Intel core i7 1st generation. Lines and markings of modern Intel processors

When choosing a processor from Intel, the question arises: which chip from this corporation to choose? Processors have many characteristics and parameters that affect their performance. And in accordance with it and some features of the microarchitecture, the manufacturer gives the appropriate name. Our task is to highlight this issue. In this article, you will find out what exactly the names of Intel processors mean, as well as learn about the microarchitecture of chips from this company.

Indication

It should be noted in advance that solutions earlier than 2012 will not be considered here, since technologies are advancing at a fast pace and these chips have too low performance with high power consumption, and it is also difficult to buy them in a new state. Also, server solutions will not be considered here, since they have a specific scope and are not intended for the consumer market.

Attention, the nomenclature below may not be valid for processors older than the above period.

And also if you have any difficulties, you can visit the site. And read this article, which tells about. And if you want to know about integrated graphics from Intel, then you should.

Tick-tock

Intel has a special strategy for releasing its "stones" called Tick-Tock. It consists of annual incremental improvements.

• Tick ​​means a change in microarchitecture, which leads to a change in socket, better performance and optimization of power consumption.
• This means that it leads to a decrease in power consumption, the possibility of placing more transistors on a chip, a possible increase in frequencies and an increase in cost.

This is how this strategy looks for desktop and laptop models:

MODEL "TIK-TAK" IN DESKTOP PROCESSORS

MICROARCHITECURA	STAGE	OUTPUT	TECHPROCESS
Nehalem	So	2009	45 nm
Westmere	Teak	2010	32 nm
Sandy bridge	So	2011	32 nm
Ivy bridge	Teak	2012	22 nm
Haswell	So	2013	22 nm
Broadwell	Teak	2014	14 nm
Skylake	So	2015	14 nm
Kaby lake	So +	2016	14 nm

But for low-power solutions (smartphones, tablets, netbooks, nettops) platforms look like this:

MICROARCHITECTURE MOBILE PROCESSORS

CATEGORY	PLATFORM	CORE	TECHPROCESS
Netbooks / Nettops / Laptops	Braswell	Airmont	14 nm
	Bay Trail-D / M	Silvermont	22 nm
Top tablets	Willow trail	Goldmont	14 nm
	Cherry trail	Airmont	14 nm
	Bay Tral-T	Silvermont	22 nm
	Clower trail	Satwell	32 nm
Top / mid-range smartphones / tablets	Morganfield	Goldmont	14 nm
	Moorefield	Silvermont	22 nm
	Merrifield	Silvermont	22 nm
	Clower Trail +	Satwell	32 nm
	Medfield	Satwell	32 nm
Medium / budget smartphones / tablets	Binghamton	Airmont	14 nm
	Riverton	Airmont	14 nm
	Slayton	Silvermont	22 nm

It should be noted that Bay Trail-D is made for desktops: Pentium and Celeron with index J. And Bay Trail-M for is a mobile solution and will also be denoted among Pentium and Celeron by its letter N.

Judging by the latest trends from the company, the performance itself is progressing rather slowly, while energy efficiency (performance per unit of energy consumed) is growing from year to year, and even soon, laptops will have the same powerful processors as on large PCs (although such representatives there is now).

The first processors under the Intel Core i7 brand appeared nine years ago, but the LGA1366 platform did not pretend to be massively distributed outside the server segment. Actually, all the "consumer" processors for it fell into the price range from ≈ $ 300 to full-weight "stukibucks", so there is nothing surprising in this. However, modern i7s also live in it, so they are devices of limited demand: for the most demanding buyers (the appearance of the Core i9 this year slightly changed the disposition, but just that very little). And already the first models of the family received the formula “four cores - eight threads - 8 MiB of the third level cache”.

It was later inherited by models for the mass-market LGA1156. Later it migrated unchanged to LGA1155. Even later, it was "marked" in LGA1150 and even LGA1151, although from the latter many users initially expected the appearance of six-core processor models. But this did not happen in the first version of the platform - the corresponding Core i7 and i5 appeared only this year within the framework of the "eighth" generation, with the "sixth" and "seventh" incompatible. In the opinion of some of our readers (which we partly share) - a bit late: we could have done it earlier. However, the claim “good, but not enough” applies not only to processor performance, but in general to any evolutionary changes in any market. The reason for this lies not in the technical, but in the psychological plane, which goes far beyond the sphere of interests of our site. Here we can arrange testing of computer systems of different generations to determine their performance and power consumption (even if, at least, on a limited sample of tasks). What we'll do today.

Testbed configuration

CPU	Intel Core i7-880	Intel Core i7-2700K	Intel Core i7-3770K
Kernel name	Lynnfield	Sandy bridge	Ivy bridge
Production technology	45 nm	32 nm	22 nm
Core frequency, GHz	3,06/3,73	3,5/3,9	3,5/3,9
# Of cores / threads	4/8	4/8	4/8
L1 cache (sum), I / D, KB	128/128	128/128	128/128
L2 cache, KB	4 × 256	4 × 256	4 × 256
L3 cache, MiB	8	8	8
RAM	2 × DDR3-1333	2 × DDR3-1333	2 × DDR3-1600
TDP, W	95	95	77

Our parade is opened by the three oldest processors - one for LGA1156 and two for LGA1155. Note that the first two models are unique in their own way. For example, the Core i7-880 (appeared in 2010 - in the second wave of devices for this platform) was the most expensive processor among all the participants in today's test: its recommended price was $ 562. In the future, not a single desktop quad-core Core i7 cost so much. And the quad-core processors of the Sandy Bridge family (as in the previous case, we have a representative of the second wave here, not the "starting" i7-2600K) are the only models for LGA115x that use solder as a thermal interface. In principle, no one noticed its implementation then, as well as the earlier transitions from solder to paste and vice versa: later, in narrow, but noisy circles, they began to endow this thermal interface with truly magical properties. Somewhere starting with the Core i7-3770K just (mid-2012), after which the noise did not subside.

CPU	Intel Core i7-4790K	Intel Core i7-5775C
Kernel name	Haswell	Broadwell
Production technology	22 nm	14 nm
Core frequency std / max, GHz	4,0/4,4	3,3/3,7
# Of cores / threads	4/8	4/8
L1 cache (sum), I / D, KB	128/128	128/128
L2 cache, KB	4 × 256	4 × 256
L3 (L4) cache, MiB	8	6 (128)
RAM	2 × DDR3-1600	2 × DDR3-1600
TDP, W	88	65

Who we will miss a little today is the original Haswell in the form of the i7-4770K. As a result, we skip 2013 and go straight to 2014: formally 4790K is already Haswell Refresh. Some were already waiting for Broadwell, but the company released processors of this family exclusively to the tablet and laptop market: where they were most in demand. And with the desktop, the plans changed several times, but in 2015 a couple of processors (plus three Xeons) appeared on the market. Very specific: like Haswell and Haswell Refresh, they were installed in the LGA1150 socket, but they were compatible only with a couple of chipsets of 2014, and most importantly, they turned out to be the only "socket" models with a four-level cache memory. Formally - for the needs of the graphics core, although in practice all programs can use L4. There were similar processors both earlier and later - but only in BGA-execution (that is, they were soldered directly to the motherboard). These are also unique in their own way. Enthusiasts, of course, were not inspired because of the low clock speeds and limited "overclocking", but we will check how this "side escape" relates to the main line in modern software.

CPU	Intel Core i7-6700K	Intel Core i7-7700K	Intel Core i7-8700K
Kernel name	Skylake	Kaby lake	Coffee lake
Production technology	14 nm	14 nm	14 nm
Core frequency, GHz	4,0/4,2	4,2/4,5	3,7/4,7
# Of cores / threads	4/8	4/8	6/12
L1 cache (sum), I / D, KB	128/128	128/128	192/192
L2 cache, KB	4 × 256	4 × 256	6 × 256
L3 cache, MiB	8	8	12
RAM	2 × DDR3-1600 / 2 × DDR4-2133	2 × DDR3-1600 / 2 × DDR4-2400	2 × DDR4-2666
TDP, W	91	91	95

And the most recent triple of processors, formally using the same LGA1151 socket, but in two versions incompatible with each other. However, we wrote about the difficult path of mass-line six-core processors to the market quite recently: when they were tested for the first time. So we will not repeat ourselves. We only note that we tested the i7-8700K again: using not a preliminary, but a "release" copy, and even installing it on an already "normal" motherboard with debugged firmware. The results did not change significantly, but in several programs they became somewhat more adequate.

