So you want to know... why Z170/Skylake? (Z97 vs Z170 Comparison)

Anyone with Haswell and/or Devil's Canyon are probably looking at Skylake and thinking "why should I upgrade?".
Well, besides the ~10% gains we're seeing on average from the processor, how about some chipset improvements?

Well, here's why:

So, one minor gain here is the extra potential USB 3.0 devices on the chipset.

The big difference here is that there are a lot more PCIe lanes built in to the chipset.
My only qualm with the extra PCIe lanes is that you can't use a GPU on them, but they do keep PCIe based storage, sound cards, etc from using up your GPU lanes.

ATMINSIDE said:

The big difference here is that there are a lot more PCIe lanes built in to the chipset.
My only qualm with the extra PCIe lanes is that you can't use a GPU on them, but they do keep PCIe based storage, sound cards, etc from using up your GPU lanes.

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Z97 has enough lanes for 2 GPUs (x8 each, same as Z170), 1 x4 SSD, 1 x1 Ethernet, 1 x1 sound card, 1 x1 wifi card, and 1 x1 USB 3.0 controller to bring USB 3.0 port count up to the same as Z170 (though these ports can't be used at full speed at the same time).

I guess that means it really only matters if you have more than one PCI-E SSDs. You can even have 2 PCI-E SSDs on Z97 if you are willing to go down to x8 for GPU, with a max 1% performance hit even for a GTX 980.

I can't imagine that being a big market.

Gotta say I'm pretty underwhelmed by Skylake. Especially since all I have is a single x16 GPU on PCI-E.

From my point of view all that skylake specification isn't important when motherboards are supporting about the same hardware as Z87/Z97 and end user can't really see any difference.

- USB 3.0 native or not , boards have the same amount, not to mention that Intel USB 3.0 had problems in Win8/8.1 and other brands were often working better ( I don't know if they solved all driver issues in Win10 but Win8/8.1 has only one integrated driver which fails often ).
On my board I have a problem to run any other devices than mouse and keyboard without installing USB drivers in Win7 so I can't install drivers from a flash drive and I have to look for a drivers CD. Maybe that's only my board issue but that's pretty annoying.

- Pcie lanes aren't changing much , 2x pcie 8x + 1x pcie 4x was enough for 2 graphics cards and pcie SSD. As we confirmed on the OCF many times, difference between pcie x8 3.0 and x16 3.0 is like 0-1% in games. New boards have usually 3 pcie x16 slots and pcie SSD need x4 slots.
Users with 3 graphics cards are like 0.5% of total users and all who decide on 3-4 cards get X99.

- Barely anyone is using additional sound cards or other devices , actually there is no point as integrated devices are good enough. There are boards with 2 LAN cards, better audio , integrated wifi etc.

- Using more than 1 pcie SSD in most cases is bad idea. It's expensive and can't run in RAID. Most users who need more space simply buy larger drives.

- Price of Z170 setup is weirdly high and I see that many people are deciding to get haswell-e instead of skylake. Haswell-E has more pcie lanes and gives a chance to use more CPU cores. Total X99 setup price isn't much higher than Z170. 6700K price is not much lower than 5870K. DDR4 price is now really low so it's not an issue to get 4 memory sticks when you buy whole PC or upgrade most components.

That's what I see and you don't have to agree with me.
I got skylake only because I wanted it for tests and reviews. I also sold some older parts before the premiere so I thought why not to check it.

If you decide on Skylake then I recommend to get memory designed for Skylake. I already tested 2 G.Skill memory kits which are not working at XMP at all and is hard to set declared speed manually. One is 2666 4x8GB / Samsung and the other 3200 4x4GB / Samsung ( in both cases I was testing 2 and 4 memory sticks ). One Kingston/Hynix kit and one Crucial/Micron are overclocking better on X99. The only exception are G.Skill/Hynix kits which are overclocking better on Z170. Good luck with these as almost all series were replaced with Samsung based kits.
In stores we have barely any memory kits designed for Skylake. It's some part of G.Skill Ripjaws V and 1-2 kits from Corsair. Some other were in the news in last days but almost nothing is available and probably won't be for next 2-3 weeks.

I'm junking out my z97 stuff, show me why I should go z170 and not x99 please.

Which kits Bart? The F4-3000C15D-8GRK work fine on both the MSI M7 and the Giga G7.

F4-3000C15D-8GRK is designed for Skylake or it's earlier kit ?
I was testing F4-3200C16Q-16GRKD and F4-2666C15Q-32GRR ( added threads in memory section today ). Both are barely overclocking on Z170 and XMP profiles are not working but both were designed for X99 boards. I'm not really sure what are the differences in timings on both platforms ( I saw some but not so many as some are greyed out in my BIOS so it's hard to compare them ).

F4-3000C15 blue and red so 15-15-15 and 15-16-16 based on Hynix IC are working really good and fully stable @3333 14-16-16 ~1.4V. So I have problems only with Samsung kits which are in almost all higher clocked kits right now.

I should get 3200 Ripjaws V soon. Don't know if 2x4GB or 2x8GB yet but main timings are the same as last 3200 Ripjaws 4 kit and should be also on Samsung. Trident Z are not available anywhere and won't be for some time ( info from G.Skill PR ).

It's designed for x99. Cl15-15-15-35 1.35v.

I had problessed with xmp amd manually setting timings with a pre production Kingston hyper x kit on the msi board. It wouldn't run Xmp1 @ 3k, but would run xmp @ 2666.

