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  • jjj - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Not that there is much demand for them anyway since Intel's products are less and less exciting with every cycle.
    Just today Digitimes was reporting that "There will be an estimated 54 million DIY motherboards shipped globally in 2015, decreasing 21.7% on year, according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers."
  • Shadow7037932 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    It's not just that, ever since Nehalem, CPUs haven't really been a bottleneck for most regular people and so people tend to upgrade the CPU less often.
  • CaedenV - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    While true that overall chip performance is slowing down there are plenty of other reasons for me to be looking at upgrading from my Sandy Bridge (and my wife's Ivy Bridge) to Skylake:
    For my wife's PC there is a good chance I could pick up an i3, slap a huge heatsink on there and have a truly silent PC... which is a big deal for her.
    For me, access to more USB 3 (and 3.1) ports, typeC support, and better mix support of onboard and dGPU setups, and (above all) support for those fast bubble-gum stick style M.2 SSDs. DDR4 is sort of a plus as well, but less of a big deal. Plus, you can easily fit an i7 and high end GPU in a very small form factor now... very tempting to move out of my ridiculous Cosmos case down to a cute little mATX cube of some sort.
    Still debating though, because I do a lot of Blu-Ray ripping to digitize my ever growing library... moving to a 6 core may help that process go much faster... but then again GPU rendering for h.265 is just around the corner, so it may be a moot upgrade. Decisions, decisions...
  • xxtypersxx - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Off topic, but what program do you prefer for the BD ripping?
  • nathanddrews - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Is there anything better than MakeMKV + Handbrake?
  • DominionSeraph - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    >Handbrake
    How are you going to QTGMC deinterlace your interlaced Blu-rays or use Apple's AAC encoder using Handbrake?
    MeGUI
  • StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I'm running Sandy Bridge-E, 3930K.

    I would rather simply underclock, undervolt to get the TDP right down and make the system silent for free.
    Got tons of USB 3.0 ports, only thing I would miss is Type-C. But I don't own any devices with it anyway, so the point is moot.

    And all of that? For Nil. Nada. Nothing. I don't have to spend an extra cent. :P
    And because of the amount of threads, it is still potent when coming to ripping/encoding/transcoding.

    With that said... I still have a Core 2 Quad still hanging around... Recently snagged a Core 2 Extreme chip for it for free, still handles pretty much everything I throw at it. (Light gaming like StarCraft 2, Red Alert 3, Sins of a Solar Empire, Cities: Skylines, Company of Heroes, Civilization etc'.)

    I don't think in the history of the PC has a 8+ year old PC still been capable of handling the majority of tasks most would throw at it... The Pentium 4's didn't age well in comparison, that's for sure.

    Intel is essentially a victim of it's own success here. :P
  • ddriver - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    A victim of its own monopoly ;)
  • ddriver - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    BTW it is not intel that is the victim, it is the consumers. Intel is more than happy to keep flogging barely incremental products at hefty price margins. I for one would like to see intel scrapping the iGPU from high end i7s in favor of 50% core count increase.
  • Notmyusualid - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Like it!

    An integrated GPU has no business inside of an i7.

    On the mobile side, it has been useful on very rare occasions, on the Desktop side, give me more cores / cache.

    Nuff said.
  • patrickjp93 - Monday, January 4, 2016 - link

    You say that, until heterogeneous processing becomes more mainstream, and then the iGPU is more useful than 2 more CPU cores.
  • jasonelmore - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    yea if they did that, they would add +$100 to the chip price tho. they will give you graphics for free, but cores cost you more.
  • FlutterKree - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    That is what they are doing after the skylake refresh. They are going to have 10 nanometer transistors on the 2017 CPU's which gives SO much more space on the chip. I believe the minimum core amount on Intel's chips will increase to 4, pentium/i3 being 4, i5 being 6 and i7 being 8. Also switch the size, the speed of the cores might stay the same (high end i7 still being around 4.0)
  • jospoortvliet - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    Why oh why would they increase the core count rather than just make the chips smaller and double their margins??? It isn't like there is any competition...
  • patrickjp93 - Monday, January 4, 2016 - link

    Intel will do that only when software begins to demand it, not before.
  • CrazyElf - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    Technically you have your wish - the 5820K.

