INTEL CORE I7-6800K

Six cores are better than four, right? Right?

WE’VE ALREADY locked horns with the daddy of Intel’s new family of uber CPUs, known as Broadwell-E. What a monster the Core i7-6950X is, all 10 cores and 20 threads of it. However, the 6950X is also a near-$1,600 slice of silicon. Value may be in the eye of the beholder, but that’s silly.

In that context, the new Core i7-6800K looks intriguing. At just over $ 400, it’s roughly a quarter the price of the 6950X. But with six cores and higher clocks, it’s at least two-thirds the chip. It’s also the latest entry-level model for Intel’s big-iron X99 platform and the LGA2011-V3 socket. In many ways, then, the real comparison is with the Core i7-6700K on the mainstream LGA1150 socket, for around $100 less, plus savings on mobo and memory costs.

So, let’s deal with the 6800K’s speeds and feeds. Like the rest of the Broadwell-E crew, it’s a 14nm chip, but not based on Skylake. Long story short: Since Intel split the desktop into two platforms, the highend option has derived from server CPUs that lag mainstream desktop architecture by a generation. And so it is here.

However, for CPU features, that isn't much of an impediment. Along with 6 cores and 12 threads, running at 3.4GHz nominal and 3.8GHz Turbo, you get 28 PCIe 3.0 lanes and 15MB of cache. Factor in the quad- channel DDR4 memory interface, and there’s no question that the LGA2011-V3 platform is a bandwidth monster with which the likes of Intel’s mainstream CPUs and mobo chipsets cannot compete. CORE STRENGTH The question is, how much effect does all that have on real-world desktop usage? The answer is that it depends on what you’re doing. In efficiently threaded software, like video encoding or professional graphics rendering, the six-core 6800K has the edge over its cheaper quad-core sibling. The gap isn’t huge. The 6800K scores 1,099 in Cinebench, for instance, to the 6700K’s 908. In x264 encoding, it’s 23.85fps against 20.54fps. But the 6700K is a little higher clocked, offsetting those extra cores.

Elsewhere, it’s a patchier story. The 6800K has a slight edge in the synthetic 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark, but it’s neck and neck in Rise of Tomb Raider. Then in Total War: Attila it actually trails the 6700K’s 55fps, at 52fps. When it comes to games, few titles scale well beyond four cores. Clock speed, in other words, counts.

Nor does the 6800K have a huge advantage when it comes to productivity metrics, including file compression or the PCMark 8 Creativity test. The 6800K also consumes significantly more power than the 6700K. However, when you factor in overclocking, the picture improves. With a maximum overclock of 4.5GHz, it doesn’t reach the 4.8GHz heights of the 6700K, but it’s starting with a 600MHz disadvantage in terms of peak Turbo speeds.

Which means the 6800K’s proposition is finely balanced. As a gaming chip, it makes no sense. It’s not a slam dunk as a pure high-performance desktop CPU, either. However, consider the platform advantages: memory bandwidth, PCIe connectivity, and an upgrade path all the way to 10 cores. Then add overclocking to the equation. Suddenly, the 6800K makes a lot of sense, even with the cost of an X99 mobo and quad-channel memory. It won’t suit everyone, but for some it will be pretty much a perfect processor. –JEREMY LAIRD