Intel Core i7-6850K (Broadwell-E) Review

Overclocking

It does seem that most retail CPUs with six or more cores will struggle to get much above 4.5GHz without custom water-cooling and hefty voltages and it was no different for our retail sample of Intel's Core i7-6850K. We've used it in a number of motherboards and the results were the same - using traditional cooling we couldn't get beyond 4.4GHz without rising above 1.4V, although we have managed to get to 4.6GHz on a single core tying in with Turbo Boost Max 3.0. Voltages have varied between 1.32V and 1.38V depending on the motherboard if you're using a fixed manual voltage, although little else is required.

Performance Analysis

If performance in multi-threaded applications is at all important to you, then you have quite a decision on your hands, assuming you have deep pockets that is. The Intel Core i7-6950X's dominance is clear and even the six cores and 12 threads of the Core i7-6850K don't do much to reign it in when dealing with benchmarks such as Terragen 3 and Cinebench. The Core i7-6700K does make a valiant effort to usurp the six core, but at stock speed especially, the additional cores do make a difference for the new Broadwell-E CPU, which is noticeably faster in Terragen 3 and a huge amount quicker in Cinebench.


Anywhere that doesn't tap into those additional cores, though, and clock speed comes into play as you can see in PCMark 8. It's the same in Unigine Valley too and this will be the same for most games - some will take advantage of the additional horsepower, or more accurately - horses, but others won't, so you'll need to consider the games you play as to whether it's worth opting for X99 at all over Z170, just as you would in an Nvidia vs AMD argument. In many cases, the extra clock speed and overclocking potential offered by the Core i7-6700K will be more beneficial.

Conclusion

It does seem a shame that the prices we're talking here will still mean the Core i7-6850K will be out of reach for many and at the very least, your money could well be better spent on a faster GPU or more SSD storage. Buying this or any other LGA2011-v3 CPU for bragging rights is something only fools need consider, but that's not to say there's no merit here at all - far from it.

If you're dead set on building a multi-GPU system and need those extra PCI-E lanes for maximum performance or the ability to fill all the M.2 and U.2 ports without seeing too many bandwidth bottlenecks, then the Core i7-6850K could well be a tempting proposition against the vastly more expensive Core i7-6900K and Core i7-6950X which, while they offer more cores, threads and cache, don't offer significant performance gains unless all those threads are being used. This isn't going to happen outside of fully multi-threaded programs and sadly games don't really come into the picture here.

As a result, if you have a decent amount of cash to spend but are still concerned about value for money, opting for the Core i7-6850K instead of the Core i7-6900K could save you enough cash to literally buy a GTX 1080, yet you still get two more cores and four more threads and a shedload more PCI-E bandwidth than a Core i7-6700K setup. So, while the Core i7-6850K is still a hugely expensive CPU, for those that are in the market for a new X99 system, it's actually quite a good buy.