    But yes, Intel is milking the consumer base. I hope that a more competitive AMD can help things, and I trust Keller (along with the AMD team) have made considerable improvements for Zen, but I don't know if will be competitive considering how far ahead Intel is.
  • Kylinblue - Sunday, January 3, 2016 - link

    Well sir you may take a look at the expensive xeons... 2687W v3 is a good example
  • jasonelmore - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    i went from a cosmos S to a small form factor build... In hindsight, i wish i stayed with a midsized or full size tower, because of storage space..

    With the small form factor, i have to buy very expensive 6TB drives to offset the fact it has no room for 3 or 4 HDD's.

    and forget about doing any fancy raid.

    If your like me and use your main gaming pc as a NAS, work station, Plex Server, then small form factor is not for you. not unless you want to pay a lot of money for specialized drives and overpriced atom powered nas's
  • Smudgeous - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    Fractal Design's tiny Node 304 has room for 6 3.5" drives or 4 plus a full size video card. I rock 6 drives connected to a pci raid card and it's absolutely fantastic. Barring the need for big over clocking headroom, I have no idea why you'd need a larger case.
  • jasonelmore - Tuesday, January 5, 2016 - link

    those drives will fail within 2-3 years.. Especially in that case. No vibration dampening, no cooling, vertical alignment.. no thanks
  • emn13 - Sunday, January 3, 2016 - link

    I have a system like you describe, though based on haswell, not skylake. When I researched components, it looked like sandy bridge would have worked just fine too - for a silent PC, you care more about the maximum sustained power load rather than the idle power usage, because you need to be able to cool that maximum load. And maximum power usage hasn't really dropped much - TDP's are down from 95W (2600k) to 91W (6700k) - i.e. essentially not at all.
  • enmass90 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Nehalem?! I would argue that CPU's haven't really been a bottleneck for most people since Wolfdale.
  • Rocket321 - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    My Wolfdale (3ghz, dual-core, 6GB Ram, 8800GT) is starting to show its age with graphic heavy web pages being slow to load and not being able to play 1080p60 content on youtube. Obviously can't run the latest games very well. So as of this year I'd say its time to upgrade any Core2duo systems.
  • anandreader106 - Saturday, January 2, 2016 - link

    I'm pretty sure that has more to do with your 8800GT.
  • jjj - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    The DIY market is not for regular people and it's not gaming only either. The big problem is the lack of additional cores at sane prices, the pointless GPU. But many more other thing cripple this market ( like too few PCI lines), pretty much everything Intel does is aimed at higher profits but at the same time they are hurting the market.
    In 2012 the mobo market was some 80 million units ,it's just crashing hard. We are buying GPUs and SSDs and RAM and anything that's appealing but on the CPU side there is nothing. Intel is just killing the mobo makers, the case makers, PSU makers. Even if you argue some saturation in developed nations, the developing markets had different dynamics and the was room for nice growth. Hopefully Zen is good and AMD aggressive , forcing Intel to offer more too but remains to be seen, AMD could focus on high margins instead of big share gains.
  • StrangerGuy - Saturday, January 2, 2016 - link

    The simple truth is that people who needs hardware beyond a Sandy Bridge Quad + single GPU + SATA3 SSD + basic USB3 are a niche within a niche. Skylake / DDR4 offers nothing compelling to these vast majority of desktop users for the added price.
  • Samus - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    I agree. Since Nehalem, the IPC improvements haven't really been beneficial to most users. The real benefits have been in the chipset.

    This is where Intel shot itself in the foot. In order to drag out Haswell because of process node delays, they released Skylakes' chipset for Haswell as the 90-series, while making virtually no changes except to the socket and reimplementing FIVR on the 100-series.

