Intel’s Skylake is creating mess in the channel

A lot of controversial messaging

There is no doubt that Skylake is rather impressive architecture with a huge focus on mobile. At the same time the Skylake Core i7 6700K desktop part seems to be the most disconnected product launch Intel did in the last few years.

The desktop part has been launched and one of the two CPU's launched can be purchased. There is a serious shortage of desktop processors, and when we asked around everyone we know thinks that the product launch came a big premature. The Skylake desktop CPU comes just months after Broadwell totally confusing the channel.

Broadlwell, now last generation processor has the faster graphics performance then the top end desktop Skylake. Broadwell Core i7 5775C was launched on June 2nd for $366 for LGA 1150 socket and with 65 W TDP. We are still scratching our heads to see Broadwell launching on June 2nd and then to be topped by Skylake on early August.

Skylake was launched just months after with 91W TDP, with the highest CPU clock of 4GHz but slower GPU performance compared to Iris graphics of Broadwell. This is not all as Skylake needs more expensive DDR4 memory, a new Z170 motherboard and yet again new 1151 socket. Two sockets in two months, this is a new high for Intel. The GPU is called Intel HD Graphics 530, and Intel gets away from four digit graphics to three digit graphics differentiator, and this is not confusing at all. I wonder what might be faster, Iris Pro 6200, Haswell's HD 4600 or Intel HD Graphics 530.

All of the above creates a lot of mess on the channel as end users don't know what is compatible with what. Your new motherboard that you got a few months ago won't work with your brand new Skylake processor.

It just looks that Intel got away much easier with all the mess that it created. The press is usually faster to point out on what AMD did wrong then to point out on obvious issues with Intel desktop strategy. It might be that many looked trough Intel's fingers and people see Intel fighting with Qualcomm / Apple for its place under the hood.   Most of the press have been busy enough with Qualcomm for Snapdragon 810 and AMD for its market value.

Intel Skylake is quite a good processor but many dislike the fact that it doesn't bring enough performance versus Haswell and Haswell refresh to make the purchase viable.

It is interesting that none of the deep dive articles about Skylake have found their place on the internet. We expect this to happen after IDF 2015 as it starts on Tuesday August 18th.

source: ChinaReview.mobi