Is demand really that high on the 6700k?

Hrimnir

Seriously, i was holding out waiting for the 20-30% premium to drop down, but they're still retailing 15-20% above MSRP.  Anyone know if its still just a supply/demand issue or if its just retailers figuring "hell, they're still selling at this price, so might as well make the extra money"

Ridelynn

Probably still a supply/demand issue, otherwise retailers would undercut each other like SOBs. 

Quizzical

It's the same silicon as all of the other quad cores.  Unless they set the bin requirements so high that hardly any of their chips can meet it, Intel should be able to make about as many of them as they want.  If it's in stock in a whole bunch of places and everyone is charging far above MSRP for it, then my guess would be that Intel raised prices and everyone is just passing along the higher prices.

F0URTWENTY

It isn't. The price will drop when they make more stock.

People aren't running out to buy new motherboards for a 15% faster processor that costs 600$ CAD

Hrimnir

Quizzical said:

It's the same silicon as all of the other quad cores.  Unless they set the bin requirements so high that hardly any of their chips can meet it, Intel should be able to make about as many of them as they want.  If it's in stock in a whole bunch of places and everyone is charging far above MSRP for it, then my guess would be that Intel raised prices and everyone is just passing along the higher prices.

Its hard to say.  I've been monitoring amazon for a while now and they're bouncing between just above $400 and below $450.  However i did check MSRP and its still $350

Quizzical

Price hikes driven by shortages are generally accompanied by the product being out of stock in a lot of places.  That doesn't seem to be the case here.  Shortages on products six months past launch are also very rare, especially when there's no obvious reason for a spike in demand.  Even if Intel decided to raise prices, it's possible that they simply haven't bothered to update the official MSRP.

Hrimnir

Quizzical said:

Price hikes driven by shortages are generally accompanied by the product being out of stock in a lot of places.  That doesn't seem to be the case here.  Shortages on products six months past launch are also very rare, especially when there's no obvious reason for a spike in demand.  Even if Intel decided to raise prices, it's possible that they simply haven't bothered to update the official MSRP.

That's precisely what i was figuring.  Which leads me to the conclusion that the retailers are continuing to sell it for the higher price because they can and people are paying it.  Also, it would be very abnormal for a company to increase the MSRP on a product 6 months after it released.  So i highly doubt that's the case.

I honestly just think its a simple matter of they're selling for that.  A good example is when the Nissan GT-R came out.  It was something like 75k msrp, and there was plenty of supply, but dealerships were easily able to sell it for 90-100k and people were willing to pay it.  So, that became the de facto price.

k61977

It is a supply and demand issue.  They will keep supply lower to keep the price higher for a while it is how you make your money back from development.  Smart business by them to keep the market short for a little while.  The price will drop in a couple months or so when they are satisfied with their margin.

Malabooga

Theres also a matter of getting rid of old stocks, where i live haswell chips are still in abundance and sell at "real" price.

Theres also a matter of ability to OC any Skylake CPUs.

Theres hasnt been any shortage of those k CPUs, and the only explanation is that first wave that arrived (that usually comes at a higher price) hasnt been sold out yet, because the only reason you would buy k version is OC, and if you dont have to pay Intels OC tax....

Avanah

TBH, There is no reason to get the 6700K if you are Gaming more than anything else. I have the i5 6600K overclocked to 4.4Ghz when my BF and I built my new system and it runs just as well as an i7 stock.
Unless you are doing serious Video Editing and/or recording, you don't need the 6700K overkill to play games.
Save your money.

Here is my build as of Oct 2015:

1. CPU: i5 6600k
2. CPU Cooler: Hyper EVO 212 Been using this forever and will not Switch. I don't do Liquid at all. Liquid + Electronics = Disaster. Easily avoided.  
3. Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170 UD5
4. RAM: Crucial 16Gb DDR4 2133
5. Boot/OS Drive: Samsung EVO 850 250GB
6. Data/Games Drive: Samsung EVO 850 500GB
7. GPU: EVGA GTX 980ti DDR5 
8. Case: Fractal Design R5
9. PSU: Corsair 750W CX750M Lifetime Fan of Corsair. Will not Switch.
10. Fans: 2x Noctua Fans 120mm (One for CPU cooler, other to add to front of Case)
11. Monitor: Acer 1440p 25" (First time ever trying out anything past 1080p).
12. Windows 7 64 Home Premium.Yeah...I'll stay with Win 7 until they force me off of it.

