Your thoughts on 6850K over 6700K for P3D?

[JasonW 32]

Starting to map out a new machine and like the title suggest, whats your opinions on the new 6850k processor? Not really worried about the price difference as much as I am any performance gains. It will be paired with a GTX 1080 SC card. I know the Skylake seems to be a popular choice around here but it seems like I read that Broadwell will have better performing cores. 

[vortex681 806]

If you're only using it for P3D/gaming, then there's probably little, if anything, to gain by going for the 6850k over the 6700k - see http://www.anandtech.com/show/10337/the-intel-broadwell-e-review-core-i7-6950x-6900k-6850k-and-6800k-tested-up-to-10-cores/8 which pairs it with a 1080 card. If you're likely to use it for rendering or video editing, then definitely go for the 6850k. I know you said that you're not worried about price but you'd potentially be paying a LOT more for very similar performance. If you're considering overclocking, on page 10 in the link it says that 4.1 GHz is a reasonably average processor result for Broadwell-E but the temperature seems very high. The 6700k should comfortably overclock higher than this with much lower temperatures.

[JasonW 32]

So it comes down to the higher number of threads and increased number of memory cache wouldnt be as beneficial compared to a higher clocked skylake?

[martin-w 3,235]

So it comes down to the higher number of threads and increased number of memory cache wouldnt be as beneficial compared to a higher clocked skylake?

 

 

Phil Taylor from Aces, the FS developer told us some years ago, that bigger cache and more cores would offer an advantage in the sim. However, I don't recall Phil telling us that the advantage would be significant. I certainly don't for a second believe that any advantage from a truck load of cores and huge cache, would be advantageous enough to warrant the enormous cost of the 6850K.

 

In my English pounds, I believe it's DOUBLE the price of Skylake.

 

In fact, FSX can use up to 256 physical cores if available, however it's been known for a while that gains  diminish  after 6 cores. And I have to say, that most of the comments I have seen suggest that any advantage above 4 cores is very small.

 

In regard to P3D... I have no idea what LM have done, or if the gains realized from more cores are now worthwhile. I have to say though, I doubt it. If someone would like to prove me wrong I'd like to hear it.

 

 At the moment, there aren't really any properly conducted comparisons between Skylake and Broadwell E that relate to the sim. All we have are a few anecdotal comments. So at present, it's down to best guesses. And my guess is that any gains from the larger cache and more cores would be too small to warrant the expenditure and that it would make far more sense to opt for Sklayke.

 

That's just my opinion. I'm making a somewhat educated guess like everyone else. No definitive answers just yet.

 

 

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=116577

[JimmiG 244]

So it comes down to the higher number of threads and increased number of memory cache wouldnt be as beneficial compared to a higher clocked skylake?

 

Not just higher clock. Skylake is a newer architecture. The 6850K is based on Broadwell, which was introduced in 2014 and is just a die shrink of Haswell from 2013. So the IPC will be lower than Skylake, even with the larger cache (which is not all that much larger per-core anyway). The chipset is also older and doesn't have all the features of Z170.

Thanks to the Intel monopoly, if you want more than 4 cores, you have to pay more for older technology.

 

If you're already on a Sandy Bridge @ ~4.5 GHz or better, I would wait to see how AMD's Zen performs. Even if Intel remains the top performer, it might force them to release 6+ cores for LGA1151 or reduce the price of and modernize their "enthusiast" (server rejects) platform.