Intel has been discussing gaming and overclocking quite a bit at this year’s Intel Developers Forum, in large part because its latest 6th Generation Core processors, formerly codenamed Skylake, are such good overclockers.
Oh, and apologies for the clickbait headline. We couldn’t resist. Hey, at least you're not looking at our coverage on "how to get ripped."
Not only have the early
Skylake-based processors currently in the wild hit relatively high frequencies already, but they are more flexible overclockers than previous-gen products as well. Unlike every Intel processor since Sandy Bridge was released, Skylake-based processors can be overclocked using both multiplier and BCLK frequency manipulation, with fine grained controls. The BCLK on the last few generations of Intel desktop processors could only handle a few MHz in either direction, depending on which strap was used, before things went sideways.
XTU World Records--We Summon Thee! And 5.81GHz of hellfire...
To further prove the point that
Skylake-based processors are excellent overclockers, Intel brought Charles Wirth of XtremeSystems fame onto the stage during a Gaming Mega-Session at IDF to super-cool a
Core i7-6700K and push its frequency as high as possible. Wirth and his teammates cooled the processor
down to sub-zero temperatures with liquid nitrogen and were able to hit a stable 5.81GHz on all cores.
While the processor was overclocked, they ran Intel’s XTU utility and hit a score of 1910, which was a new record. The previous record with four processor cores was 1908.
Intel Core i7-6700K Overclocked To Over 5.8GHz Considering how new Skylake is to the market, seeing numbers this high, this early, are encouraging. As Intel continues to tune
Skylake, and motherboard makers and overclockers get more familiar with the intricacies associated with the architecture, expect significantly higher frequencies to be achieved and more records to be broken.