CPU	Intel Core i3-7350K	Intel Core i5-7600K	Intel Core i5-8400
Kernel name	Kaby lake	Kaby lake	Coffee lake
Production technology	14 nm	14 nm	14 nm
Core frequency, GHz	4,2	3,8/4,2	2,8/4,0
# Of cores / threads	2/4	4/4	6/6
L1 cache (sum), I / D, KB	64/64	128/128	192/192
L2 cache, KB	2 × 256	4 × 256	6 × 256
L3 cache, MiB	4	6	9
RAM	2 × DDR4-2400	2 × DDR4-2400	2 × DDR4-2666
TDP, W	60	91	65

With whom to compare the results? It seems to us that it is imperative to take a pair of the fastest modern dual- and quad-core processors of the Core i3 and Core i5 lines, since they have already been tested, and it is interesting to see which of the oldies they will catch up with and where (and whether they will catch up). In addition, we managed to get hold of a completely new six-core Core i5-8400, so we took the opportunity to test that too.

CPU	AMD FX-8350	AMD Ryzen 5 1400	AMD Ryzen 5 1600
Kernel name	Vishera	Ryzen	Ryzen
Production technology	32 nm	14 nm	14 nm
Core frequency, GHz	4,0/4,2	3,2/3,4	3,2/3,6
# Of cores / threads	4/8	4/8	6/12
L1 cache (sum), I / D, KB	256/128	256/128	384/192
L2 cache, KB	4 × 2048	4 × 512	6 × 512
L3 cache, MiB	8	8	16
RAM	2 × DDR3-1866	2 × DDR4-2666	2 × DDR4-2666
TDP, W	125	65	65

You can't do without AMD processors, and there is no need to. Including the "historical" FX-8350, which is the same age as the Core i7-3770K. Fans of this line have always argued that it is not only cheaper, but generally better - just very few people know how to cook it... But if you use the "right programs", then immediately overtake everyone. We are from this year just at the request of workers We have reworked the testing methodology towards "severe multithreading", so there is a reason to test this hypothesis - all the same, testing is historical. And modern models will require at least two. The Ryzen 5 1500X would be very suitable for us, which is very similar to the old Core i7, but it has not been tested. The Ryzen 5 1400 is formally also suitable ... but in fact, this model (and modern Ryzen 3), along with the halving of the cache memory, also "suffered" the connections between the CCX. Therefore, I also had to take the Ryzen 5 1600, where this problem does not exist - as a result of which it often overtakes 1400 more than one and a half times. And a couple of Intel six-core processors are also present in today's testing. Others are clearly too slow to compare with this inexpensive processor, well, okay - let it dominate.

Testing technique

Methodology. Here, we briefly recall that it is based on the following four whales:

• Methodology for measuring power consumption when testing processors
• Methodology for monitoring power, temperature and CPU load during testing
• Methodology for measuring performance in games sample of 2017

Detailed results of all tests are available as a complete table with results (in Microsoft Excel 97-2003 format). Directly in the articles, we use already processed data. This is especially true for application tests, where everything is normalized relative to the reference system (AMD FX-8350 with 16 GB of memory, a GeForce GTX 1070 video card and a Corsair Force LE 960 GB SSD) and is grouped according to the scope of the computer.

iXBT Application Benchmark 2017

Basically, the claims of AMD fans that in "severe multithreading" FX were not so bad, if we consider only performance, there are reasons: as you can see, the 8350, in principle, could compete on equal terms with the Core i7 of the same release year. However, here it looks good against the background of the younger Ryzen, but between these two families practically nothing was produced by the company for this market segment. Intel, on the other hand, has such a uniform lineup, which made it possible to double the performance within the framework of the “quad-core” concept. Although the cores are of great importance here - the best dual-core processor of 2017 still did not catch up with the quad-core Core of the "previous" generation (recall that this is how it is officially called so far in the materials of the company, clearly separating from the numbered ones starting from the second). And six-core models are good - and that's all. So Intel's accusations that the company delayed their entry to the market too long can be considered to some extent fair.

All the difference from the previous group is that the code is not so primitive here, so, apart from cores, threads and gigahertz, the architectural features of the processors running it are also important. Although the overall result for Intel products is quite comparable: the difference between 880 and 7700K is still twofold, the i5-8400 is still inferior only to the latter, the i3-7350K still hasn't caught up with anyone. And this happened in the same seven years. We can assume that there are eight - after all, LGA1156 entered the market in the fall of 2009, and the Core i7-880 differed from the 860 and 870 that appeared in the first wave only in frequencies, and even then a little.

One has only to "weaken" the utilization of multithreading a little, so the position of newer processors immediately improves - albeit weaker in quantity. However, the traditional "two ends", all other (relatively) equal, comparison of the "previous" and "seventh" generations of Core gives us. Although it is easy to notice that the "second" and ... "eighth" are drawn to the maximum extent for the "revolutionary" ones. But this is more than understandable: the latter has increased the number of cores, and in the "second" the microarchitecture and technical process have radically changed, and at the same time.

As we already know, Adobe Photoshop is a little "odd" (bad news - the problem has not been fixed in the latest version of the package; very bad news - now it will be relevant for the new Core i3 as well), so processors without HT are not considered. But our main characters have support for this technology, so no one bothers them all to work normally. As a result, in general, the state of affairs is similar to other groups, but there is a caveat: the fastest processor for the LGA1150 turned out to be the i7-4790K, which does not have a high frequency, but the i7-5775C. Well - in some places intensive methods of increasing productivity are very effective. It is a pity that not always: it is easier to “work” with frequency. And cheaper: you don't need an additional eDRAM crystal, which also needs to be somehow placed on the same substrate with the "main" one.

The number of cores as a "driver" for increasing performance is also suitable - even more than the frequency. Although in our first testing, the Core i7-8700K looked worse, but this was due to the results of the same Adobe Photoshop: they turned out to be almost the same as for the i7-7700K. Switching to a "release" processor and motherboard solved the problem in this case: the performance turned out to be similar to other six-core Intel processors. With a corresponding improvement in the overall result in the group. The behavior of other programs has not changed - they previously had a positive attitude towards increasing the number of supported computation threads while maintaining a similar level of such frequency.

Moreover, sometimes it is only she who "decides", and the number of computation threads. Basically, of course, there are certain nuances here, but “ there is no reception against scrap". The entire revolutionary Ryzen architecture, for example, allowed the 1400 to only deliver performance on par with the FX-8350 or Core i7-3770K that hit the market in 2012. Considering that it has a frequency lower than both, and in general this is a special budget model, in fact, using only half of a semiconductor crystal, it is not so bad. But it does not cause reverence. Especially against the background of another (and also inexpensive) representative of the Ryzen 5 line, which easily and noticeably overtook any quad-core Core i7 of any production year :)

Although we abandoned the single-threaded decompression test, this program still cannot be considered too "greedy" for cores and their frequencies. It is clear why - the performance of the memory system is very important here, so the Core i7-5775C was able to overtake only the i7-8700K, and even then by less than 10%. It is a pity that there are no products yet, where L4 is combined with six cores and memory with a high memory bandwidth: such a processor "without bottlenecks" in such tasks could show a miracle... In theory, at least - it is obvious that we will not see anything like this in desktop computers in the near future for sure.

It is characteristic that this branch of the "backbone" of desktop processors demonstrates (until now!) High results in this group of programs as well. However, what unites them is mainly the purpose, and not the optimization methods chosen by the programmers. But the latter are not ignored either - in contrast to some more "primitive" tasks, such as video encoding.