    So people upgrading from a recent Haswell platform are getting almost no chipset improvements and few IPC improvements. Considering Haswell systems cost over a hundred bucks less than that of a comparable Skylake system (a Z97 board with USB 3.1 and m.2 costs nearly half that of a Z170 equivilent) I'm surprised there is that much demand as well...and it's more likely a supply issue.

    Since the launch price was so high to begin with (higher than most recent Core i5/i7 launched) it becomes pretty obvious the margins aren't favoring Intel like they'd prefer due to poor yields.
  • patrickjp93 - Monday, January 4, 2016 - link

    Poor yields? Intel wouldn't be making 700 mm sq. Knight's Landing chips if yields were poor. This is all demand.
  • mapesdhs - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    This sort of thing just makes used builds even more attractive. 6700K is nice for sure, but I saved 200 UKP building an X79 with a 3930K instead. High pricing on current CPUs will only harm desktop sales even more in the coming year.
  • nathanddrews - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I really like my 3570K build, but if I could go back, I would have gone with a hex-core model w/HT. Next time, Gadget, next time...
  • lilmoe - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    If you're workload doesn't included extensive multi-threaded rendering, I'd say the 4790K is the most appealing chip currently available.
  • bji - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Agreed, and it's what I've been buying. But the price hasn't dropped in well over a year on that part. Weird times.

    In a way it feels like the average cost per year of processors is still dropping though because the newer processors may cost as much as the older ones, but have a longer useful lifespan. Perhaps that's the metric that Intel is trying to hold constant with its pricing strategies.
  • jasonelmore - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    yeah they only knock off $15 when the next generation comes out.. might as well get the new generation. now if it were something reasonable like $50 or $75, but intel's smarter than that
  • Hinton - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I'd prefer the 5775C over thr 4790K, since I play computer games.

    If I didn't play games, an i3 would be my choice.
  • eek2121 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I'm willing to bet that Intel is restricting the supply more than anything. I don't know of any of my friends who has upgrade to Skylake. Most of us are still happily on our i7/2600ks or our i7/4790ks.
  • Mondozai - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    It's a conspiracy theory, but one that makes sense. After all, Intel has long used shadowy tactics(contra-revenue being one) to gain market share and/or squeeze more profits out of their products.

    Intel's still heavily into desktop PCs and servers. Their mobile showing has been quite laughable, they're not only an also-ran but soon a no-name. As such, in an environment with falling PC sales, ginning up the price even more than reducing supply would induce the cushion for them to re-orient their company.

    Especially with the recent buy of Altera, they're pushing into IoT and all kinds of areas but they did the same with mobile and got nowhere. For now, their cash cow needs to deliver.
  • ddarko - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    No, this conspiracy theory doesn't make sense because Intel doesn't get a bigger cut from the higher RETAIL price. The price Intel receives is the WHOLESALE price and there's been zero talk, rumors or evidence that Intel has increased the price it's charging to sell the chips to the retailers. The only people who benefit from the elevated retail price are the retailers charging and pocketing the elevated retail prices..

    The likely cause is low yields. The problems Intel has had transitioning to the 14nm process are extensive and publicly documented. Intel delayed the launch of Skylake, screwed up the release desktop Broadwell before it, and finally abandoned its longstanding tick-tock release cadence going forward. It makes far more reasonable that Intel is still struggling to make its 14nm yields up.
  • CaedenV - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    yes and no... don't they use the same fab buildings to build the much more expensive Xeon chips? Could be they are pouring their output into those which is then restricting i5/i7 production.
  • kpb321 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    The Xeon chips are always a generation or two behind on the CPU design and on the process so they haven't started making any major 14nm Xeon processors as far as I know. Might have some 14nm Xeons in some of the embedded or workstation only lines but the "real" 2 and 4 socket Xeon chips aren't on 14nm and would be horrible to do on it. Those chips are huge chips and need a much more mature manufacturing process to help the yields be acceptable. Best chips for a new process with poor yields are smaller chips, not larger ones. That is why broadwell was primarily the low power low core count variations and why you see mobile chips transition quite early.
  • extide - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Uhh, yes they have. Infact 14nm is mostly being used for Xeon EP v4 (Broadwell), Xeon-D, and Knights Landing which are all fairly large chips (>300mm, ~250mm, and 650+mm respectively) so I highly doubt yield is the issue right now. It's simply that the profit margins on the aformentioned chips are WAY higher.
  • yuhong - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Well, Xeon EP v4 is not even released yet.
  • patrickjp93 - Monday, January 4, 2016 - link

