform, which is very welcome with the M-ITX boards. There are many other updates and new features but those, for me, are the significant ones.
You are correct. I am the only person in the entire world who can't tell the difference. Perhaps you could refer me to your double blind study on this subject :sunglasses:
Let me highlight what I said, and maybe you'll understand where you went awry.
I think you'll see it this time ;-)
I want to address one other comment you said directly...
I do not agree here.
Yes, boot times have greatly been reduced, there are tons of improvements that can be done on the GPU side of things, but unless software itself is generically improved in games, apps, and nearly everything... You will still see substantial gains with better CPUs.
Just take a look at how much of an improvement Skylake has been for gaming. It's substantial, check this out here.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/intel-skylake-core-i7-6700k-reviewed/2/
We even see I/O gains with a better CPU! Check out those M.2 improvements.
Do you need to upgrade? That's the ultimate question. I think the answer depends on your current CPU.
If you have anything from the i5 2500k or up, you are perfectly fine staying with your CPU. Below the 2500k? I'd recommend an upgrade. This is essentially a recommendation to upgrade if your CPU is 5 or more years old.
I think that's a reasonable lifespan for a CPU and it feels like a customer improvement compared to the previous required upgrade time.
So, there have been gains, albeit smaller in terms of raw numbers, the TDP combined with marginal gains suggests there is still upwards room to make a PC faster just within the CPU.
Also, you have to realize just how important these power saving gains are. At some point, these power saving gains can be turned into performance wins. By reducing the amount of power required, intel is making their CPUs better. These will not be lost and can turn the 'Tick' processor upgrades into bigger wins.
If anything, we may see gigantic leaps in performance when Intel decide to push that.
Here's hoping AMD push Intel into 'Tick' performance gains rather than power.
The benefit of the 950 is that I use it to heat my office :smile:.
If you don't need more than an i3 that's absolutely fine :smiley:
It depends, I've seen bigger gains than that and smaller gains in terms of game FPS. It depends on the game or app.
Some of the gains are well over 50%. Some are only 10%.
But on a whole, sure, I'm happy with that graphic.
And I've already stated I wouldn't recommend an upgrade if you have a CPU from that last 4 years. The 2500k/2600k is a good processor that has remained competitive for 4 years. Every once in a while, Intel put out a chip that's quite amazing during a Tock phase, the 2500k is that.
But if you don't have any CPU, it's well worth getting a new CPU/Mobo/DDR4.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDo-j00vUtw .
Interestingly, digitalfoundry later showed a greater advantage when pairing Skylake up with faster memory, something only minimally seen with earlier generations where shelling out for faster memory was seen as largely not worth it, for gaming at least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbyGapxiGLQ
To summarize. You said it wasn't worth upgrading and nothing has changed since 2009. I corrected you and said 2011. You replied with a summary of my post. I clarified your image and agreed. You then, ironically, said my post was a summary of yours. And this post.
Thanks for the laugh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrfTcXQlsbs