Skylake’s features and chipsets

Skylake is the code name for Intel’s sixth-generation range of Core laptop and desktop PC processors. They’ve already been superseded by the seventh-generation CPUs. Here are the key specs for the original Skylake desktop processors:

Core i5-6400

• Socket 1151
• Quad-core (4 threads)
• 2.7GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
• 6MB L3 cache
• Intel HD 530 graphics @ 350MHz, boosting to 950MHz
• 65W
• Price: £149.99 inc VAT

Core i5-6500

• Socket 1151
• Quad-core (4 threads)
• 3.2GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
• 6MB L3 cache
• Intel HD 530 graphics @ 350MHz, boosting to 11050MHz
• 65W TDP
• Price: £159.99 inc VAT

Core i5-6600

• Socket 1151
• Quad-core with HyperThreading (8 threads)
• 3.3GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
• 6MB L3 cache
• Intel HD 530 graphics @ 350MHz, boosting to 1050MHz
• 65W TDP
• Price: £179.99 inc VAT

Core i5-6600K

• Socket 1151
• Quad-core (4 threads)
• 3.5GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
• 6MB L3 cache
• Intel HD 530 graphics @ 350MHz, boosting to 1150MHz
• 91W TDP
• Price: £199.99 inc VAT

Core i7-6700

• Socket 1151
• Quad-core with HyperThreading (8 threads)
• 3.4GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
• 8MB L3 cache
• Intel HD 530 graphics @ 53MHz, boosting to 1150MHz
• 91W TDP
• Price: £244.99 inc VAT

Core i7-6700K

• Socket 1151
• Quad-core with HyperThreading (8 threads)
• 4.0GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 4.2GHz
• 8MB L3 cache
• Intel HD 530 graphics @ 53MHz, boosting to 1150MHz
• 91W TDP
• Price: £263.99 inc VAT

What are Skylake’s features and chipsets?

When it launched, one of the reasons to buy a PC with a Skylake chip was the sheer number of new features it brought. Rather than being a simple performance bump, Skylake was first to support DDR4 memory. Skylake arrived with the ‘100-series’ chipset, codenamed Sunrise Point. The Z170 Express replaced the Z97, which itself was not a massive upgrade from Z87.

The chipset supports up to 20 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, up to 10 USB 3.0 ports and 14 USB 2.0 ports. Motherboards with the Z170 Express chipset can have up to six SATA ports and an eSATA channel, plus Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology for PCIe storage devices including NVMe.

The Core i7 chips have 16 PCI Express 3.0 lanes for graphics which can be split into 1x 16-lane, 2x 8-lane or 1x 8-lane and 2x 4-lane channels. The memory controller supports dual-channel DDR4 or DDR3L DRAM, and they use Socket 1151. The H170 chipset replaced the H97 for mainstream PCs, while the H110 is the ‘value’ offering, replacing the H81 and various other chipsets.

Overclocking

The K versions of Skylake are multiplier unlocked. Interestingly, the base clock is separate from the PCI-E bus. This means you can adjust the core clock frequency of the chip without affecting anything else. However, overclockers will still change the multiplier and voltage to see the biggest performance gains, so there’s not much change overall.

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The article was published on June 5, 2017 @ 10:13 AM