    It ships in 2 weeks. Please keep up.
  • eanazag - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    The Xeon 3 series has been on par releases with the desktop processors most of the time. The supporting boards suck for home use as far as new features.
  • patrickjp93 - Monday, January 4, 2016 - link

    The Broadwell E5/E7s AS WELL AS the Knight's Landing 700 mm sq. behemoths are in full production swing right now with launch due in a couple weeks. Please do keep up.
  • mrdude - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    When the most compelling reason to upgrade to the Sky Lake platform is Type-A USB 3.1, you know you've got problems.
  • FunBunny2 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    welcome to the world of "good enough", cousin of Boris Badenoff.
  • drfish - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    If you want a 6700K for closer to MSRP and you need mobo/RAM anyway, it might actually make sense to buy a bundle: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.a...
  • jasonelmore - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    sold out drfish
  • bill.rookard - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Interestingly enough, this is what happens when Intel doesn't have good competition in the CPU space. If AMD were competitive from a performance POV, you can bet that if people couldn't get a high-end Intel system they'd put together an equivalent AMD system. Sadly, nothing AMD has competes at this point.

    If AMD could get their Zen hardware out right now, and it was capable of competing on performance, they could really make some much needed cash.
  • CaedenV - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Poor AMD. So many of us are demanding that they build better chips just so that we can throw more money at Intel.
  • lilmoe - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I'm more than willing to buy a laptop with an AMD APU + dedicated AMD graphics if Zen turns out as efficient or more so than Skylake, even if peek performance wasn't as good.

    Better yet, I would *throw* money on a laptop with separate CPU and GPU chips EACH with HBM (16GB RAM and 2-4GB VRAM).

    This might be hard to explain, but AMD's CPUs have always felt "more balanced" than Intel's. I'm not sure why, maybe it's the buses or type of cache arrangement... I've always ended up with Intel because, lets face it, even if not as "well balanced", they're still faster and more efficient. Visual Studio can use all the single threaded speed it can get.
  • Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Wow, lots of really stupid people out there.
  • hapkiman - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    This does seem like a SNAFU on Intel's part, like they purposely are limiting supply, when they know demand is high. However I see that the MicroCenter where I got mine is still $379 (what I paid) and in stock. The catch is you have to live close enough to physically go to the store.

    http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.a...
  • Klimax - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    What advantage would get intel from this? None. Only shops would get extra money...
  • StrangerGuy - Saturday, January 2, 2016 - link

    Yup. The only reasons left for the supply problems are natural (lousy 14nm yields) or artificial (clear out 22nm inventory)
  • patrickjp93 - Monday, January 4, 2016 - link

    Yields aren't lousy. Otherwise Intel wouldn't be in the ending stags of Knight's Landing production, and those are 700 mm sq. dies.
  • jordanclock - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Is overclocking still that prominent that the K models are worth this kind of hassle?
  • CaedenV - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    In the gaming realm overclocking will always be a big deal, even though they would see similar performance from an i3 or low end i5... it is all about that bling lol.
    Personally, I like having the i7 locked part. You can still OC a little bit, but you save a bit of money while you are at it. $50 less for 95% of potential performance? sold! My i7 2600 runs at 4-4.2GHz quite well when under load. No complaints, and would do again.
  • Denithor - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    You haven't been able to do that "mild" overclock on chips since Ivy Bridge. Starting with Haswell the non-K chips have actually been completely speed locked.