What do we end up with? The effect of "evolutionary development" has somewhat diminished: Core i7-7700K outperforms i7-880 by less than two times, and its superiority over i7-2700K is only one and a half times. On the whole - not bad: it was achieved with intensive means in comparable "quantitative" conditions, that is, it can be applied to almost any software. However, in relation to the interests of the most demanding users, it is not enough. Especially if we compare the gains at each annual step, adding another Core i7-4770K (which is why we regretted above that this processor was not found).

At the same time, the company has had the opportunity to dramatically increase performance at least in multi-threaded software (and there have been many such programs among resource-intensive programs for a long time). Yes, and it was also implemented - but within the framework of completely different platforms with their own characteristics. No wonder many have been waiting for six-core models for LGA115x since 2014 ... But many did not expect any breakthroughs from AMD in those years - all the more impressive were the first Ryzen tests. Not surprisingly - as you can see, even the inexpensive Ryzen 5 1600 can compete in performance with the Core i7-7700K, which was the fastest processor for the LGA1151 just a couple of months ago. Now a similar level of performance is quite affordable for Core i5, but it would be better if it happened earlier :) In any case, there would be fewer reasons for complaints.

Energy consumption and energy efficiency

However, this diagram once again demonstrates why the performance of mass central processors in the second decade of the 21st century grew at a much slower pace than in the first one: in this case, all development took place against the background of “non-increase” in energy consumption. Even reductions, if possible. It was possible to reduce it by architectural or some other methods - users of mobile and compact systems (which have long been sold much more than "typical desktop") will be satisfied. Yes, and on the desktop market, a small step forward, since you can tweak the frequencies a little more, which was done in the Core i7-4790K, and then was fixed in the "regular" Core i7, and even in the Core i5.

This is especially clearly seen in the assessment of the power consumption of the processors themselves (unfortunately, for LGA1155 it is impossible to measure it separately from the platform by simple means). At the same time, it becomes clear why the company does not need to somehow change the requirements for cooling processors within the LGA115x line. Also, why more and more products in the (formally) desktop range are starting to fit into traditional laptop processors thermal packs: this happens without any effort. In principle, it would be possible to install all quad-core processors under LGA1151 TDP = 65 W and not suffer :) Just for the so-called. For overclocking processors, the company considers it necessary to tighten the requirements for the cooling system, since there is a small (but also non-zero) probability that the buyer of a computer with such will overclock it and use all sorts of "stability tests". And mass products do not cause such concerns, and are initially more economical. Even six-core ones, although the power consumption of the older i7-8700K has grown - but only to the level of processors for LGA1150. In normal mode, of course - during overclocking, you can inadvertently return to 2010 :)

But, at the same time, modern economical processors are not necessarily slow - three to five years ago, the performance of "energy efficient" models against the background of the top in the line often left much to be desired, since they had to reduce the frequency too much, or even reduce the number of cores. Therefore, in general, "energy efficiency" has increased much faster than pure performance: here, when comparing the Core i7-7700K and i7-880, not twice, but all two and a half. However ... the first "big leap" and immediately one and a half times fell on the introduction of LGA1155, so it is not surprising that complaints about the further evolution of the platform were heard from this direction as well.

iXBT Game Benchmark 2017

The most interesting are, of course, the results of the oldest processors, such as the Core i7-880 and i7-2700K. Unfortunately, nothing good happened with the first of them: apparently, none of the GPU manufacturers seriously dealt with the issues of compatibility of new video cards with the platform of the end of the last decade. And it's understandable why: many LGA1156 skipped altogether, or have already managed to migrate from it to other solutions for so many years. And with the Core i7-2700K, there is another problem: its performance (recall - in normal mode) is still often enough to work at the level of the new Core i7. In general, there is such an unkillable legend: which (together with the older Core i5 for LGA1155) was first made a good game processor by high single-threaded performance (in those years, Intel strongly “clamped” Core i3 and Pentium in frequency), and then started more or less effectively utilize all eight supported computation threads. Although the same level of performance in games is often achieved by more "simple" solutions for new platforms, but sometimes there is a feeling that this is connected not only and not so much with performance "in its pure form". Therefore, for those who are to some extent interested in the results in games, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with them using the full table, and here we will give only a couple of the most interesting and illustrative diagrams.

Take Far Cry Primal, for example. We immediately discard the results of Core i7-880: the incorrect operation of a video card on a GTX 1070 with this platform is obvious. Perhaps, by the way, the same can be applied to the LGA1155, although in general the frame rate cannot be called low here: in practice it is enough. But clearly lower than it could have been. And LGA1151 also somehow does not shine and LGA1150 looks like the best platform. Now we recall that a modified version of the Dunia Engine 2 (it is used here) was developed between 2013 and 2014, so they could just reoptimize... An indirect confirmation of this is the low (relatively expected) frame rate on Ryzen 5: there is a feeling that there should be more and that's it.

But games on the EGO 4.0 engine began to appear in 2015 - and here we no longer see such artifacts. Except for the Core i7-880, which once again amused us with "brakes", but this correlates well with other games. And the best looks are not just multi-core processors, but also those released since 2015, that is, the LGA1151 and AM4 platforms. The exact opposite of the previous case, although in general both games were released in 2016. And both within the same processor family always "vote" for the model in which there are more computing cores. But within one- different (especially, significantly different architecturally) with their help must be compared very carefully. If you want to compare, of course: in general, in both (and not only in them) on a system with a five-year-old processor and a "good" video card, you can play with much more comfort than with any processor, but on a budget video card for $ 200 In general, the requirements for the processors of games are growing or not, and the gaming computer needs to be assembled “from a video card”. However, it would be strange if something would change in this industry - especially considering that the performance of video cards over the past eight years has not doubled or even three times;)

Total

Actually, all we wanted to do was compare several processors from different years at once when working with modern software. Moreover, some characteristics of older Core i7 models have practically not changed during this time, especially if we take the interval from the winter of 2011 to the same period in 2017. But productivity grew at the same time - slowly, but slightly more than the often discussed "5% per year". And taking into account the fact that every year a normal user does not buy computers, but usually focuses on 3-5 years - over such a period, "accumulated" in performance, and in efficiency, and in the functionality of the platform. But could have been better... At the same time, some "weak points" are clearly visible: for example, an increase in the clock frequency in 2014 did not allow achieving significantly higher performance either in 2015 or even at the beginning of 2017. We managed to break away from LGA1155 noticeably (as the software was optimized for processors starting with Haswell, the results were more modest at the start), that's all. And then (all of a sudden) + 30% productivity, which hasn't happened for a long time. In general, from a historical point of view, a smoother implementation of this process would look better. But what happened was already there.

Produced on Nehalem, Bloomfield and Gulftown microarchitectures. In this case, the internal clock frequency hovers around 3000 MHz. Integrated graphics are not supported by all models. The data bus frequency usually does not exceed 5 GHz per second.

Some configurations are equipped with unlocked multipliers. In order to learn more about processors, you should consider Intel Processors Core i7 on specific microarchitectures.

CPU on Nehalem microarchitecture

The Core processor has a clock speed of 2.8 GHz. In this case, four cores are provided. The bus frequency of the CPU reaches 2400 MHz. The system can withstand the maximum voltage of 1.4 V. The Intel Core model is released on four cores. It has a clock frequency of 2.53 GHz. The CPU multiplier is of the unlocked type. The main bus frequency hovers around 2400 MHz. The Core i7 2700K is clocked at 2.93 GHz. The specified modification for four cores has an LGA socket. The bus frequency itself does not exceed 2400 MHz.

Bloomfield lineup

The 4720 has four cores. In this case, the chip area is 263 mm 2. The clock speed itself is 2.6 GHz. The Core i7 4730 is configured with four cores. In total, 731 million transistors are involved in it. The CPU clock speed is 2.8 GHz. The Intel modification is rated at 3.07 GHz. In this case, the chip area is 263 mm 2. The bus itself is available at 213 MHz.

