Intel Skylake chips comparison: Core i7-6820HK vs i7-6700HQ vs i7-6500U vs i5-6300HQ vs i5-6200U (benchmarks, specs and prices)

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Some of you may say that we are comparing apples and oranges but the truth is that most users are still confused about all the letters and series etc. So we decided to write a short piece regarding five of the most powerful mobile Skylake chips currently on the market – Core i7-6820HK, Core i7-6700HQ, Core i7-6500U, Core i5-6300HQ and the Core i5-6200U. The first two, along with the Core i5-6300HQ, sport four physical cores and they are part of the high-performance lineup delivering high enough performance for CPU-intensive tasks, rendering, and gaming but they also consume a lot of energy and are rated at 45W TDP.

As for the other two chips – Core i7-6500U and Core i5-6200U – they are part of the ultra-low voltage family and offer high Turbo Boost frequencies, two physical cores, and excellent performance/energy efficiency ratio while being rated at only 15W TDP. They are mostly found in everyday notebooks suitable for office work, multimedia and some times CPU-intensive tasks, but their main advantage is the low power consumption. Here’s how they stack against each other.

Contents


Intel Core i7-6820HK

This is actually the first unlocked for overclocking mobile chip from the company and it’s mostly found in high-end gaming notebooks that can handle the extra heat for overclocking. The chip currently sits in second place in our CPU ranking table (right after the Haswell chip Core i7-4930MX) and just a two places above the aforementioned Core i7-6700HQ. We recently had the chance to test out the Core i7-6720HK chip in the Alienware 17 R3 and it offers little improvement over the Core i7-6700HQ, but when overclocked, the silicon offers extraordinary raw performance. Here’s a little bit more about the CPU…

Specs

Intel_Core_i7_logo1Intel Core i7-6820HK represents the Skylake H family and it’s considered a high-performance chip with relatively high consumption – 45W TDP, which matches its little sibling i7-6700HQ. The Core i7-6820HK has four cores ticking at 2.7GHz and can go up to 3.6 GHz for one active core, 3.4GHz for two active cores and 3.2 GHz for four active cores. It has 8 MB Intel Smart Cache, which is the other notable difference when compared to 6700HQ (with 6MB Smart Cache). The silicon supports the so-called Hyper-Threading technology that emulates one virtual core for each physical, thus establishing a total of 8 threads.

Furthermore, the chip is manufactured using a 14nm FinFET process and integrates Intel HD Graphics 530 GPU with 24 EU (Executable Units) clocked at 350 – 1050 MHz. The memory controller supports up to 64GB of DDR3 or DDR4 RAM at 1600 or 2133 MHz respectively. The CPU is suitable for heavy applications and gaming.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-6820hk/

And here you can find notebooks featuring the Core i7-6820HK: http://amzn.to/1RL6HhR

Intel Core i7-6700HQ

This is a well-known CPU and we did numerous reviews and tests on the chip. It can be found in mid-range notebooks, mid-range gaming notebooks and even high-end machines made for CPU-intensive tasks or hardcore gaming. It sits in fourth position in our CPU rankings and delivers exceptional performance suitable for gaming, rendering etc. You can check some reviews of notebooks with this processor like Lenovo Y700, Lenovo Y900, Acer Aspire V15 and V17 Nitro Black Edition, Dell Inspiron 7559, ASUS ROG GL552/G552/GL752/G752, ASUS N551VW and more.

Specs

Intel_Core_i7_logo1Intel Core i7-6700HQ represents the Skylake H family and it’s considered as a high-performance chip with high voltage – 45W TDP. This is a step down from its direct predecessor – Core i7-4700HQ but matches its short-lived predecessor Core i7-5700HQ. The Core i7-6700HQ has four cores ticking at 2.6GHz and can go up to 3.5 GHz for one active core and 3.1 GHz for four active cores. The silicon supports the so-called Hyper-Threading technology that emulates one virtual core for each physical and thus establishing a total of 8 threads.

Furthermore, the chip is manufactured using 14nm FinFET process and integrates Intel HD Graphics 530 GPU with 24 EU (Executable Units) clocked at 350 – 1050 MHz. The memory controller supports up to 64GB of DDR3 or DDR4 RAM at 1600 or 2133 MHz respectively. The CPU is suitable for heavy applications and gaming.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-6700hq/

And here you can find notebooks featuring the Core i7-6700HQ: http://amzn.to/1RL6QSe

Intel Core i5-6300HQ

This is the first mobile quad-core Core i5 CPU from the company and can be found in budget gaming notebooks or CPU-oriented mid-rangers. It’s ideal for everyday work, CPU-intensive tasks and offers no less than perfect gaming experience matching its Core i7-6700HQ bigger brother but, of course, lacks the raw performance the Core i7 offers because of the lower clocks and the absence of the much-needed Hyper-Threading feature. But again, we want to stress on the fact that the chip is perfectly capable of handling the latest games and we already proved that in our extensive article on the matter. Also, here’s a review of the Dell Inspiron 7559 with the Core i5-6300HQ CPU.

