
Intel Broadwell-E Review - ethana
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10337/the-intel-broadwell-e-review-core-i7-6950x-6900k-6850k-and-6800k-tested-up-to-10-cores
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rdl
I want to upgrade my desktop/gaming box from a 5yo but maxed out Gulftown
i7-970, but this really isn't terribly compelling. I guess I wait another
generation (throw a new GPU in there, but nothing else)?

Dual CPU Xeon seems better (mmm, ECC), although faster RAM is nice, and I'm
not sure what a "good" workstation board is. Is there a market for
~silent/water cooled 2P Xeon workstations still? No need to overclock, but
something quiet is nice -- big diameter fans at minimum.

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ksk
Why would you want ECC for a gaming box?

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koolba
Why wouldn't you want ECC for everything?

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ksk
Well ECC is not the be-all end-all. There are several sources of bit errors.
SD-Cards, USB Flash drives, TCP/IP Packets, HDDs, SSDs etc etc. Thats just the
'bits' you have control over. If you're copying data from somewhere else, you
have no control over what the other person does to it, etc etc. I wont't
produce a thesis here, but you get the idea :)

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sliken
Right, ECC is improving one piece. ZFS adds file checksums. SATA uses ECC for
transfers. Considering the cost I think ECC is worth it.

The xeon E3-1230 is cheaper than the i7-6700K and while it has a slightly
slower clock I don't think it's noticeable.

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ksk
Hmm, do you happen to know what the actual improvement is, in terms of a
reduction in the probability of bit errors? What I'm thinking is.. assuming
there are multiple weak links in the chain, strengthening one link, might not
really make all that big of a difference. But I agree with the general point
you're making - something is better than nothing.

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rl3
Annoying that the i7-6800K is gimped by having only 28 PCI-E lanes. I guess
Intel needed a reason for people to buy the i7-6850K.

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mrmondo
Interesting, it's not that much better than the available 2015 line up, for
example my iMac has a 6700K in it which sits in the top 3 or 4, mind you this
is typical of a tick, in a tick-tock manufacturing process.

Why did they come out with another Broadwell based processor when Skylake /
Ice Lake seems to be logical next tstep?

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turnip1979
Intel chip performance improvements seem to have slowed down. They add extras
like acceleration for 3d prints, USB improvements, etc. But raw horse power
seems at a standstill. I wonder if this is because they don't have a fierce
competitor anymore or whether they are keeping "high" multicore chips for
their Xeon line. A decade ago, people kept harping we'll have hundreds of cpu
cores in our desktop systems any day now. That didn't happen. We do have
thousands of GPU cores .. so .. go NVidia and AMD! Intel needs to get their
act together.

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ajoy39
It's partially because of the lack of competition and partially because the
process technology itself has slowed down. We're starting to run up against
the limits of silicon, going from 22nm to 14nm isn't as big of a performance
increase as going from, say, 90nm to 45nm was a decade ago.

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agumonkey
I wonder how power efficient new gen. cpus are compared to their ancestors.