CPU on Gulftown microarchitecture

The Core i7 970 model is released by the manufacturer for six cores. Its clock frequency does not exceed 3.2 GHz. The bus is available for the 2660 MHz model. The Core i7 980 is clocked at exactly 3.3 GHz. The chip area in this situation is 239 mm 2. The bus itself is provided at 2660 MHz. The Core i7 990 transistor processor has 1,170 million units. The clock frequency of the model does not exceed 3.4 GHz. The LGA connector is supported in this case.

Main functions

The area of ​​high-speed memory in processors based on the Gulftown microarchitecture is very extensive, so the Intel Core i7 deserves good reviews from the owners. The cache memory is directly related to the architecture. Model kernels are used dynamically. Thus, the system provides high performance. If we consider Intel Core i7 4790, then the IM bus in this case is provided for 5 MHz. It plays an important role in the exchange of information.

The system bus in the processor on the Gulftown microarchitecture is used by CB. It is perfect for transferring data to the controller unit. The interface is provided by the manufacturer with MI support. Direct connection is made through the motherboard. All major operating commands are supported by it.

Performance

An Intel Core i7 laptop is capable of supporting a maximum of four threads. In this case, the base frequency parameter is quite high. An IP program is provided for ordering instructions. Processing the data itself does not take much time. It is also important to note that the clock frequency parameter directly depends on the speed of computational cycles.

The calculated power in Intel processors is specified through a dot. The maximum frequency setting is 38 GHz. Directly the power of the CPU on the Gulftown microarchitecture is at the level of 83 watts. When operating at the base frequency, all cores are used in the processor.

Memory module specifications

The Intel Core i7 CPU on the Gulftown microarchitecture is capable of boasting a lot of memory. In this case, it is supported in various formats. The number of channels directly affects the performance of the system. There are two of them in this modification. It is also important to mention that the Intel CPU supports flex memory.

The throughput is at a very high level. In this case, reading the data does not take much time. This was largely achieved by supporting dual-channel memory. High speed of data storage is another advantage of this system. ECC memory is supported by processors. The standard chipset for this is installed.

Graphics Specifications

On the Gulftown microarchitecture, the graphics frequency parameter is at the level of 350 MHz. In this case, it is also important to consider the render rate. It affects the base frequency quite strongly. Directly the graphics subsystem can significantly increase rendering.

Support for the NS format is provided for Intel models. If we consider the Intel Core i7 2600K, then the maximum system size is 1.7 GB. This metric is very important for interface support. It also affects memory availability. To increase the interaction of a personal computer with a processor, the PPC system is used. Its resolution is 4096 x 2304 pixels.

Direct support

It is important to mention the support of "Direct". In this case, specific collections of application programs are taken into account. "Direct" series 11.1 is great for processing system files. If we talk about the graphic component, then it is important to mention the "Open Graph" system. It affects the computation of tasks quite strongly. In this case, a lot depends on the support for multimedia files.

The Libera system is designed to display two-dimensional graphics. If we talk about the "Quick Video" technology, then in this case you need to take into account the conversion speed. According to experts, the system interacts normally with portable media players. Another technology "Quick Video" affects the speed of video editing. In addition, it provides the placement of important information on the safety of work on the Web. It is very easy to create videos with this technology.

Expansion options

The Intel Core i7 computer uses the Express edition for data transfer. Today there are many versions of it, which, in fact, are not very different. However, in general, the Express edition is very important when it comes to connecting various devices to a personal computer.

If we talk about version 1.16, then it is able to significantly increase the data transfer speed. The specified system can work only with devices of the PC type. Directly channels, it allows you to play up to 16. In this case, the basic modulator of the central processor is not involved in data processing.

Data Protection Technology

This technology allows you to work with the AE system, which is a set of commands. Due to it, you can quickly perform data encryption. In this case, the process is safe. The AE system is also used to decrypt the data. The set of tools of the program allows you to solve a wide range of tasks. In particular, the AE system is capable of working with cryptographic data. It solves problems with applications pretty quickly.

The "Data Project" technology itself was created to decrypt random numbers. Authentication is carried out through them. Additionally, it should be noted that the "Data Project" technology includes the "Key" system. It is designed to generate random numbers. It helps a lot in creating unique combinations. Also, the Kay system is involved in decoding algorithms. It works well for enhancing data encryption.

Platform Protection Technology

The technology "Platforms Protection" at the CPU "Intel" is provided for series 10.1. Speaking about it, first of all it is important to mention the "Guard" system. It was created for safe work with various applications. In this case, various operations can be performed with them.

The "Guard" system is also used to connect microcircuits. The Trusted program is used directly to protect platforms. It allows you to work with a digital office. The measurable launch function is supported by Platform Protection technology.

Also available is the option of secure command execution. In particular, the system is able to isolate some threads. At the same time, running applications do not affect them. The Anti-Tef system is used to cancel hardware programs. In this case, the CPU vulnerability is greatly reduced. The Anti-Tef system is also designed to fight against malicious software.

INTRODUCTION This summer, Intel did a strange thing: it managed to replace two whole generations of processors focused on mainstream personal computers. At first, Haswell was replaced by processors with the Broadwell microarchitecture, but then within just a couple of months they lost their status as a novelty and gave way to Skylake processors, which will remain the most progressive CPUs for at least another year and a half. This leapfrog with a change of generations occurred mainly due to problems Intel, which arose when introducing a new 14-nm technical process, which is used in the production of both Broadwell and Skylake. Productive carriers of the Broadwell microarchitecture on their way to desktop systems were greatly delayed, and their followers came out according to a pre-planned schedule, which led to the crumpled announcement of the fifth generation Core processors and a serious reduction in their life cycle. As a result of all these perturbations, in the desktop segment Broadwell have occupied a very narrow niche of economical processors with a powerful graphics core and are now content with only a small level of sales inherent in highly specialized products. The attention of the advanced part of the users turned to the followers of Broadwell - the Skylake processors.

It should be noted that over the past few years, Intel has not at all please its fans with the performance increase of the offered products. Each new generation of processors adds only a few percent to the specific speed, which ultimately leads to a lack of explicit incentives for users to upgrade old systems. But the release of Skylake - a generation of CPUs that Intel actually jumped a notch on the way to - inspired some hope that we would get a really worthwhile update to the most common computing platform. However, nothing of the kind happened: Intel performed in its usual repertoire. Broadwell was presented to the public as a kind of offshoot from the main line of desktop processors, and Skylake was only slightly faster than Haswell in most applications.

Therefore, despite all expectations, the appearance of Skylake on sale caused skepticism among many. After reviewing the results of real-life tests, many buyers simply did not see the real point in switching to sixth-generation Core processors. Indeed, the main trump card of fresh CPUs is primarily a new platform with accelerated internal interfaces, but not a new processor microarchitecture. And this means that Skylake offers few real incentives to update based systems of past generations.

However, we still would not dissuade all users without exception from switching to Skylake. The fact is that although Intel is increasing the performance of its processors at a very restrained pace, since the advent of Sandy Bridge, which still work in many systems, four generations of microarchitecture have already changed. Each step along the path of progress has contributed to an increase in productivity, and by now Skylake is able to offer quite significant performance gains over its earlier predecessors. Only to see this, it is necessary to compare it not with Haswell, but with the earlier representatives of the Core family that appeared before it.

Actually, this is exactly the kind of comparison we are going to do today. With all that said, we decided to see how much the performance of Core i7 processors has grown since 2011, and collected in a single test the older Core i7s belonging to the Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake generations. Having received the results of such testing, we will try to understand which processors' owners should start upgrading old systems, and which of them can wait until the next generations of CPUs appear. Along the way, we will look at the performance level of the new Core i7-5775C and Core i7-6700K processors of the Broadwell and Skylake generations, which have not yet been tested in our laboratory.

Comparative characteristics of the tested CPUs

From Sandy Bridge to Skylake: Specific Performance Comparison

In order to remember how the specific performance of Intel processors has changed over the last five years, we decided to start with a simple test in which we compared the speed of Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake brought to the same frequency 4 , 0 GHz. In this comparison, we used Core i7 processors, that is, quad-core processors with Hyper-Threading technology.

