Actually, pricing was always going to be a big issue for any desktop CPU back in 2015 with an on-package 128MB memory buffer and the 5775C came in at $366, a price point Intel was likely making a lot less margin on when compared to the $339 4770K from years prior. We reviewed the Core i7-5775C back in 2015 and found that it was able to beat AMD’s best iGPU solutions in games, sometimes by up to a 60% margin, though it did cost at least three times more. The intention was to feed the iGPU a lot more memory bandwidth, which would improve 3D graphics performance, but when not utilized by the iGPU it could be used by the CPU, as additional cache. In the case of the 5775C we got the first socketed Crystal Well part and it received 128MB eDRAM, which acted like an L4 cache. This is because Broadwell-DT featured what Intel called “Crystal Well” which was code for CPUs featuring eDRAM and as introduced with Haswell, though only in BGA form. But it's my opinion that Broadwell-DT was much more interesting than Broadwell-E, despite being limited to just 4 cores, while parts like the Core i7-6950X packed 10. So in a way, Broadwell-DT was a failure, leaving the ultra expensive Broadwell-E parts to push Intel HEDT agenda forward. Skylake almost transitioned to DDR4, while Broadwell parts were limited to DDR3 on the Z97 platform. Incredibly, a mere two months after the release of the Core i7-5775C and Core i5-5675C, both parts were essentially discontinued as Intel moved on with Skylake-S, pumping out a full range of 14nm Core i7, i5, i3, Pentium and even Celeron processors. The 14nm process also had its issues and was heavily delayed - just not '10nm' heavily delayed - but it was, and as a result Broadwell arrived much later than expected, forcing Intel to refresh Haswell a year after release, and it would still be another full year before 14nm Broadwell would arrive.īut it'd be short lived. It was mid-2015 and the chipmaker's then new and very cutting edge 14nm process was a big deal, we just didn’t expect that they’d still be relying on it 6 years later with their 11th-gen Core series processors. 10th-gen, but why? You would be forgiven if you had no idea Intel even had a 5th generation mainstream desktop processor range, because it consisted of only two socketed parts, and neither of them were on sale for particularly long, despite being Intel’s most interesting CPUs in years.īroadwell was kind of a big deal as it ushered in Intel’s now infamous 14nm process.

5th gen i7 laptop