That 3200 kit couldn't run at XMP even on X99 for which its designed ... I'm not sure why.

Crucial 2666 is working at XMP without problems on X99 and Z170 and OC up to 3000
Kingston Fury 2666 is working at XMP on both boards and OC up to 3200 on Z170 while on X99 can reach 3400
G.Skill 3000 ( 2 kits ) is working at XMP on both boards and OC up to 3333
Geil 2133 has no XMP but OC on both boards up to 3200
G.Skill 2666 is working at XMP on X99 only and can't OC above 2800

Do you know if your kit is on Hynix or Samsung IC ? If it's older one then probably on Hynix. HyperX Predator is Hynix for sure.

Honestly, looking at how many people still run 2500k and 2600Ks with admirable performance, I see no reason at all to upgrade to Skylake. My 4790K is an excellent chip, and it's all I will need for the foreseeable future. The only thing that's really exciting is the additional PCIe lanes, but I don't intend to use M.2 until they have a single GPU out that can max 4K, so it doesn't matter to me anyway. Sata3 SSDs are plenty fast for me.

Id like to upgrade b/c I enjoy new things and throwing away money...its my 2 favorite past-times.

my only issue...where is asus with their viii formula? looks like thats the only board still missing from their new lineup? anyone know anything about that?

is that an average of 10% performance increase? or just in a select few benches that take advantage of new instructions?

Only in some benchmarks. The same as in previous generations it's like 0-15% depends from program.

What is interesting when you look at the pcie lanes is that in theory there should be many more but in real most motherboards have 16+8+4 pcie lanes on even higher motherboards ( like ASUS M8 Hero ) vs 8+8+4 on Z87/Z97. For most users it simply means there are no changes.

So far ASUS released Ranger, Gene and Hero from ROG series. I see no place for Formula there but maybe will be released too. Maximus Extreme will be released a bit later but there are already results in rankings on this board. Probably Impact will be released too but as always with huge delay ( and overpriced ).
I had a chance to test Ranger and Hero. Gene is like Hero but in mATX format. Generally Ranger is designed for gamers while other 2 for gamers and overclockers. Difference is in higher memory support and some additional options in BIOS ( also LN2 mode switch on board ).

Dlaw said:

Honestly, looking at how many people still run 2500k and 2600Ks with admiral performance, I see no reason at all to upgrade to Skylake. My 4790K is an excellent chip, and it's all I will need for the foreseeable future. The only thing that's really exciting is the additional PCIe lanes, but I don't intend to use M.2 until they have a single GPU out that can max 4K, so it doesn't matter to me anyway. Sata3 SSDs are plenty fast for me.

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admirable.

They, anand, said that it's a good upgrade from 2600k and generations on down. I believe they found an average of 25% performamce increase over sandybridge. Clearly it makes no sense to upgrade from ivy or haswell for most people.

EarthDog said:

admirable.

They, anand, said that it's a good upgrade from 2600k and generations on down. I believe they found an average of 25% performamce increase over sandybridge. Clearly it makes no sense to upgrade from ivy or haswell for most people.

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It's just a question of whether spending $500 (maybe $400 after selling SB stuff) for 25% performance increase is worth it. That's for everyone to decide for themselves. For me it's definitely not.

Clearly.

But I'd be shocked if you only got $100 for even a 2500k/mobo/ram... and if you had a 2600k...so I think your outgoing would be less than what you posted.

EarthDog said:

Clearly.

But I'd be shocked if you only got $100 for even a 2500k/mobo/ram... and if you had a 2600k...so I think your outgoing would be less than what you posted.

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Yeah it would depend on what the existing gears are.

I have 2500k + pretty cheap mobo + pretty cheap mid-range RAM. The 2500k can probably be sold for a reasonable price, for people trying to upgrade from maybe a locked chip (but then most people here would have an unlocked chip already), but I can't imagine anyone paying much for a mid-low end 1155 mobo, or DDR3 memory. The motherboard is certainly not worth upgrading to for someone with an existing 1155 mobo (and who would have a CPU without a mobo?). Whoever buys the DDR3 RAM would know that they will have to throw it out for the next upgrade as well.

Then there's shipping cost of selling those things.

Yeah $15 to ship (combo)... yippee. If you want to bang on the low end to make your point, I'm good with that. Just dont forget about the other end of the spectrum, particularly from an enthusiast site like OCF.

EarthDog said:

Yeah $15 to ship (combo)... yippee. If you want to bang on the low end to make your point, I'm good with that. Just dont forget about the other end of the spectrum, particularly from an enthusiast site like OCF.

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I'm not really banging on the low end. I'm banging on my end. That's my personal situation .

Higher end stuff can be sold for more, but I'd imagine people who are buying SB now are more budget conscious, and wouldn't want to spend much more on faster memory for example, since RAM speed doesn't make that big of a difference for most things past DDR3-1600 anyways. Same for enthusiast motherboards. If I am buying SB now and have money for a used enthusiast SB setup, I would get a mid-low range used Haswell setup instead, which would probably be faster, and leave more room for potential future upgrades.

You can speculate until we are blue in the face to make your point. But at this time, I'm bored splitting hairs to make/break a case.

EarthDog said:

admirable.

They, anand, said that it's a good upgrade from 2600k and generations on down. I believe they found an average of 25% performamce increase over sandybridge. Clearly it makes no sense to upgrade from ivy or haswell for most people.

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I fail at spelling. Fixing.