    Now, of course, it looks like Skylake can be BCLK overclocked like the older generations so an unlocked multiplier won't be a big factor, unless you happen to need the iGPU.
  • stangflyer - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    I agree! I had a dumb ass moment and accidentally purchased a 3570 instead of a k while I was in a rush at work. Delidded it and have been running at max of 4.2 for 3 years. Wish I would have gotten a 3770k but right now still a good chip for a rig that games 95% of the time.
  • lilmoe - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    No. It's not worth the hassle. However, it's a reassuring sort of thing for many because you get better binning for your parts...
  • TristanSDX - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Reason is simple: too many high-end Haswel left in warehouses
  • TEAMSWITCHER - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I read review after review on the internet looking for any substantial reason to upgrade from my aging Haswell 4770k system.....and failed. The only significant numerical increase I could find was in the model number - 6700K. And we all know that is just something Intel makes up.
  • Pissedoffyouth - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    > aging Haswell 4770k

    What the fuck? It's not that old. If you said 2600k or Ivy bridge then sure.
  • lilmoe - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    IKR
  • pt2501 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Directx 12 will mitigate the need for a high end cpu. I see my i5 2500k lasting another 2-5 years. Might just skip a new cpu all together and just add in pci express expansion boards for USB 3.1.

    PS: Please AMD have ZEN not suck, I want to have great cpu AND gpu performance so that explicit multi adapter in DX12 gets a great boost.
  • Notmyusualid - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Had me shaking my head in disbelief too...
  • TEAMSWITCHER - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I just checked my newegg order history it was November 6, 2013 when I ordered my Haswell parts. That makes it a bit more than two years old ... It feels like a much longer time I guess. I don't remember having a hard time justifying the upgrade from Sandy Bridge.
  • ezschemi - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    And even if you do manage to get a 6700k, they can be crap:
    got two 6700k CPUs and their default VCore is 1.3V and 1.28V. The 4770k next to them runs at 4.4GHz and 1.18V.

    So yeah, either Intel is limiting the supply or there is something with their production...
  • MrSpadge - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    From what I've seen there's quite a lot of variation between Skylake chips. The really good and convincing overclockers are certainly in short supply.
  • IEC - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    My experience as well. My chip was as high as 1.3V+ vcore at stock, but was stable at 4.5GHz @ 1.25V. Seems to require inordinately more voltage beyond that. Still beats my overclocked 3570K for gaming, but if I needed more threads or wanted something a bit more future-proof I'd wait for Broadwell-E, Skylake-E, or Zen depending on how competitive those end up being.
  • MrSpadge - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Another point working towards the shortage: failing chips due to excessive heat sink pressure, making people buy the next Skylake.

    I just had my 6700 fail after being mounted for 3 months. Used a Thermalright Ultra 120 at maximum pressure, as I did for the last 10 years with various other CPUs. Didn't know this would break the CPU. Even after the reports of broken CPUs after transport appeared, I didn't suspect anything because I didn't move the machine. Still, it broke one day simply due to static pressure. 2 edges are bent upwards by about 1 mm, with the PCB broken at both points. Got an i3 6100 now instead of another expensive quad core.
  • Klimax - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    Somebody didn't pay attention...
  • britjh22 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Basically, unless you ABSOLUTELY NEED some feature on the Z170 chipset, get the 4790k instead of i5-6600k, and the 5820k instead of the i7-6700k. While the X99 chipset motherboards do tend to be a bit more expensive, that's really the only difference. The article stating you have to use a quad channel kit is just wrong (running 2x8gb myself), and I was able to get 5820k/MSI X99 SLI Krait/16gb Corsair DDR4/Phantek Dual tower cooler for just over $615. The 6600k/6700k at it's current price is a complete flop.
  • drzzz - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Anton,

    Calling BS on your Amazon does not have any in stock. Searched just now on the US Amazon portal and Seller:Intel (Amazon direct) has 4 in stock (at time of search) for $484.99. You did not even get the price right that my search is returning.

