Review on Intel I7 6700 FC LGA14C Processor BX80662I76700 by Jnis Bisters ᠌

Name: Intel I7 6700 FC LGA14C Processor BX80662I76700
Item: Intel I7 6700 FC LGA14C Processor BX80662I76700
Rating: 4

July 04, 2023

Not a bad buy, well worth the money.

You need to understand that this is LGA2066, the HEDT (hi-end desktop) platform, that this is an expensive, redundant segment. The previous version of this platform - LGA2022-3 (X99) - was worse in functionality than Skylake 2022, i. E. did not support booting from PCI-E SDD, DDR4, native USB 3.1 gen 2 and other things that, with the release of the hundredth series of Intel chipsets (Skylake, 2022), became available in any motherboard for 3000. At the same time, it cost and still costs hundreds of oil, it seems that in general the prices for Intel HEDT motherboards start at 15,000. And that in a couple of years, the next iteration will probably come out, and 2066 will also become obsolete, not giving what any entry-level mother will give on that moment.

The main advantages of this platform over the "mass" Skylake-S/Kaby Lake-S/Coffee Lake-S are as follows. Firstly, the ability to connect 2 video cards simultaneously via x16 PCI-E lanes. In motherboards of the mass segment, of course, you can also connect 2 video cards, but they will share the bandwidth of one. Secondly, multi-core processors. A year ago, when it was all announced and I bought it, it was about stones up to 18 cores and 32 threads. True, the base frequency there is from 2.4 GHz (if I'm not confused), and they are unlikely to overclock well. In mass systems, the limit is still 6/12 for Coffee Lake, that is, 3 times less. It seems that 8/16 will be released in the fall. And here all this has long been and is supported. Thirdly, there is 4-channel memory, unlike 2-channel in mass systems, and it is supported 2 times more - because there are 4 slots, but 8. The maximum is not 16x4 = 64, but 16x8-128 GB of RAM.

In total, if someone needs 2 full lines for video cards, or there is not enough 64 GB of RAM, or some scientific tasks that can master more than 6-8 processor cores and 12-16 threads, and at the same time there is a lot of extra money, then they are the target audience of this platform. And I just tried it out of curiosity, and if someone is looking for something optimal, by default I advise you not to look at 20xx at all. She is not for us. DDR5, PCI-E 4 will come out and this PC will be a pumpkin, expensive pumpkin.

Pros

3 years ago I took a good mother on the Z170 and a weak i3 6100 processor. Over time, I put top-end SSDs there, normal video, and went up to the processor. It suggested itself, as I planned, i7 7700K, I immediately calculated when buying a Z170 on tic-tac. But since the beginning of 2022, there have been rumors about Coffee Lake. First - that it will be with 6 cores. Then - that it will be with Socket 1151, as on my Z170 chipset. Then - that the form factor will be preserved, but there will be no compatibility with the 100-200 series. Then - what some manufacturers may have, they say, just ate the BIOS. Then - that there will be backward compatibility and only 4 cores will work on old chipsets. Etc. Exhausted by rumors and my greed, a victim of marketers, by the summer of 2022 I began to understand that Coffee Lake would be, but not for my motherboard. I was terribly upset - so many hopes in the dust. And I remembered my student dream - the HEDT platform, which just received an ate that summer to the Kaby Lake level. It turned out that a 6-core processor costs quite real money. Yes, mother is more expensive. But you don’t have to wait another 3 months for the release of Coffee Lake, and the upgrade possibilities are off the charts. You can even put 32 threads! No matter how much money, this motherboard will be able to master it :) In any case, in theory, the HEDT platform should be either the same or better than the mass analogue in everything? And so, on emotions, I bought this processor and a mother for it. Because 7800X is the cheapest for LGA2066 platform with 4-channel memory support. Now 1 paragraph in fact. 7800X on MSI X299 GAMING M7 ACK board with CBO NZXT Kraken X52 works for me with fixed Vcore 12022V at 4.6GHz for all cores. RAM Corsair 4 to 8, 3200/16. Throttling moderately in benchmarks, I did not set AVX offsets. Allowable voltage for 7800X is up to 1.35V. That is, I could leave 4.8 GHz if I really wanted to. Maybe someday I'll replace it with 7900/7920. But no more, see below why. And then, the kernels will double, and the price will triple. But rather, this expensive toy will go to the dustbin of history in this form.

Cons

20xx has always been positioned as a platform for enthusiasts, incl. overclockers and down-and-out gamers. by 2022 with the release of this 2066, and in the mass segment - Coffee Lake, this has ceased to be true. I took a motherboard, far from the best, for 25k, and another 25k processor. 3-4 months after the purchase, it was possible to take the i7 8700K for the same 25k or cheaper, and the mother to it for overclocking for 10k. Installing two video cards is rather unprofitable, it is cheaper and more efficient to buy 1 last titan instead of 2 1080Ti, 1 1080ti instead of 2 regular 1080s, etc. Unless you just need two Titans? Nuuu, respect, then I, perhaps, to you not the adviser. In typical home use, the entire 2066 platform is useless. According to one authority from the news, all 2022 motherboards for this processor have disgusting cooling of the processor power circuits. That is, if you are thinking about overclocking, a bummer may await you not at the threshold of processor gluttony in volts and not at the imperfection of your cooling system, which cannot remove as much heat as your processor can give out. The bummer will be much earlier (if the stone itself is good) - your VRM will overheat. And the mother will normally pull mb 10-12 cores at most. Scalping LGA2066 stones is more difficult than LGA1151. And yes, overclocking only works on the 7800X as part of Turbo Boost. The base clock is locked in, and disabling Turbo Boost makes it impossible to overclock at all - peaking at base 3500s with EIST reset. To assemble a personal PC (not for video editing, rendering, extremely complex calculations at the forefront of scientific discoveries) with 6 cores - cheap Coffee Lake is better in everything than solutions based on this platform. It is necessary 8/16 - the 9th generation should be released in the fall of 2022, just wait. Much cheaper, if not the stone itself, then the mother to him for sure. And it will accelerate better. Because (see ark. Intel. Com) the typical heat dissipation (TDP) of the coolest mainstream processors is 95W. The 7800X has a TDP of 140W. But there is AVX512, which you probably won't need at all. In short, see i7 8086K.