Intel Core i7-6700K And Z170 Chipset Review: Skylake For Enthusiasts

Name: Intel Core i7-6700K and Z170 Chipset Review: Skylake For Enthusiasts
Brand: Intel

by Marco Chiappetta — Sunday, November 22, 2015, 08:00 AM EDT

Futuremark's PCMark 7 is a whole-system benchmarking suite. It has specific application performance measurements targeted for a Windows 7 environment and uses trace-based metrics to gauge relative performance (It has also been updated for Windows 8 compatibility, however--and we ran the latest version). Below is what Futuremark says is incorporated into the PCMark suite...

Futuremark PCMark 7

General Application and Multimedia Performance

The PCMark test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance during typical desktop usage. This is the most important test since it returns the official PCMark score for the system
Storage
Windows Defender
Importing pictures
Gaming
Video Playback and transcoding
Graphics
DirectX
Image manipulation
Web browsing and decrypting

pcm7

The new Core i7-6700K put up an excellent score in the PCMark 7 suite. The processor's relatively high clocks, the increased bandwidth afforded by its DDR4 RAM, architectural improvements, and higher-performing graphics core all contribute to the Core i7-6700K's strong showing here.

PCMark 8 v2

System Level Benchmark

PCMark 8 v2 is the latest version in Futuremark’s series of popular PC benchmarking tools. It is designed to test the performance of all types of systems, from tablets to desktops. PCMark 8 offers five separate benchmark tests--plus battery life testing for mobile platforms—to help consumers find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for their particular use case. This latest version of the suite improves the Home, Creative and Work benchmarks with new tests using popular open source applications for image processing, video editing and spreadsheets. A wide variety of workloads have also been added to the Work benchmark to better reflect the way PCs are used in enterprise environments.

These tests can be run with or without OpenCL acceleration. We chose to run with OpenCL acceleration enabled to leverage all of the platforms’ CPU and GPU compute resources…

Once again, we see some strong numbers from the Core i7-6700K. Intel's new flagship, mainstream desktop processor had no trouble outpacing the top-of-the-line Broadwell based Core i7-5775C or the 4770R, both of which are packing Iris Pro Graphics.

Tags: Intel, core i7, CPU, processor, Chipset, Skylake, z170, motherboar

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com