    Ryan,

    WTF kind of reporting is this. I mean really it is not hard to log into Amazon and run a search. I mean first party seller through amazon in stock for less than quoted in the article.

    Here is the link:
    http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Boxed-I7-6700K-Process...
  • drzzz - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Anton and Ryan,
    If you are going to call out a vendor specifically for being out of stock on a part it is generally considered good practice to check their website yourself and not rely on third party tracking sites.

    Really have to say this piece appears as a response to comments in another pipeline article. Sadly, no more effort was taken in this article than the other as once again a simple search reveals that facts in the article are not true.
  • thestryker - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Except there aren't any in stock as of 11:15am pacific. I'm not sure what the point of your outrage is given that amazon stock changes rapidly. The screen picture in the article is from nowinstock.net which is from my experience accurate and it does show that early this morning there was stock but isn't now.
  • drzzz - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Link I provided is still showing stock 11:53am PST. It has been showing stock all day and yesterday.

    Until today I have never heard of nowinstock.net. So I have no personal experience on how good or bad their tracking is. That said I tend to directly check vendors for stock because I have found over the years that third party tools are generally not that accurate but YMMV.

    I don't call it outrage but I do call it serious concern about the amount of effort going into AT articles short or long form. Two days in a row that a published article had information that was wrong in it and quickly verified by a less than one minute google/amazon searches. Both articles by the same author.

    As I said calling out a specific vendor calls for a higher level of checking than using a third party tool to say something is/is not in stock. Like maybe a screen capture of his amazon search showing them out of stock. Heck had that been there I would not have even gone and looked again. More on point is that in two days of looking at stock of the the i7-6700K on Amazon I have not seen it out of stock or at the prices Anton indicated. I have checked amazon about 10 times in two days before you ask how many times have I checked.

    I have been watching Amazon while writing this and the stock dropped to 1 then went back to 14. Apparently Amazon is listing small amounts of stock to justify their $484.99 price. Now that is interesting. Still Amazon continues to have stock at a lower price than the article indicates. Also I followed the nowinstock.net link for the i7-6700K processor and it appears to be a dead product link on amazon. That is why searching on Amazon is important and why you should not blindly trust third party sites. Again just more reason why this article was clearly under researched.
  • Phanuel - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Except that he rightly points out that Amazon itself has none.

    "Instead the only 6700Ks available via Amazon are through their third-party marketplace sellers"

    The ones on Amazon are "Ships from and sold by MITXPC."

    Perhaps you should understand how Amazon actually works.
  • drzzz - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I see that "sold by line" and concede I may have not noticed it not being Amazon.com on the product listing earlier but when I added it to my cart just now it said sold by hard2findparts in the checkout section and the price in cart was $475.00. Very fluid on Amazon.com right now but have not seen $499.99 as a starting price yet. I will back off on this one a bit for now.
  • Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Glad to see you guys were able to work this out.=) Suffice it to say, Anton and I did check Amazon directly when this article was being written, and again when it was finalized for publication. Amazon proper has not had a 6700K in stock on either occasion.

    Meanwhile when we did finalize this, $499 was the cheapest marketplace seller available. And the marketplace sellers are something very different; it's akin to buying on eBay (with all of the risks thereof), which is why we don't count them as Amazon.
  • BMNify - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    @drzz: I don't think you understand how Online stores work, the stock situation can change within minutes.
  • smilingcrow - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Calling BS on your post as Amazon has no stock now. You do realise that stock levels vary as do Amazon's pricing! ;)
  • metayoshi - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I'm actually surprised people are eating up the 6700K so fast. I went black friday shopping for a new gaming/video editing PC for my girlfriend, and while I saw a ton of people lining up for the 6700K at $350, I simply got the 4790K for $250. That was at a local Microcenter, but I'm sure you can find just as good of a deal, if not better, for that CPU, while the 6700K is still at full price, or as this site puts reveals, even higher than MSRP. That's just a crazy amount of money just to be on the latest and greatest when the last couple of generations were more than good enough and on sale.
  • extide - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    $100 for a die shrink, and 2 gen newer CPU? Really in the overall cost of a new PC, that isnt that much, at least IMHO.
  • mrdude - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    You'd see a greater return reinvesting that $100 saved into a GPU or even better/newer peripherals. The performance improvements just aren't there over Haswell. The platform goodies are enticing, but that's about it.

