Intel Skylake Processors To Get Graphics Performance Boost With GT4e

We’ve been lurking on some forums and noticed that a number of enthusiasts are wondering why the upcoming enthusiast quad-core Skylake processors have such a high TDP rating when they are supposed to be made on the latest 14nm manufacturing process with a number of power efficiency enhancements over Broadwell. A new slide that we’ve never seen before has made its way up on the Anandtech Forums that might help shed some light as to why.

The slide that was posted up this week shows that Skylake-Y draws up to to 60% less power (SoC only) compared to current Broadwell-Y (Core M) based on internal projections. Not bad considering both processors are manufactured on the 14nm process. It also shows that the Skylake platform offers up to 50% better 3D Gaming on Skylake Iris Pro Graphics! The footnote shows that they are comparing Skylake GT4e 45W versus Broadwell GT3e 47W on Futuremark 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark11. The mobile Skylake GT4e part features eDRAM according to Wikipedia, so it looks like Intel will be using up the newly saved Watts in the power envelope and using it to beef up the iGPU! We are glad to see that Intel has made improvements to its ingregrated graphics performance and can’t wait to see what Skylake processors are capable of when they are released down the road.

It is also believed that Intel will be including GT4e on desktop LGA parts, but without the eDRAM L4 cache (source). This could be great news for desktop users as well and help explain why the Intel Core i7-6700K and Core i5-6600K processors are 95W TDP parts.