Conclusion

Default

First of all we’re going to have a closer look at performance differences with standard clock speeds. From our overall performance rating we see that the Core i7-5960X is on average 21.17% quicker than the Core i7-5820K. If you keep in mind, that the i7-5960X comes with eight cores and 16 threads, whereas the i7-5820K has to do the same job with six cores and twelve threads, then the difference is already partially explained. Based on the difference in core count the i7-5960X should be up to 33% quicker than the smaller i7-5820K. But since there are quite a few benchmarks and applications, where performance isn’t scaling with the sheer number of threads it doesn’t make for a difference in all cases. In the end there is about 10% difference to what the i7-5960X could be faster than the i7-5820K, which is also due to different clock speeds.
If we start searching for the benchmarks with should best possible scaling on the i7-5960X, then we find that Frybench runs 31.37% faster on this CPU, WinRAR is even 40.31% quicker, Black Multithreaded gains an additional 29.58% and Cinebench gets boosted by 31.24%. What is also very interesting to look at are the results gathered with Sysmark. Especially the Media Creation Suite shows a significant performance bump of 15.64% on the i7-5960X.
In the case of the other benchmarks we don’t see big differences anymore. The reason is, that the higher core count simply has no effect on applications that can’t use high numbers of cores.
We also had a closer look at power consumption and in idle we notice that our test setup with Core i7-5960X was burning 27.27% more power than the same system equipped with Core i7-5820K. In case of load power consumption the difference was 26.52%.

4.2 GHz

Overclocking both processors to 4.2GHz basically shows the same picture like when comparing the two CPU with standard clocks. On average the Core i7-5960X is 25.70% quicker than the Core i7-5820K. Since both CPUs are running at the same frequency the gap between the two processors becomes a bit bigger. With the CPUs at default clocks the i7-5820K clocks a little higher than the i7-5960X. Again we notice that all benchmarks and programs that support large numbers of cores and threads benefit from the i7-5960X in almost a linear way. Single threaded benchmarks and programs on the other hand show only marginal differences.
What’s always interesting to look at when overclocking a CPU is putting the performance gained by increasing the clocks speeds into perspective regarding additional power consumption. In the case of the Core i7-5820K performance goes up by 15.44%. On the other hand idle power consumption rises by 72.73% and load power consumption by 20.44%. With the i7-5960X the performance increase is 19.76% on average, whereas idle power consumption is 60.00% higher and under full load we measure 16.16% difference.

4.2 GHz DDR4-3000

Having arrived at this point we’re not going to go through every single benchmark anymore since the overall results are still very similar. What’s much more interesting now is checking what performance differences there are when running DDR4 memory at 2133MHz and 3000MHz with both processors.
Overclocking the system with Core i7-5960X inside we notice that the performance goes up by 1.89%. In the case of the Core i7-5820K the difference is 2.22% on average. If we go and look out for the benchmarks and programs that benefit the most from increased memory clocks, then we see that Frybench performs 9% quicker with the memory at 3000MHz and in combination with the Core i7-5960X. In the case of the i7-5820K the same benchmark benefits by 2.66%. WinRAR appears to be scaling excellently on both CPUs whereas the i7-5960X benefits by 13% and the i7-5820K by 9%. Also the results gathered with Cinebench show 5% scaling on the i7-5960X. Apart from the applications that show significant scaling there is also Sysmark, which on average benefits by between two and three percent from the increased memory clocks on both processors.
Looking at idle power consumption, the system with Intel Core i7-5820K turns 9.09% more energy into heat, whereas with the i7-5960X consumption goes up by 11.61%. Under full load the differences are 5.96% in case of the i7-5820K and 4.5% for the i7-5960X.

Recommendation

Last but not least we can say that first and foremost multithreaded applications benefit from the Core i7-5960X. Since there are two more cores and four more threads then on the i7-5820K performance in multithreaded applications scales in an almost linear way. Therefore if you need a workstation, which is going to be used in a productive environment and additional CPU power actually accounts for higher revenue, then this CPU is the right choice. Should you not require the additional two cores and four threads, then i7-5820K will be more than sufficient under any circumstances.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 8 - WinRAR
Page 2 - Sysmark	Page 9 - Frybench
Page 3 - 3DMark	Page 10 - HWBot Prime
Page 4 - XTU	Page 11 - Performance Rating
Page 5 - Cinebench	Page 12 - Power Consumption
Page 6 - SiSoft Sandra	Page 13 - Conclusion
Page 7 - Blackhole