Skylake, Intel’s upcoming series of chips and the successor to its successfully shrunken Broadwell chips. I won’t go in to the tedious and dreadfully boring details of Intel’s tick-tock cycle as Alessandro does that for you every time he mentions Intel, but what it all boils down to is the fact that Skylake is an all-new microarchitecture that includes full support for DDR4 and – one some models at least – an integrated GPU that’ll be fully DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.4 and OpenCL 2.0 compliant.
It’s expected to launch soon – with much supposition, presumption and conjecture that we can expect it to be available around Gamescom, which kicks off next week. According to some leaked slideshows, it seems we can expect quite a bit of extra performance (particularly of the per watt variety) from Intel’s new chips. Most of that performance – up to a 41% increase over the last chips – comes in the form of graphical horsepower, but it’s also expected to bring a 10% CPU performance increase across the board. So says Fanless tech, who’ve leaked a bunch of sexy slides showing Skylake’s performance increases.
Take a look.
What’s interesting here is that Skylake seems to be unbelievably power efficient, making it perfect for stuffing in to smaller and more compact computers like Steam Machines and quite possibly Microsoft upcoming, as yet unannounced Surface Pro 4.
Microsoft’s top-end tablet has always promised to do away with the need for laptops, and with a sufficiently powerful, suitably power-efficient brain, the Surface Pro 4 could finally deliver.
The increase in Intel’s onboard graphics chips should also be worth noting. While their IGP has never really been able to compete with Nvidia or AMD’s standalone GPU’s, they’ve become powerful enough to run many games well enough – and an increase in raw power of this magnitude means you may get some decent gaming out of them. Couple that with the fact that DirectX 12 will allow for your onboard graphics to work in tandem with discrete units, and Skylake looks to be a gamer’s dream.
We’ll find out more once Intel stops being so tight-lipped about everything.
Last Updated: July 27, 2015
Pariah
July 27, 2015 at 13:06
Shit. So I have to save for new MB, RAM, CPU AND GFX card next year. :/
So much amazing new tech when compared to my (only) 3 year old PC.
Hammersteyn
July 27, 2015 at 13:13
But PC haz no gaems 🙁
Corrie
July 27, 2015 at 13:24
It does
Just Potato players have a hard time seeing them since ya know they can only see 30 fps
😛
Hammersteyn
July 27, 2015 at 13:32
Who’s there? Who said that?
Corrie
July 27, 2015 at 14:08
Wow you can’t see me?
I mean I guess it’s because I’m going at 60fps but its okay I’ll put *Shudders* Vsync on
Michael Matusowsky
July 27, 2015 at 17:14
Only 60fps? 144FPS master race reporting in.
VampyreSquirrel
July 27, 2015 at 13:16
New socket, new RAM… lol… just stab me in the bank account already!!!
ZA Ludomusicologist
July 27, 2015 at 13:21
Very good yes… but how much will it cost?
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
July 27, 2015 at 13:21
Let us have a quick bank balance forecast.
Good Balance
– HTC Vive
– Fallout 4 CE
+ Bonus and 13th check
– New Skylake CPU and Board (Most likely Asus cause why not)
= Bread and water for the foreseeable future.
Still worth it. 🙂
Corrie
July 27, 2015 at 13:24
Don’t forget the Fallout Anthology
Doubt I’ll get my hands on a Fallout 4 CE though 🙁
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
July 27, 2015 at 13:39
I did forget more ram and a R9 Fury. 🙂
Corrie
July 27, 2015 at 14:10
Atleast you’ll be toasty during winter
It’s freezing in Durban
Greylingad[CNFRMD]
July 27, 2015 at 14:16
40% of zero is still zero… Also 10% overall? Not enough motivation to adopt…having just upgraded to an i7…
HairyEwok
July 27, 2015 at 14:17
This ticks me off. Will they ever release a CPU based just for gaming. Sure I can understand that the majority of CPU users are work based but seriously… Who goes and uses the integrated GPU for gaming (Excluding games like CS:GO, Dota 2 and Mystery Criminal Case Candy Crush wtf ever you want to call those games). I sure as hell don’t. At least 75% of the gaming community uses a GPU from either Nvidia or Radeon.