Quizzical

Avanah said:

2. CPU Cooler: Hyper EVO 212 Been using this forever and will not Switch. I don't do Liquid at all. Liquid + Electronics = Disaster. Easily avoided.  

You do realize that those heatpipes in your cooler have some liquid inside, don't you?

Quizzical

Hrimnir said:

Quizzical said:

Price hikes driven by shortages are generally accompanied by the product being out of stock in a lot of places.  That doesn't seem to be the case here.  Shortages on products six months past launch are also very rare, especially when there's no obvious reason for a spike in demand.  Even if Intel decided to raise prices, it's possible that they simply haven't bothered to update the official MSRP.

That's precisely what i was figuring.  Which leads me to the conclusion that the retailers are continuing to sell it for the higher price because they can and people are paying it.  Also, it would be very abnormal for a company to increase the MSRP on a product 6 months after it released.  So i highly doubt that's the case.

I honestly just think its a simple matter of they're selling for that.  A good example is when the Nissan GT-R came out.  It was something like 75k msrp, and there was plenty of supply, but dealerships were easily able to sell it for 90-100k and people were willing to pay it.  So, that became the de facto price.

The Core i7-6700K never was much available at $350.  Intel might well have hiked prices the day after the reviews launched and before any public availability of the chips.

Avanah

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

The I7 6700k costs around 400€ here in France (that's $446 at current exchange rate). Not even remotely close to $600.
The I5 6600k is at 270€ (that's $300).

So there's basically a $146 difference for a processor that is still much more powerful than the I5.
What the poster above, @Avanah , forgets, is that beside the hyperthreading, the I7 is at base 4.0ghz, while the I5 is at 3.5ghz, which gives the I7 a way higher overclocking range than the I5. I could easily boost mine to 4.8ghz, but I'm a conservative overclocker and I usually just remove the turbo and up the max frequency a bit so that all the processor cores ALWAYS run faster than the normal turbo speed.
Not to mention The I7 also has 2mb more smart cache than the I5.

So yeah, for the enthusiast gamer, the I7 is definitely worth it over the I5.

Personally, I wouldn't have moved to the 6700k from the 4790k if I didn't get almost free upgrades from the update plan I get from my company even for my personal computer. I paid only 100€ the move from my previous full haswell rig to my actual skylake one, and that's only because I wanted a motherboard with more features and higher speed DDR4. I'm also not just gaming on that computer, but also work, calculate 3D graphics, do video editing and compression, so the I7 was even more a natural choice. I'm actually thinking of getting an I7 with more cores next upgrade (6 cores/12 threads).

So the upgrade for me was a no brainer, but for the regular consumer, if you have a good haswell config there's no real reason to move to skylake for now. That's my advice.

You didn't seem to read what I said. And as you verified my statement....
Sure you can OC the i7 more but my keyword is "STOCK". I'm telling people based on experience that the i5 IS the better deal for GAMING.
The i7, as you also stated and verified my post is only needed when you do Video editing, Graphic Design ect. I ALREADY did refer to that also.
You are repeating what I said, just in your own words trying to justify getting the i7 over the i5 for Gaming.

There is NO Game that the 6600k CAN not run as well as the 6700k.

I'm merely trying to help people save money by getting a cheaper Chip that performs like an i7. Smart Cache?  Who cares, you will never notice it.

I will never own an i7 as I can make an i5 run just as well if not better..FOR GAMING.

Save money + i7 performance on an i5.

Avanah

Quizzical said:

Avanah said:

2. CPU Cooler: Hyper EVO 212 Been using this forever and will not Switch. I don't do Liquid at all. Liquid + Electronics = Disaster. Easily avoided.  

You do realize that those heatpipes in your cooler have some liquid inside, don't you?

Yes, but they are permanently sealed with welds. Liquid coolers are NOT. So the 212 CANT leak unless you cut the tubes. 

Quizzical

The reasons to prefer a Core i7 over a Core i5 in a desktop haven't changed much since the first Core i5 was introduced in 2009.  Nor has the reason to prefer a Core i5:  the price tag.  But no previous desktop Core i7 has been in short supply six months after launch, so I don't think there are shortages caused by people suddenly discovering that the Core i7 is better.