The SYSmark 2014 1.5 complex test was taken as the main test tool, which is good because it reproduces typical user activity in common office applications, when creating and processing multimedia content, and when solving computational problems. The following graphs show the results obtained. For ease of perception, they are normalized, the performance of Sandy Bridge is taken as 100 percent.

The SYSmark 2014 1.5 integral indicator allows making the following observations. Moving from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge increased specific productivity only marginally - by about 3-4 percent. The next step towards Haswell turned out to be much more productive, resulting in a 12 percent improvement in performance. And this is the maximum gain that can be observed in the given graph. After all, further Broadwell overtakes Haswell by only 7 percent, and the transition from Broadwell to Skylake does increase the specific productivity by only 1-2 percent. All the progress from Sandy Bridge to Skylake translates into a 26% increase in performance with constant clock speeds.

A more detailed interpretation of the obtained SYSmark 2014 1.5 indicators can be viewed on the following three graphs, where the integral performance index is decomposed into components by application type.

Pay attention, most noticeably with the introduction of new versions of microarchitectures, multimedia applications add to the speed of execution. In these, the Skylake microarchitecture outperforms Sandy Bridge by a whopping 33 percent. But in calculating tasks, on the contrary, progress is manifested least of all. Moreover, at such a load, the step from Broadwell to Skylake even turns into a slight decrease in specific performance.

Now that we have an idea of ​​what has happened to the specific performance of Intel processors over the past few years, let's try to figure out what caused the observed changes.

From Sandy Bridge to Skylake: What Has Changed in Intel Processors

We decided to make a representative of the Sandy Bridge generation a reference point in comparing different Core i7s for a reason. It was this design that laid a solid foundation for all further improvement of productive Intel processors up to today's Skylake. Thus, representatives of the Sandy Bridge family became the first highly integrated CPUs in which both computing and graphics cores, as well as a north bridge with an L3 cache and a memory controller, were collected in a single semiconductor crystal. In addition, for the first time, they began to use an internal ring bus, through which the problem of highly efficient interaction of all structural units that make up such a complex processor was solved. All subsequent CPU generations continue to follow these universal principles of construction, embedded in the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, without any serious adjustments.

The internal microarchitecture of computing cores has undergone significant changes in Sandy Bridge. It not only brought support for the new AES-NI and AVX instruction sets, but also found numerous major improvements in the depths of the executive pipeline. It was in Sandy Bridge that a separate level zero cache was added for decoded instructions; a completely new command reordering block has appeared, based on the use of a physical register file; branch prediction algorithms have been noticeably improved; and in addition, two of the three execution ports for working with data have become unified. Such heterogeneous reforms, carried out at once at all stages of the pipeline, allowed to significantly increase the specific performance of Sandy Bridge, which, in comparison with the previous generation Nehalem processors, immediately increased by almost 15 percent. Added to this is a 15% increase in nominal clock speeds and excellent overclocking potential, resulting in a family of processors that Intel still cites as an exemplary embodiment of the "so" phase in the company's pendulum design concept.

Indeed, we have not seen such improvements in microarchitecture after Sandy Bridge in terms of mass scale and efficiency. All subsequent generations of processor designs have made much smaller improvements in computing cores. Perhaps this is a reflection of the lack of real competition in the processor market, perhaps the reason for the slowdown in progress lies in Intel's desire to focus on improving the graphics cores, or maybe Sandy Bridge just turned out to be such a successful project that its further development requires too much labor.

The transition from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge illustrates the recent decline in innovation intensity. Despite the fact that the next generation of processors after Sandy Bridge was transferred to a new production technology with 22nm norms, its clock frequencies did not increase at all. The improvements made in the design mainly concerned the more flexible memory controller and the PCI Express bus controller, which received compatibility with the third version of this standard. As for the microarchitecture of computational cores itself, some cosmetic alterations made it possible to accelerate the execution of division operations and slightly increase the efficiency of Hyper-Threading technology, and that's all. As a result, the growth in specific productivity was no more than 5 percent.

At the same time, the introduction of Ivy Bridge brought something that the overclocking army of millions now bitterly regrets. Starting with processors of this generation, Intel refused to interface the semiconductor chip of the CPU and the lid covering it by means of flux-free soldering and switched to filling the space between them with a polymer thermal interface material with very dubious heat-conducting properties. This artificially worsened the frequency potential and made the Ivy Bridge processors, like all their successors, noticeably less overclocked compared to Sandy Bridge, which is very vigorous in this regard.

However, Ivy Bridge is just a "tick", and therefore no one promised any special breakthroughs in these processors. However, the next generation, Haswell, which, unlike Ivy Bridge, is already in the "so" phase, did not bring any encouraging performance gains either. And this is actually a little strange, since a lot of various improvements in the Haswell microarchitecture have been made, and they are scattered across different parts of the execution pipeline, which, in total, could well increase the overall pace of command execution.

For example, in the input part of the pipeline, the performance of branch prediction was improved, and the queue of decoded instructions was dynamically divided between parallel threads coexisting within the Hyper-Threading technology. Along the way, there was an increase in the window of out-of-order execution of commands, which in total should have raised the share of code executed in parallel by the processor. Directly in the execution unit, two additional functional ports were added, aimed at processing integer instructions, servicing branches and saving data. Thanks to this, Haswell is able to process up to eight micro-ops per clock - a third more than its predecessors. Moreover, the new microarchitecture has doubled the bandwidth of the cache memory of the first and second levels.

Thus, improvements in the Haswell microarchitecture did not affect only the speed of the decoder, which seems to be the bottleneck in modern Core processors at the moment. Indeed, despite the impressive list of improvements, Haswell's performance gain compared to Ivy Bridge was only about 5-10 percent. But in fairness, it should be noted that the acceleration on vector operations is much stronger. And the greatest gain can be seen in applications using the new AVX2 and FMA commands, which support has also appeared in this microarchitecture.

The Haswell processors, like the Ivy Bridge, were not particularly popular with enthusiasts at first either. Especially considering the fact that they did not offer any increase in clock frequencies in the original version. However, a year after their debut, Haswell began to seem noticeably more attractive. First, there has been an increase in the number of applications that appeal to the strongest points of this architecture and use vector instructions. Secondly, Intel was able to fix the frequency situation. Later modifications of Haswell, which received their own codename Devil's Canyon, were able to increase the advantage over their predecessors thanks to the increase in clock frequency, which finally broke through the 4 GHz ceiling. Besides, following the lead of overclockers, Intel has improved the polymer thermal interface under the processor cover, which made Devil's Canyon more suitable objects for overclocking. Certainly not as malleable as Sandy Bridge, but nonetheless.

And with this baggage, Intel approached Broadwell. Since the main key feature of these processors was to be a new production technology with 14nm norms, no significant innovations in their microarchitecture were planned - it had to be almost the most commonplace "tick". Everything necessary for the success of new products could well be provided by only one thin technical process with second generation FinFET transistors, which in theory allows to reduce power consumption and raise frequencies. However, the practical implementation of the new technology turned into a series of failures, as a result of which Broadwell got only economy, but not high frequencies. As a result, those processors of this generation, which Intel introduced for desktop systems, came out more like mobile CPUs than the successors of the Devil's Canyon cause. Moreover, in addition to reduced thermal packets and reduced frequencies, they differ from their predecessors and have a smaller L3 cache, which, however, is somewhat compensated by the appearance of a fourth level cache located on a separate crystal.

At the same frequency as Haswell, Broadwell processors demonstrate an approximately 7% advantage, provided both by the addition of an additional level of data caching and by another improvement in the branch prediction algorithm along with an increase in the main internal buffers. In addition, Broadwell introduces new and faster execution schemes for multiply and divide instructions. However, all these small improvements are canceled out by a fiasco with clock speeds dating back to the era before Sandy Bridge. So, for example, the senior overclocking Core i7-5775C of the Broadwell generation is inferior in frequency to the Core i7-4790K by as much as 700 MHz. It is clear that it is pointless to expect any kind of productivity growth against this background, if only it would do without a serious drop.

