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I am not only underwhelmed, but I am downright disappointed in Intel for this.
I know they couldn't give less of a kitten's fart about my opinion, but what the hell is this. You've released a product that basically offers nothing. It offers less than nothing. It offers nothing while trying to pretend it's something
This is the unenthusiastic handjob of hardware releases
Still not had reason to move on from a heavily clocked 2600k yet...
Only lasted me about 5 years so far... when the hell was that EVER a thing before?
Hoping Zen lights some fires.
Same, only reason i've upgraded from from my trusted 2600k is the other half needs a PC. Overclocking my 2600k to 3.7GHz and 16GB Ram, SSD have been fine for everything I need. I cant be bothered to wait until Skylake-X i think this should be a worthy upgrade come June 17.
Just wondering, has there ever been a concensus as to the typical sensible oc potential of a 2600K? For obscure reasons, every SB CPU with HT I've obtained has been a 2700K and all of them (seven so far) have run at 5GHz with ease, ie. good temps, sensible voltage, nothing more required for cooling than a simple TRUE and one fan (though in final builds I normally use H80s). I'm sure the CPUs I've obtained could do more than 5.0, but I've never tried as that's always been my target, at which speed it gives the same multithreaded performance as a stock 6700K. I built a gaming PC for a friend using a 2700K @ 5.0 (ASUS M4E is my mbd of choice for this, works a treat every time and so easy to setup):
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/8231433
So what's the equivalent it-will-always-manage-this-speed-no-problem for the 2600K? 4.8? 4.6? The more I read forum posts, the more I've wondered whether the jump between the 2600K and 2700K isn't just a mere base clock bump. As review articles for IB said at the time, Intel made SB too good, especially the venerable 2500K (4.7 seems to be easy for that model, even with an average mbd).
As for upgrades, if Intel had ever released a proper SATA3 PCIe card which would work on any system (ie. using its own SATA3 tech which the Intel RST drivers would pick up straight away), I bet there's a lot of users who would stick to systems even older than SB (it's the Marvell/ASmedia chips which let down older mbds). Ditto things like M.2, in theory older mbds could use it with a BIOS update (PCIe cards for booting, would be great for X79 and anything P55 or later), but that'll never happen. As for USB3, there are various addon PCIe cards which work well. Ya gotta love built in obsolescence.
I remember review articles for IB being very critical of Intel for the lack of any significant speedup, plus the meddling with chip cap material which made temps so much higher and thus oc'ing a lot more difficult (re the numerous IB delidding vids on youtube; one guy saw load temps drop by 35C). Where is the equivalent critical eye for this 7700K? It seems like review sites are being overly nice to Intel this time round. Hmm, wonder why.
Meanwhile, SB-E continues to be a very worthy alternative upgrade for someone with an older system, given how crazy cheap the 3930K is these days (IB-E costs somewhat more, but not too bad with some luck). Only tricky part is finding a mbd, as X79 boards are harder to locate than 3930Ks. Even so, for threaded performance, it's hard to beat cost-wise. My 4960X and ASUS P9X79-E WS cost a dribble over 400 UKP, while a 3930K and P9X79 Deluxe I obtained for a friend was only 175. And unlike entry HW-E/BW-E, the 3930K has a full 40 PCIe lanes, so no worries about SLI/CF restrictions. The only thing that would make me consider upgrading is native M.2 for booting, though even then one can get round that to a large extent by for example using an addin card with an SM961 to hold game installation data.
Ian.