There is some binning difference, but the average difference in max overclock speed will tend to be much less than the stock speed difference.  All of the desktop and laptop Sky Lake quad cores are different bins of the same silicon.  Intel could easily have decided that the Core i5-6600K would have a stock clock speed of 3.9 GHz and turbo to 4.1 GHz and with a higher TDP to compensate.  That they chose lower clock speeds doesn't mean it can't overclock to essentially the same speed as before.  Indeed, before Devil's Canyon, the stock clocks on the Core i7 tended t only be 100 MHz higher than on the top Core i5.  What changed is the marketing strategy, not some fundamental change in silicon.

There is some luck involved with overclocking, as some dies simply can handle more than others.  It wouldn't be surprising if a particular Core i7-6700K can overclock to 500 MHz higher than a particular Core i5-6600K--but neither would it be surprising if the situation were reversed.  I'd be shocked if the average difference across many randomly chosen dies was an overclock speed of 500 MHz higher on one than the other, though.

Ridelynn

Never say never. I bet there are a lot of Core i5 6600K's out there that are OC'ed past 4.2 and are perfectly stable.

Traditionally, enabling hyperthreading has lowered overclocking headroom. There are a lot of i7 owners that disable it just to increase the OC headroom.

This is from the link above:

How are the 6600k and the 6700k different?
In most cases the L3 cache difference is immaterial. If you want hyperthreading, the choice is obvious but bear in mind it makes the CPU hotter in testing. Will the i7 part overclock better? That remains to be seen. However, if my Haswell Overclock Chart is any indication, the difference will likely be small. If that 100MHz matters that much to you, you should've bought a binned chip in the first place.

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Quizzical

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

First, this has to be said: the hyperthreading chips are definitely not similar to the non-hyperthreading ones.

Also, the higher frequency chips have passed tests to be able to reliably run at those higher frequencies. Those 3.5ghz I5 (3.9 max turbo with one core) have definitely never passed a test where they were reliable at 4.0ghz (4.2ghz turbo).

If you reduce the huge safety margins the chip makers are substracting from their max frequencies, you easily understand why a 6700k has way more overclocking potential than a 6600k.

What Intel does is to make a wafer with a few hundred nominally identical dies for Sky Lake quad cores.  They cut up the wafer and test the individual dies.  Depending on how high each particular die can clock, at what voltages and power consumption, some get sold as Core i7-6700K, some as Core i5-6600K, some as other desktop Core i5 or Core i7, some as laptop Core i7s, some as Xeon E3, and some get thrown in the garbage for being defective enough that they can't meet any of the established bins.

There are probably two or three different dies for different sizes of GPUs built into the chip, as a large GPU takes a lot more die space than a small one.  But they don't make entirely different dies for having hyperthreading or not, or supporting ECC or not, or having 8 MB versus 6 MB of L3 cache.  Making dozens of different combinations is way too expensive; it's much cheaper to just make a chip with everything and disable various features to provide artificial differentiation of your lineup for marketing reasons.  This also allows salvage parts, where if some of the L3 cache is defective on one die, you disable it and sell it as one of the bins with 6 MB of L3 cache rather than 8 MB.  That sure beats having to throw it in the garbage.

Yes, they are cherry-picking some of the best dies to be a Core i7-6700K.  But a lot of the dies are almost good enough to be a 6700K, but not quite--such as able to hit the same clock speeds, but while using a few too many watts.  The Core i5-6600K gets pretty good dies, too, and considering that hyperthreading tends to reduce the maximum clock speed as compared to turning it off, it wouldn't be surprising in the slightest if an average Core i5-6600K can overclock to a higher clock speed than an average Core i7-6700K with hyperthreading kept on.

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Quizzical

Gorwe said:

Quizzical said:

The reasons to prefer a Core i7 over a Core i5 in a desktop haven't changed much since the first Core i5 was introduced in 2009.  Nor has the reason to prefer a Core i5:  the price tag.  But no previous desktop Core i7 has been in short supply six months after launch, so I don't think there are shortages caused by people suddenly discovering that the Core i7 is better.

There is some binning difference, but the average difference in max overclock speed will tend to be much less than the stock speed difference.  All of the desktop and laptop Sky Lake quad cores are different bins of the same silicon.  Intel could easily have decided that the Core i5-6600K would have a stock clock speed of 3.9 GHz and turbo to 4.1 GHz and with a higher TDP to compensate.  That they chose lower clock speeds doesn't mean it can't overclock to essentially the same speed as before.  Indeed, before Devil's Canyon, the stock clocks on the Core i7 tended t only be 100 MHz higher than on the top Core i5.  What changed is the marketing strategy, not some fundamental change in silicon.