Largely because of this, Broadwell turned out to be unattractive for the bulk of users. Yes, the processors of this family are highly economical and even fit into a thermal package with a 65-watt frame, but who, by and large, cares about this? The overclocking potential of the first generation 14nm CPU turned out to be rather restrained. We are not talking about any work at frequencies approaching the 5 GHz bar. The maximum that can be achieved from Broadwell when using air cooling lies in the vicinity of 4.2 GHz. In other words, the fifth generation Core came out from Intel, at least weird. What, by the way, the microprocessor giant ultimately regretted: Intel representatives note that the late release of Broadwell for desktop computers, its shortened life cycle and atypical characteristics negatively affected the level of sales, and the company does not plan to start such experiments anymore.

The newest Skylake against this background is not so much a further development of Intel's microarchitecture as a kind of work on errors. Despite the fact that the production of this generation of CPUs uses the same 14nm process technology as in the case of Broadwell, Skylake has no problems with working at high frequencies. The nominal frequencies of the sixth generation Core processors returned to those indicators that were characteristic of their 22nm predecessors, and the overclocking potential even increased slightly. The fact that in Skylake the processor power converter was again migrated to the motherboard played into the hands of overclockers and thereby reduced the total heat dissipation of the CPU during overclocking. It's a pity that Intel hasn't returned to using an efficient thermal interface between the die and the processor cover.

But as for the basic microarchitecture of computing cores, despite the fact that Skylake, like Haswell, is the embodiment of the "so" phase, there are very few innovations in it. Moreover, most of them are aimed at expanding the input part of the executive conveyor, while the rest of the conveyor remained without any significant changes. The changes relate to improving the performance of branch prediction and increasing the efficiency of the prefetcher, and nothing else. At the same time, some of the optimizations serve not so much to improve performance as to improve energy efficiency again. Therefore, one should not be surprised that Skylake hardly differs from Broadwell in its specific performance.

However, there are exceptions: in some cases, Skylake can surpass its predecessors in performance and more noticeably. The fact is that the memory subsystem has been improved in this microarchitecture. The on-chip ring bus got faster, and this ultimately increased the bandwidth of the L3 cache. Plus, the memory controller received support for high-frequency DDR4 SDRAM memory.

But in the end, nevertheless, it turns out, no matter what Intel says about the progressiveness of Skylake, from the point of view of ordinary users this is a rather weak update. The main improvements in Skylake are in the graphics core and in energy efficiency, which opens the way for such CPUs to fanless tablet form factor systems. Desktop representatives of this generation do not differ too much from Haswell. Even if we close our eyes to the existence of the intermediate generation Broadwell, and compare Skylake directly with Haswell, the observed increase in specific productivity will be about 7-8 percent, which can hardly be called an impressive manifestation of technological progress.

Along the way, it is worth noting that the improvement of technological production processes does not meet expectations. From Sandy Bridge to Skylake, Intel changed two semiconductor technologies and more than half the thickness of the transistor gates. However, the modern 14nm technical process, compared to the 32nm technology of five years ago, did not allow increasing the operating frequencies of the processors. All Core processors of the last five generations have very similar clock speeds, which, if they exceed the 4 GHz mark, are quite insignificant.

For a clear illustration of this fact, you can look at the following graph, which displays the clock speed of older overclocking Core i7 processors of different generations.

Moreover, the clock speed does not even peak at Skylake. Haswell processors belonging to the Devil's Canyon subgroup can boast of the maximum frequency. Their nominal frequency is 4.0 GHz, but thanks to the turbo mode, in real conditions, they are able to accelerate to 4.4 GHz. For modern Skylakes, the maximum frequency is only 4.2 GHz.

All this, naturally, affects the final performance of real representatives of various CPU families. And then we propose to see how all this affects the performance of platforms built on the flagship processors of each of the Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake families.

How we tested

Five different generations of Core i7 processors took part in the comparison: Core i7-2700K, Core i7-3770K, Core i7-4790K, Core i7-5775C and Core i7-6700K. Therefore, the list of components involved in testing turned out to be quite extensive:

Processors:

Intel Core i7-2600K (Sandy Bridge, 4 cores + HT, 3.4-3.8 GHz, 8 MB L3);
Intel Core i7-3770K (Ivy Bridge, 4 cores + HT, 3.5-3.9 GHz, 8 MB L3);
Intel Core i7-4790K (Haswell Refresh, 4 cores + HT, 4.0-4.4 GHz, 8 MB L3);
Intel Core i7-5775C (Broadwell, 4 cores, 3.3-3.7 GHz, 6 MB L3, 128 MB L4).
Intel Core i7-6700K (Skylake, 4 cores, 4.0-4.2 GHz, 8 MB L3).

CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S.
Motherboards:

ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming (LGA 1151, Intel Z170);
ASUS Z97-Pro (LGA 1150, Intel Z97);
ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe (LGA1155, Intel Z77).

Memory:

2x8 GB DDR3-2133 SDRAM, 9-11-11-31 (G.Skill F3-2133C9D-16GTX);
2x8 GB DDR4-2666 SDRAM, 15-15-15-35 (Corsair Vengeance LPX CMK16GX4M2A2666C16R).

Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (6 GB / 384-bit GDDR5, 1000-1076 / 7010 MHz).
Disk subsystem: Kingston HyperX Savage 480 GB (SHSS37A / 480G).
PSU: Corsair RM850i ​​(80 Plus Gold, 850W).

Testing was performed on Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise Build 10240 using the following set of drivers:

Intel Chipset Driver 10.1.1.8;
Intel Management Engine Interface Driver 11.0.0.1157;
NVIDIA GeForce 358.50 Driver.

Performance

Overall performance

To assess the performance of processors in common tasks, we traditionally use the Bapco SYSmark test suite, which simulates the user's work in real common modern office programs and applications for creating and processing digital content. The idea of ​​the test is very simple: it produces a single metric that characterizes the weighted average speed of a computer during everyday use. After the release of the Windows 10 operating system, this benchmark was once again updated, and now we use the latest version - SYSmark 2014 1.5.

When comparing Core i7 of different generations, when they operate in their nominal modes, the results are not at all the same as when comparing at a single clock frequency. Still, the real frequency and features of the turbo mode have a significant impact on performance. For example, according to the data obtained, the Core i7-6700K is faster than the Core i7-5775C by as much as 11 percent, but its advantage over the Core i7-4790K is quite insignificant - it is only about 3 percent. At the same time, one cannot ignore the fact that the newest Skylake turns out to be significantly faster than the processors of the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge generations. Its advantage over the Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3770K reaches 33 and 28 percent, respectively.

A deeper understanding of the SYSmark 2014 1.5 results can provide insight into the performance scores obtained in various system use cases. The Office Productivity script simulates typical office work: preparing word, processing spreadsheets, working with e-mail, and surfing the Internet. The script uses the following set of applications: Adobe Acrobat XI Pro, Google Chrome 32, Microsoft Excel 2013, Microsoft OneNote 2013, Microsoft Outlook 2013, Microsoft PowerPoint 2013, Microsoft Word 2013, WinZip Pro 17.5 Pro.

The Media Creation scenario simulates the creation of a commercial using pre-shot digital images and video. The popular packages Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended, Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and Trimble SketchUp Pro 2013 are used for this purpose.

The Data / Financial Analysis scenario is devoted to statistical analysis and investment forecasting based on a certain financial model. The scenario uses large amounts of numerical data and two applications Microsoft Excel 2013 and WinZip Pro 17.5 Pro.

The results obtained by us under various load scenarios are qualitatively similar to the general indicators of SYSmark 2014 1.5. Noteworthy is the fact that the Core i7-4790K processor does not look outdated at all. It is noticeably inferior to the newest Core i7-6700K only in the Data / Financial Analysis calculation scenario, and in other cases it is either inferior to its successor by a completely inconspicuous amount, or generally turns out to be faster. For example, a member of the Haswell family is ahead of the new Skylake in office applications. But older processors like the Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3770K seem to be somewhat outdated offerings. They lose to the new product in different types of tasks from 25 to 40 percent, and this, perhaps, is a sufficient reason for the Core i7-6700K to be considered a worthy replacement for them.

