Intel Releases First Ever 10-Core Desktop Processor: Just How Fast Is The Core i7-6950X

[Deleted User]

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Slapshot1188

Interested in how this performs in gaming...

Not sure how many games will benefit from 10 cores.

H0urg1ass

Meanwhile the vast majority of games don't even utilize 4 cores with hyper-threading yet.  But it will be fantastic for rendering, ripping or other CPU intensive tasks that I do occasionally.

SlyLoK

i5s are still what you should get if you are just a gamer IMO.

Nightlite

Yea.. this has no place in gaming currently, and at 140TDP it is going to require some extreme cooling when you get all those cores encoding a project for sure.

Still there is a market for this, and I would very much like to play with it.

SEANMCAD

excited the cost of VR keeps dropping!

13lake

the 6950x uses over 350w on full load overclocked to 4.3/4.4Ghz with some uncore twiddling and a better chip sample than guru3d got i bet u can get it to 4.6Ghz and >400w

ceratop001

Seems like a great multitasking processor.

H0urg1ass

SEANMCAD said:

excited the cost of VR keeps dropping!

Tha hell??  I mean you're seriously coming off like a savant at this point, this has nothing to do with VR.  Do you have to make every thread about it?

SEANMCAD

H0urg1ass said:

SEANMCAD said:

excited the cost of VR keeps dropping!

Tha hell??  I mean you're seriously coming off like a savant at this point, this has nothing to do with VR.  Do you have to make every thread about it?

sorry not following you, just saying why I find this data interesting. Not sure why the cost part of it is of interest but maybe I can contemplate on that

Malabooga

Its 1720$.

Thats 172$/core. RIdiculous. 360$/core over 8 core.

ANd, if you want single thread performance, Skylake s better. If you want multicore performance 14 cores Xeon costs about the same.

Quizzical

Nightlite said:

Yea.. this has no place in gaming currently, and at 140TDP it is going to require some extreme cooling when you get all those cores encoding a project for sure.

Still there is a market for this, and I would very much like to play with it.

140 W isn't that hard to cool in a desktop.  Many GPUs burn well over 200 W.

Nanfoodle

HOLLY CRAP! 

Quizzical

SEANMCAD said:

excited the cost of VR keeps dropping!

Because nothing says "cheap VR" like a $1569 CPU?

The only thing stopping Intel from releasing a 22 core desktop CPU is that they decided not to.  Here's the Xeon E5 version of the same chips:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/xeon-processor-e5-family.html

SEANMCAD

Quizzical said:

SEANMCAD said:

excited the cost of VR keeps dropping!

Because nothing says "cheap VR" like a $1569 CPU?

The only thing stopping Intel from releasing a 22 core desktop CPU is that they decided not to.  Here's the Xeon E5 version of the same chips:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/xeon-processor-e5-family.html

well I was thinking that as the hardware improves that the cost of lower entry requirements would be reduced.
Is that how it works? I would think, for example, that the entry to the same performance requirements of a GTX980 actually gets reduced because of newer technology introduced that is more powerful.

is that how it works? if not can you explain?

Quizzical

Last generation, Intel decided to offer a 6-core CPU around $400, 8-core around $1000, and no 10-core at all.  This generation, they decided to offer 6-core around $400, 8-core around $1000, and 10-core around $1600.  They had 10-core CPUs last generation, too:

http://ark.intel.com/products/family/78583/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-v3-Family#@Server

They just decided not to offer a desktop version of one, so you had to get a Xeon E5 (which probably disables overclocking, but does allow ECC memory and some other stuff) to get it.

I don't see a price drop there.  The die shrink from 22 nm to 14 nm does save on power, and that allows you to clock the ten cores higher.  The top 10-core version of Haswell-E had a base clock of 2.6 GHz and a max turbo of 3.2 GHz, which wouldn't make a very good desktop chip for most purposes.  That's probably why Intel didn't release a desktop version.  So that is progress of sorts, but it's not a "hardware is getting cheaper" type of progress.

waynejr2

H0urg1ass said:

Meanwhile the vast majority of games don't even utilize 4 cores with hyper-threading yet.  But it will be fantastic for rendering, ripping or other CPU intensive tasks that I do occasionally.

While what you say is true.  It is very narrowly focused but still true.  It gives a tiny picture of what is going on.   You game isn't likely to get those 4 core dedicated to your hypothetical game.  There are many processes swapping out using those cores.  You can't simply suspend all of them.  More cores can help that.