There is some luck involved with overclocking, as some dies simply can handle more than others.  It wouldn't be surprising if a particular Core i7-6700K can overclock to 500 MHz higher than a particular Core i5-6600K--but neither would it be surprising if the situation were reversed.  I'd be shocked if the average difference across many randomly chosen dies was an overclock speed of 500 MHz higher on one than the other, though.

Thank you for proving my point

In short: buy an i7 if you're an elite arsehole who simply must have the best of everything(nevermind the thing called cost efficiency)

Cost efficiency can depend on a lot of things.  If you're a business buying a computer for an employee that you pay $100k per year, and you believe that a Core i7 will make him 1% more productive than a Core i5, getting the Core i7 pays for itself pretty quickly.

Hrimnir

Gorwe said:

Hrimnir said:

Seriously, i was holding out waiting for the 20-30% premium to drop down, but they're still retailing 15-20% above MSRP.  Anyone know if its still just a supply/demand issue or if its just retailers figuring "hell, they're still selling at this price, so might as well make the extra money"

Really, what could you possibly need an i7 for?

Not a matter of need.  Matter of want ;-)

In all honesty, its a matter of having it last as long as possible between upgrades.  Secondarily games are finally moving in the direction of properly utilizing more than 4 threads, some games out now are actually using 6 at a reasonable level.  So, just future proofing, and i've gotten to that age i don't want to fuck with my PC for at least 3 more years (short of maybe swapping out a GPU).

Coman

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Just for info, the comparison of the best score of a 6700k with a single 980ti compared to the best score of a 6600k with a single 980 ti:

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/6312412/fs/7118368#

Ooops... the I5 gets crushed. And 3DMark is a gaming benchmark...

The 980 in the 6700K however seems to be overclocked. Not sure how much impact this might make, but I guess a lot on a gaming benchmark.

Avanah

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Avanah said:

You didn't seem to read what I said. And as you verified my statement....
Sure you can OC the i7 more but my keyword is "STOCK".

And yet you compared a stock I7 with an already heavily overclocked I5.
I think I perfectly read and understood what you said, but you were unable to read and understand what I said...

My statements are based on saving money for equal performance. Your statements are: If you don't have an i7 you are WRONG."

All I know is my 6600k (overclocked) can keep up with an 6700 (Stock). I'm just saving money by overclocking the 6600k to get me the performance I need in relation to a stock 6700k. Nothing more, nothing less.
You use what you want, I'll use what I want. 

Rhygarth

Gorwe said:

blueturtle13 said:

Gorwe said:

Quizzical said:

The reasons to prefer a Core i7 over a Core i5 in a desktop haven't changed much since the first Core i5 was introduced in 2009.  Nor has the reason to prefer a Core i5:  the price tag.  But no previous desktop Core i7 has been in short supply six months after launch, so I don't think there are shortages caused by people suddenly discovering that the Core i7 is better.

There is some binning difference, but the average difference in max overclock speed will tend to be much less than the stock speed difference.  All of the desktop and laptop Sky Lake quad cores are different bins of the same silicon.  Intel could easily have decided that the Core i5-6600K would have a stock clock speed of 3.9 GHz and turbo to 4.1 GHz and with a higher TDP to compensate.  That they chose lower clock speeds doesn't mean it can't overclock to essentially the same speed as before.  Indeed, before Devil's Canyon, the stock clocks on the Core i7 tended t only be 100 MHz higher than on the top Core i5.  What changed is the marketing strategy, not some fundamental change in silicon.

There is some luck involved with overclocking, as some dies simply can handle more than others.  It wouldn't be surprising if a particular Core i7-6700K can overclock to 500 MHz higher than a particular Core i5-6600K--but neither would it be surprising if the situation were reversed.  I'd be shocked if the average difference across many randomly chosen dies was an overclock speed of 500 MHz higher on one than the other, though.

Thank you for proving my point

In short: buy an i7 if you're an elite arsehole who simply must have the best of everything(nevermind the thing called cost efficiency)

 I use my i7 6700K not just for gaming but also for work and video editing. Having the HT makes the jump from an i5 to an i7 worth it for people like me. Not just elite Aholes

Ok, this IS a definite benefit for going i7(pro use). I thought we were speaking gaming related stuff(imo, i5 = gaming, i7 = pro use { + elite aholes } ).

You got me there

lol Gorwe you just sound bitter, if people can afford an i7 that dose not make them aholes

calling them aholes makes you sound jealous tho.

To OP if they can charge premium price for an item they will.