    Of course, 'platform goodies' are the reason we have far-too-many chipsets for the desktop and server platform as it allows another route of milking. If the processor isn't doing it, maybe the chipset will
  • blzd - Friday, January 1, 2016 - link

    On the same train of thought you could take it evenfurther. Why even buy a 4790k for $250 when a cheaper i5 will get the same FPS?

    Save another $100 and get the i5. Why are people recommending i7s for gaming systems anyways? Hyper Threading on 4 cores does little to nothing for games.
  • santosmurillo - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    My tastes probably sound rather plebian but I just purchased an 8350 which I oc'd it to 4.6ghz and am playing all the games at high(not ultra) with framerates at 60. For $139 it serves it purpose rather well.
  • stephenbrooks - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Been running an FX-8350 for a couple of years now. Looked it up in Anandtech Bench on say 7-Zip or POVray (I do a lot of general mathematical compute) and found the 6700K is only 15-30% faster, while being more than 2x the price of course.
  • santosmurillo - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I also have a 3570k that runs quite well. I don't see the point in moving to skylake yet when ivy bridge and bull dozer seem to do the job. If I was rendering or needed the threads then maybe. But I'd probably get a 2011 instead.
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, January 1, 2016 - link

    Best bang for the buck is 8320E for $100 plus $40 off a motherboard. Get the UD3P with it and overclock to 4.5 or 4.6 (with APM off).
  • yuhong - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    I wonder how much of the low DDR4 price is to the lack of Skylake CPUs reducing demand for DDR4.
  • plonk420 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    forget Skylake; i want Broadwell. :|
  • leopard_jumps - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    He , he , better forget the new K (overclockable) processors for now !
  • rickon66 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    While on vacation in October, we stopped by the Micro Center in St. Louis and I picked up a 6700K for $319, mobo, 16GB ram, a 212EVO cooler and a powersupply. Then I started to worry about spending too much, called the store and returned it all via FedEx. DUH!! What a dummy-now I want it all back!!!
  • dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Wow, it's even overpriced at Microcenter right now, though at $380 it's still lower than anywhere else:
    http://www.microcenter.com/product/451883/Core_i7-...
  • varg14 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Microcenter has the 6700k for $379 and the 6600k for $249 I think but the deal is the 4790k for $279 I belive
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, January 1, 2016 - link

    Or, if you're on a budget, 8320E for $100 with a UD3P board for $40 off. Get a decent cooler and PSU then put a fan on the VRM heatsink and you can overclock to 4.5 - 4.6 and spend the remaining money on a better GPU.
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, January 1, 2016 - link

    Of course you'll need a good CPU cooler for those speeds and will need to turn off APM to avoid throttling to 95W.
  • zvadim - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link

    they raised 4790k up to $300 :(
  • sna1970 - Friday, January 1, 2016 - link

    What is the point of skylake when Haswell-E is around for $400+ and six unlocked cores ?
  • TheRealAnalogkid - Saturday, January 2, 2016 - link

    Going with tri-GPU is why I am building a x99...40 lanes with a 5930 and all the goodies that the Asus RVE has is too much to pass up. I thought about the 6700, came close.
  • jeffbui - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link

    BHPhoto had an amazing deal on a 6500k w/ Gigabyte mobo for $280.00 last week. I'm on an i5-750, almost pulled the trigger.

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