We still have a speed bottleneck.  That is outside the number of core issue despite how people want to make it that.

SEANMCAD

Quizzical said:

Last generation, Intel decided to offer a 6-core CPU around $400, 8-core around $1000, and no 10-core at all.  This generation, they decided to offer 6-core around $400, 8-core around $1000, and 10-core around $1600.  They had 10-core CPUs last generation, too:

http://ark.intel.com/products/family/78583/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-v3-Family#@Server

They just decided not to offer a desktop version of one, so you had to get a Xeon E5 (which probably disables overclocking, but does allow ECC memory and some other stuff) to get it.

I don't see a price drop there.  The die shrink from 22 nm to 14 nm does save on power, and that allows you to clock the ten cores higher.  The top 10-core version of Haswell-E had a base clock of 2.6 GHz and a max turbo of 3.2 GHz, which wouldn't make a very good desktop chip for most purposes.  That's probably why Intel didn't release a desktop version.  So that is progress of sorts, but it's not a "hardware is getting cheaper" type of progress.

that is not what I am asking

Price Per Performance drop

not same hardware, price drop.

I would think that has technology advances that the performance cost of a 386 goes down, not the price of a 386 itself. Which a 386 is likely about as powerful as a dump phone

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kitarad

Blows your mind it does mine anyway.

Ridelynn

The average consumer doesn't need much more than 4 cores right now. Heck most of the time they don't need more than 2 (and even that is just to allow the OS to be able to transition between threads efficiently without undo bottlenecking).

Until that starts to change, which probably won't be very soon, you will continue to see 2 core machines dominating consumer sales.

High core counts are great, but right now are pretty much regulated to rackmount and workstation computers running heavily virtualized or highly parallel environments.

And if you don't believe me, go check out the Steam Hardware Survey... dual core still dominates, quad core is very close behind, and any other core count (which includes HT cores as full cores) are in extremely low single digit percentages. 

Maybe DX12/Vulkan will help change that, as they will present some benefit for more cores. But right now, the only benefit a typical consumer will see will be faster unzipping those financial documents from a royal family in Nambibia that will make you millions by providing a tax free haven to shelter their income from ISIS warlord pirates. And the people who (mostly illegally) encode movies.

SEANMCAD

Torval said:

No, it's not going to cause a price drop in desktop CPU prices. Higher end and task specific CPUs are always going to be pricier because they target enthusiasts or users with specific needs that will pay more for that functionality.

I do a ton of database and ETL work.  In addition I also run multiple VMs locally on my desktop. The VMs are sometimes running ETL processes or VPNs connecting to remote desktops running ETL processes. I need a lot of CPU power and cores, a ton of memory, and SSDs to do that smoothly. I have a low end gaming GPU so it can managing that and meeting software.

We pay more to have that power available. I would love to have an 8 or 10 core CPU. It would mean I could farm out more cores to the VMs and rely less on host CPU switching and management. 6 cores does okay though.

so your saying a chip designed in the 90s for the servers of the 90s which was not for the average consumer  has the same Cost Per Performance now as it did in the 90s' For that matter so do main frames I suppose

or are you just trying to say the Price Per Performance curve of non-gaming PC never in any way ever intersects the Price Per Performance curve of gaming PC because the two technologies never in any way ever intersect each other

interesting, please tell me more

Alders

SlyLoK said:

i5s are still what you should get if you are just a gamer IMO.

Don't agree with this if streaming at any decent settings is part of the gamers daily habit. I maxed out my i5 pretty quickly like that.

I've been thoroughly pleased with my upgrade to a 5820k.

SEANMCAD

I just got an add from Microcenter having

1. the 1070 in stock
2. 390x in stock
3. a uber gamer style add for the i7 6950X leaving me with the impression that it is in fact for the consumer market and not for friggin servers...

a lot appears to be going on right now in the world of computer technology

Ridelynn

It's for the consumer market that either has the money to burn or not enough common sense to get something more suitable.

And 1070 in stock... yeah. I'll just leave that one there.

SEANMCAD

Ridelynn said:

It's for the consumer market that either has the money to burn or not enough common sense to get something more suitable.

And 1070 in stock... yeah. I'll just leave that one there.

this iteration of computer technology is so different from the last 12 or so iterations I have been thru.

oh wait... actually its not