Kaby vs Sky

[Cjhalgmad]

Is Kaby Lake really worth the wait? All I've heard is that it has this 'tick tock' feature which I don't even know what it is and I've heard people say that it isn't that much of an improvement anyways. The point being I'm building a new PC so should I wait for the alleged January 5th release date and pick up a z270 mobo and the 7700k or get what I'm hoping is a cheaper z170 and 6700k pair?

 

Thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

Same IPC, just a bit higher clock, lower power, and some new gpu features.  I wouldn't pay much extra for it.

[TheNuzziNuzz]

Wait for zen.

[BlackJackLTT]

On 12/21/2016 at 9:03 PM, Cjhalgmad said:

Is Kaby Lake really worth the wait? All I've heard is that it has this 'tick tock' feature which I don't even know what it is and I've heard people say that it isn't that much of an improvement anyways. The point being I'm building a new PC so should I wait for the alleged January 5th release date and pick up a z270 mobo and the 7700k or get what I'm hoping is a cheaper z170 and 6700k pair?

 

Thanks

I think you should wait for Kaby Lake because then the Skylake CPUs and MOBOs are going to be much cheaper. 

[dizmo]

Some of the Z270 boards look really nice, especially the MSI ones. That might be worth the wait if you are about the features they've added. Performance wise there isn't a huge reason to buy the new ones. Though you likely won't save much money.

[dizmo]

1 minute ago, BlackJackLTT said:

I think you should wait for Kaby Lake because then the Skylake CPUs and MOBOs are going to be much cheaper. 

They don't drop that much. Especially the CPUs.

[BlackJackLTT]

On 12/21/2016 at 9:13 PM, dizmo said:

They don't drop that much. Especially the CPUs.

I dunno... Maybe they will drop a little bit... But from what I'm seeing and as you said they won't have a big performance improvment

[MageTank]

6 minutes ago, BlackJackLTT said:

I think you should wait for Kaby Lake because then the Skylake CPUs and MOBOs are going to be much cheaper. 

CPU prices don't change much at all. 4790k debuted at $350 USD, and and now retails for $330. http://pcpartpicker.com/product/6vzv6h/intel-cpu-bx80646i74790k

 

$20 difference for a 2-gen old product.

[Daniel644]

Kaby Lake is more about support for additional items, like the Hardware DRM that will allow 4k 10 bit streaming of Netflix on PC and things like that, it's not going to be significantly faster, just hardware level h.265 encoding/decoding with some minor efficiency improvements, unless you need those it's not worth it, only reason to wait is in hopes of better pricing on skylake parts, which you already missed some pretty good sales on last month.

[Cjhalgmad]

I would imagine that zen would drop the pricing even if it's just by the little bit considering that they would probably bring something out that's similar or better at a similar if not cheaper price. But that's just my quick thinking without doing much in terms of research 

[Cjhalgmad]

3 minutes ago, Daniel644 said:

which you already missed some pretty good sales on last month.

From where I live (England) there wasn't many sales I don't think on cpu's. The best I picked up on Black Friday is a 525gb SSD from £150 down to £80 so that was a pretty good find.

[typographie]

42 minutes ago, Cjhalgmad said:

All I've heard is that it has this 'tick tock' feature which I don't even know what it is and I've heard people say that it isn't that much of an improvement anyways.

"Tick-tock" is a casual name given to Intel's release cadence, where a "tick" is a die shrink of the current architecture, and a "tock" is a new architecture. Intel stuck to it quick closely for a long time and released one or the other every year or so, but Intel themselves have stopped using the term because they're apparently having some issues going from 14 nm to 10 nm.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick-Tock_model

[Cjhalgmad]

2 minutes ago, typographie said:

"Tick-tock" is a casual name given to Intel's release cadence, where a "tick" is a die shrink of the current architecture, and a "tock" is a new architecture. Intel stuck to it quick closely for a long time and released one or the other every year or so. If I'm not mistaken, Kaby Lake is a "tick" relative to Skylake.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick-Tock_model

 

So for example broadwell is tock (new architecture) and broadwell-e is tick (improvement of the current architecture) I think.

[typographie]

11 minutes ago, Cjhalgmad said:

So for example broadwell is tock (new architecture) and broadwell-e is tick (improvement of the current architecture) I think.

The architecture in this case is just plain "Broadwell." Regardless of the product it's used in (whether it's the i7-5775C or the i7-6850K or some random Celeron or mobile CPU) it's the same core architecture. Broadwell was a die shrink ("tick") of Haswell.

 

If you prefer to look at it this way, Broadwell-E is a die shrink of Haswell-E.

[dizmo]

6 hours ago, BlackJackLTT said:

I dunno... Maybe they will drop a little bit... But from what I'm seeing and as you said they won't have a big performance improvment

Nope, same improvement as every other generation to generation.

[imPixelTV]

one supports windows 7 and 8 the other doesnt

[Biggerboot]

Kaby Lake is basically a higher clocked Skylake.  The 5% boost is pretty much based on that.  There's no harm in waiting for it I guess, since it's only a month away.

7 hours ago, MageTank said:

CPU prices don't change much at all. 4790k debuted at $350 USD, and and now retails for $330. http://pcpartpicker.com/product/6vzv6h/intel-cpu-bx80646i74790k

 

$20 difference for a 2-gen old product.

Just to chime in, last gen hardware doesn't just become automatically cheaper to manufacture just because a new architecture is being made.  Intel pretty much just stops making that old architecture and it sells until it's out of stock.  It doesn't cost Intel much for some of that stock to sit until it finds a buyer with a particular 1150 board in need.

 

What does affect price is supply and demand.  It's usually right before a generation goes out of stock that it will come down at retail, mainly to get it out quicker.  But you should really look at buying used for previous gen hardware.

 

Motherboards are a similar deal, completely driven by supply and demand.  Since Z170 boards will still be just as viable, the demand for them will still be good enough until they go out of stock.

1 hour ago, imPixelTV said:

one supports windows 7 and 8 the other doesnt

They both don't (natively at least) because they abandoned the old MBR for GPT.

[imPixelTV]

1 minute ago, Biggerboot said:

Kaby Lake is basically a higher clocked Skylake.  The 5% boost is pretty much based on that.  There's no harm in waiting for it I guess, since it's only a month away.

 

Just to chime in, last gen hardware doesn't become cheaper to manufacture just because a new architecture is being made.  What it does affect is supply and demand.  It's usually right before a generation goes out of stock that it will come down at retail, but you should really look at buying used for previous gen hardware.

 

Motherboards are a similar deal, completely driven by supply and demand.  Since Z170 boards will still be just as viable, the demand for them will still be good enough until they go out of stock.

They both don't (natively at least) because they abandoned the old MBR for GPT.

depressing