Gaming performance

As you know, the performance of platforms equipped with high-performance processors in the vast majority of modern games is determined by the power of the graphics subsystem. That is why, when testing processors, we select the most processor-dependent games, and we measure the number of frames twice. In the first pass, tests are carried out without enabling anti-aliasing and with setting far from the highest resolutions. Such settings allow us to assess how well processors perform with a gaming load in principle, which means they allow us to make guesses about how the tested computing platforms will behave in the future, when faster options for graphics accelerators appear on the market. The second pass is performed with realistic settings - when choosing FullHD-resolution and the maximum level of full-screen anti-aliasing. In our opinion, such results are no less interesting, since they answer the frequently asked question about what level of gaming performance processors can provide right now - in modern conditions.

However, in this testing we put together a powerful graphics subsystem based on the flagship NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card. And as a result, in some games, the frame rate showed a dependence on processor performance, even in FullHD resolution.

FullHD results with maximum quality settings

Typically, the impact of processors on gaming performance, especially when it comes to powerful representatives of the Core i7 series, is negligible. However, when comparing five Core i7s from different generations, the results are not at all uniform. Even when set to the maximum graphics quality settings, the Core i7-6700K and Core i7-5775C demonstrate the highest gaming performance, while the older Core i7s lag behind. So, the frame rate obtained in a system with a Core i7-6700K exceeds the performance of a system based on a Core i7-4770K by a subtle one percent, but the Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3770K processors seem to be a significantly worse basis for a gaming system. Moving from a Core i7-2700K or Core i7-3770K to the latest Core i7-6700K gives an increase in fps of 5-7 percent, which can have a very noticeable impact on the quality of the gaming process.

You can see all this much more clearly if you look at the gaming performance of processors with reduced image quality, when the frame rate is not limited by the power of the graphics subsystem.

Results at reduced resolution

The latest Core i7-6700K processor once again manages to show the highest performance among all the latest generations of Core i7. Its superiority over the Core i7-5775C is about 5 percent, and over the Core i7-4690K - about 10 percent. There is nothing strange in this: games are quite sensitive to the speed of the memory subsystem, and it is in this direction that serious improvements have been made in Skylake. But the superiority of the Core i7-6700K over the Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3770K is much more noticeable. Senior Sandy Bridge lags behind the new product by 30-35 percent, and Ivy Bridge loses to it in the region of 20-30 percent. In other words, no matter how much Intel was criticized for improving its own processors too slowly, the company was able to increase the speed of its CPUs by a third over the past five years, and this is a very tangible result.

Testing in real games is completed by the results of the popular synthetic benchmark Futuremark 3DMark.

They echo the gaming performance and those results that are given by Futuremark 3DMark. With the transfer of the microarchitecture of the Core i7 processors from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge, the 3DMark scores increased by 2 to 7 percent. The introduction of Haswell's design and the release of Devil's Canyon processors added an additional 7-14 percent to the performance of older Core i7s. However, then the appearance of the Core i7-5775C, which has a relatively low clock frequency, somewhat rolled back the performance. And the newest Core i7-6700K, in fact, had to take the rap for two generations of microarchitecture. The increase in the final 3DMark rating for the new processor of the Skylake family in comparison with the Core i7-4790K was up to 7 percent. And in fact, this is not so much: after all, the most noticeable performance improvement over the past five years has been brought by Haswell processors. The latest generations of desktop processors are, indeed, somewhat disappointing.

In-app tests

In Autodesk 3ds max 2016 we are testing the final rendering speed. This measures the time it takes to render at 1920x1080 using the mental ray renderer for one frame of a standard Hummer scene.

Another test of the final rendering is carried out by us using the popular free 3D graphics package Blender 2.75a. In it we measure the duration of building the final model from Blender Cycles Benchmark rev4.

We used the Cinebench R15 benchmark to measure the speed of photorealistic 3D rendering. Maxon recently updated its benchmark, and now it again allows you to evaluate the performance of various platforms when rendering in the latest versions of the animation package Cinema 4D.

We measure the performance of websites and web applications built with modern technologies using the new Microsoft Edge 20.10240.16384.0 browser. For this, a specialized test WebXPRT 2015 is used, which implements algorithms that are actually used in Internet applications in HTML5 and JavaScript.

Performance testing for graphics processing takes place in Adobe Photoshop CC 2015. The average execution time of the test script, which is a creatively reworked Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed ​​Test, which includes typical processing of four 24-megapixel images captured by a digital camera, is measured.

At the numerous requests of amateur photographers, we have conducted performance testing in the graphics program Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6.1. The test scenario includes post-processing and export to JPEG with a resolution of 1920x1080 and a maximum quality of two hundred 12MP RAW images taken with a Nikon D300 digital camera.

Non-linear video editing performance is tested in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015. This measures the rendering time to H.264 of a Blu-Ray project containing HDV 1080p25 footage with various effects overlay.

To measure the speed of processors when compressing information, we use the WinRAR 5.3 archiver, with which we archive a folder with various files with a total volume of 1.7 GB with the maximum compression ratio.

To evaluate the speed of video transcoding into H.264 format, the x264 FHD Benchmark 1.0.1 (64bit) test is used, based on measuring the encoding time by the x264 encoder of the source video into MPEG-4 / AVC format with a resolution [email protected] and default settings. It should be noted that the results of this benchmark are of great practical importance, since the x264 encoder is at the heart of numerous popular transcoding utilities, for example, HandBrake, MeGUI, VirtualDub, etc. We periodically update the encoder used for performance measurements, and version r2538 took part in this testing, which implements support for all modern instruction sets, including AVX2.

In addition, we have added to the list of test applications a new x265 encoder designed for transcoding video into the promising H.265 / HEVC format, which is a logical continuation of H.264 and is characterized by more efficient compression algorithms. To evaluate performance, the original [email protected] Y4M video file that is transcoded to H.265 with medium profile. The release of the coder version 1.7 took part in this testing.

The advantage of the Core i7-6700K over its earlier predecessors in various applications is beyond question. However, two types of tasks have benefited most from the evolution that has taken place. Firstly, related to the processing of multimedia content, be it video or images. Secondly, the final rendering in 3D modeling and design packages. In general, in such cases, the Core i7-6700K outperforms the Core i7-2700K by no less than 40-50 percent. And sometimes a much more dramatic improvement in speed can be seen. So, when transcoding video with the x265 codec, the newest Core i7-6700K produces exactly twice the performance than the old Core i7-2700K.

If we talk about the increase in the speed of execution of resource-intensive tasks that the Core i7-6700K can provide in comparison with the Core i7-4790K, then here it is impossible to bring such impressive illustrations to the results of the work of Intel engineers. The maximum advantage of the novelty is observed in Lightroom, here Skylake is one and a half times better. But this is rather an exception to the rule. In most multimedia tasks, the Core i7-6700K offers only a 10% improvement in performance over the Core i7-4790K. And with a load of a different nature, the difference in performance is even less or even absent.

Separately, a few words must be said about the result shown by the Core i7-5775C. Due to its low clock speed, this processor is slower than the Core i7-4790K and Core i7-6700K. But do not forget that its key characteristic is economy. And it is quite capable of becoming one of the best options in terms of specific performance per watt of electricity consumed. We will easily verify this in the next section.

Energy consumption

Skylake processors are manufactured using a modern 14nm process technology with second-generation 3D transistors, however, despite this, their thermal package has increased to 91 watts. In other words, the new CPUs are not only "hotter" than 65-watt Broadwells, but also surpass Haswell's calculated heat dissipation, manufactured using 22-nm technology and getting along within the 88-watt thermal package. The reason, obviously, is that initially the Skylake architecture was optimized not for high frequencies, but for energy efficiency and the possibility of using it in mobile devices. Therefore, in order for the desktop Skylake to get acceptable clock frequencies lying in the vicinity of the 4 GHz mark, the supply voltage had to be raised, which inevitably affected power consumption and heat dissipation.

However, Broadwell processors did not differ in low operating voltages either, so there is a hope that the 91-watt Skylake thermal package was received for some formal reason and, in fact, they will not be more voracious than their predecessors. Check it out!