Specs

csm_4th_Generation_Intel___CoreOE_i5_Processor_Badge_08_d673281aefIntel Core i5-6300HQ represents the Skylake family and it’s considered a high-performance chip with normal voltage and TDP of 45W. The Core i5-6300HQ has four cores ticking at 2.3GHz and can go up to 3.2 GHz for one active core, 3.0GHz for two active cores and 2.8 GHz for four active cores.

Although it’s a part of the Core i5 line, it’s just ~15% slower than Intel Core i7-4702MQ and it’s ~50% faster than Intel Core i5-4300M. This makes Core i5-6300HQ the perfect choice for gaming machines, where one would want to spend their budget on offerings with a more powerful GPU, but wouldn’t want to compromise too much in terms of computing performance.

Furthermore, the chip is manufactured using a 14nm FinFET process and integrates an Intel HD Graphics 530 GT2 GPU with 24 EU (Executable Units) clocked at 350 – 950 MHz. The memory controller supports up to 64GB of DDR3 or DDR4 RAM at 1600 or 2133 MHz, respectively. The CPU is suitable for heavy applications and gaming.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i5-6300hq/

And here you can find notebooks featuring the Core i5-6300HQ: http://amzn.to/1TyMn80

Intel Core i7-6500U

It’s probably the most mainstream processor, along with the Core i5-6200U, and it’s used in budget notebooks, mid-range laptops, and even high-end ultrabooks. It offers high performance while keeping the energy consumption to a minimum. It has two physical cores, supports Hyper-Threading and can go up to 3.1 GHz with two active cores. It’s the perfect choice for everyday tasks combined with some little CPU-intensive tasks. Usually, the chip isn’t present in gaming notebooks, but there are a few exceptions like the Alienware 13 R2 and the Razer Blade Stealth, although the latter becomes a game ready device when paired with Razer’s Core external casing for desktop-grade discrete GPU. However, our tests from the review of the tiny Alienware indicate that the Core i7-6500U is a bottleneck to the GPU in terms of gaming performance if paired with anything above NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M. But, of course, the chip isn’t intended for gaming and it does its job just fine as a daily driver while keeping the juice in the battery preserved.

Specs

Intel_Core_i7_logo1Intel Core i7-6500U is part of the Skylake generation processors and it’s entitled to the ULV lineup (ultra-low voltage) with 14nm FinFET manufacturing process. It has two cores that support Hyper-Threading technology resulting in up to 4 threads. The chip is a direct successor to the Core i7-5500U Broadwell CPU expecting slightly better performance with emphasis on the power efficiency features.

The CPU is clocked at 2.5 GHz and can go up to 3.1 GHz for one active core or 3.0 GHz for two active cores. Also, the silicon includes an Intel HD Graphics 520 iGPU that sports 24 Execution Units ticking at 300 MHz and can go up to 1.05 GHz. The whole SoC supports DDR4-2133/DDR3L-1600 memory in a dual-channel array. So the whole chip is rated at 15W TDP including the memory controller and the integrated graphics thus making it suitable for 11-inch notebooks or bigger. It also supports the cTDP down feature and the OEM can lower the TDP to 7.5W.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-6500u/

And here you can find notebooks featuring the Core i7-6500U: http://amzn.to/1TyMyAd

Intel Core i5-6200U

Well, this chip is the one of the most widely spread CPUs as it can be found in low budget devices and high-end ones like the Dell XPS 13, for example. It’s practically the same as the Core i7-6500U but offers lower clock rates, yet still supports the much-needed Hyper-Threading technology. If you are looking for a low-cost multimedia notebook or a daily driver for your everyday tasks, laptops with the Core i5-6200U will suit you just fine.

Specs

Intel_Core_i5_logo-300x400Intel Core i5-6200U is a 6th generation dual-core CPU. It is manufactured using 14 nm FinFET process, meaning it’s part of the Ultra-Low Voltage lineup.The CPU is clocked at 2.3GHz, but thanks to the Turbo Boost technology it could automatically increase its clock speeds up to 2.8GHz for a single core and 2.7GHz when two cores are functioning. It is designed using Intel’s Skylake architecture allowing it to have similar performance to Intel Core i7-5500U, which is part of the Broadwell lineup. The CPU boasts four logical cores and 3MB level 3 cache. It consumes 15W of energy and can operate at a maximum temperature of 100 degrees Celsius.

The SoC also integrates Intel HD Graphics 520. Its performance is similar to that of NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 820 GPU. The GPU can be clocked at up to 1000MHz. The SoC supports the Dual-Channel DDR3L-1600/DDR4-2133 Memory Controller, HyperThreading, AVX, AVX2, Quick Sync, Virtualization and AES-NI technologies.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i5-6200u/

And here you can find notebooks featuring the Core i5-6200U: http://amzn.to/1RL8qnk

Benchmark tests


Bottom line

It’s really important to know what you are looking for in a notebook and what you intend to use it for. If you are more into gaming, the high-end Core i7-6700HQ and Core i5-6300HQ CPUs will be up for the challenge but if that’s not enough, the Core i7-6820HK will deliver unlocked performance for your CPU-intensive tasks aside from gaming.

However, if you just need a good daily driver, laptops with Core i7-6500U and Core i5-6200U are the sweet spot between good performance, Hyper-Threading support and low power consumption with less heat dispersion. Also, make sure to check out our extensive Intel Skylake review.

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