The new Corsair RM850i ​​digital power supply we used in the test system allows us to monitor the consumed and output electrical power, which we use for measurements. The following graph shows the total system consumption (without monitor) measured "after" the power supply, which is the sum of the power consumption of all components involved in the system. The efficiency of the power supply itself is not taken into account in this case. We have activated turbo mode and all available energy-saving technologies to correctly estimate energy consumption.

At idle, a quantum leap in the economy of desktop platforms came with the release of Broadwell. The Core i7-5775C and Core i7-6700K have noticeably lower idle consumption.

But under load in the form of video transcoding, the most economical CPU options are Core i7-5775C and Core i7-3770K. The newest Core i7-6700K consumes more. His energetic appetites are on par with the senior Sandy Bridge. True, the new product, unlike Sandy Bridge, has support for AVX2 instructions, which require quite serious energy costs.

The following diagram shows the maximum load under load created by the 64-bit version of LinX 0.6.5 with support for the AVX2 instruction set, which is based on the Linpack package, which has an exorbitant appetite for energy.

Once again, the Broadwell generation processor shows miracles in energy efficiency. However, if you look at how much electricity the Core i7-6700K consumes, it becomes clear that progress in microarchitectures has bypassed the energy efficiency of desktop CPUs. Yes, Skylake has introduced new offerings with an extremely tempting performance-to-power ratio in the mobile segment, but the latest desktop processors continue to consume roughly the same amount as their predecessors did in the five years prior.

conclusions

After testing the latest Core i7-6700K and comparing it with several generations of previous CPUs, we again come to the disappointing conclusion that Intel continues to follow its unspoken principles and is not too eager to increase the speed of desktop processors focused on high-performance systems. And if, in comparison with the older Broadwell, the new product offers about a 15% improvement in performance due to significantly better clock speeds, then in comparison with the older, but faster Haswell, it no longer seems as progressive. The difference in performance between Core i7-6700K and Core i7-4790K, despite the fact that these processors are shared by two generations of microarchitecture, does not exceed 5-10 percent. And this is very little for the senior desktop Skylake to be unambiguously recommended for updating existing LGA 1150 systems.

However, it would take a long time to get used to such insignificant steps by Intel in increasing the speed of processors for desktop systems. The increase in the performance of new solutions, which lies approximately within such limits, is a long-established tradition. Intel's desktop-centric CPUs have not revolutionized the computing performance for a very long time. And the reasons for this are quite understandable: the company's engineers are busy optimizing the developed microarchitectures for mobile applications and, first of all, think about energy efficiency. Intel's success in adapting its own architectures for use in thin and light devices is undeniable, but the adherents of classic desktops can only be content with small performance gains, which, fortunately, have not yet completely disappeared.

However, this does not mean at all that the Core i7-6700K can be recommended only for new systems. Owners of configurations based on the LGA 1155 platform with processors of the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge generations may well think about upgrading their computers. In comparison with the Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3770K, the new Core i7-6700K looks very good - its weighted average superiority over such predecessors is estimated at 30-40 percent. In addition, processors with the Skylake microarchitecture can boast of support for the AVX2 instruction set, which has now found widespread use in multimedia applications, and due to this, in some cases, the Core i7-6700K turns out to be much stronger faster. So, when transcoding video, we even saw cases when the Core i7-6700K was more than twice as fast as the Core i7-2700K!

Skylake processors also have a number of other advantages associated with the introduction of the accompanying new LGA 1151 platform. And the point is not so much in the support of DDR4 memory that has appeared in it, but in the fact that the new logic sets of the hundredth series have finally received really high-speed connection to the processor and support for a large number of PCI Express 3.0 lanes. As a result, the leading LGA 1151 systems boast numerous fast interfaces for connecting storage devices and external devices that are free from any artificial bandwidth limitations.

Plus, when assessing the prospects of the LGA 1151 platform and Skylake processors, one more point should be kept in mind. Intel will be in no rush to bring the next generation processors known as Kaby Lake to market. According to the available information, representatives of this series of processors in desktop versions will not appear on the market until 2017. So Skylake will be with us for a long time, and the system built on it will be able to remain relevant for a very long period of time.

In 2010, Intel introduced new processor brands - Core i3, i5, i7... This event was confusing for many users. This is because the company's goal was completely different - it wanted to offer a faster way to identify models at low, medium and high levels. Intel also wanted to convince users that the Intel Core i7 is much better than the same i5, and this, in turn, is better than the i3. But this does not give an exact answer to the question, which processor is better, or what is the difference between Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors?

A little later, the company released new generations of processors based on architectures such as Ivy bridge, Sandy, Haswell, Broadwell and . This innovation has further confused many consumers. Although such new technologies have appeared, the names have not changed - Core i3, i5, i7. The differences between these technologies are only as follows: i3 processors are designed for small (basic) class computers, i5 processors for middle-class computer systems, and i7 processors for high-end computers, for powerful PCs, in simple terms.

But there are still other differences that we will talk about.

Key points

Some users believe that the names i3, i5 and i7 are related to the number of cores in the processor, in fact, this is not the case. These brands are randomly selected by Intel. Therefore, the chips of all these processors can have either two or four cores. There are also more powerful models for desktop computers that have more cores and surpass other processors in many respects.

So what are the differences between these three models?

Hyper-Threading

When processors were still in their infancy, they all had a single core executing just one set of instructions, namely a thread. The company was able to increase the number of computational operations by increasing the number of cores. Thus, the processor could do more work per unit of time.

The next goal of the company is to increase the optimization of such a process. To do this, they created the technology Hyper-Threading allowing a single core to execute multiple threads at the same time. For example, we have a processor with a 2-core chip that supports Hyper-Threading technology, then we can consider this processor as a four-core.

Turbo Boost

Previously, processors worked at one clock frequency, which was set by the manufacturer, in order to change this frequency to a higher one, people were engaged in overclocking (overclocking) processor. This type of activity requires special knowledge, without which, you can cause colossal damage to the processor or other computer components in a couple of moments.

Today, everything is completely different. Modern processors are equipped with technology Turbo Boost, which allows the processor to operate at a variable clock speed. Thus, the energy efficiency and operating time of, for example, laptop and other mobile devices are improved.

Cache size

Processors tend to handle a lot of data. The operations performed can be different in volume and complexity, but it often happens that the processor needs to process the same information several times. To speed up this process, and especially the processor itself, such data is stored in a special buffer (cache memory). Therefore, the processor can retrieve such data almost instantly, without unnecessary load.

The amount of cache memory in different processors is calculated differently. For example, in a low-end processor - 3-4 MB, and in higher-end models - 6-12 MB.

Of course, the more cache memory, the better and faster the processor will perform, but this instruction is not suitable for all applications. For example, photo and video processing applications will use large amounts of cache memory. Therefore, the larger the cache size, the more efficient the applications will be.

For performing the simplest tasks, such as surfing the Internet or working in office programs, the cache is not so significant.

Intel processor types

Now let's consider the types of processors, namely the description of each of them.

Intel Core i3

What is it suitable for: Regular, daily work with office applications, Internet browsing and high quality movies. For such processes, Core i3 is the best option.

Characteristic: This processor offers up to 2 cores and supports Hyper-Treading technology. True, it does not support Turbo Boost. Also, the processor has a fairly low power consumption, so such a processor is undoubtedly suitable for laptops.

Intel Core i5

What is it suitable for: More intensive work, such as using video and photo processing programs, you can play many modern games, at low, medium and sometimes high settings.

Characteristic: This processor is used in both conventional desktop computers and laptops. Has 2 to 4 cores, but does not support Hyper-Treading, but supports Turbo Boost.

Intel Core i7

What is it suitable for: This processor is predisposed to work with powerful graphics editors. You can play modern games at maximum settings, but other components, for example, a video card, play an important role here. Also, you can view video files in 4K.

Characteristic A: At the moment, this chip is the highest grade. Has both 2 and 4 cores and support for Hyper-Treading and Turbo Boost.

We have reviewed brief characteristics of 3 types of processors, and now you can choose the best one for you.