Conclusion

Stock Clocks

First, we’re going to talk about the average performance differences of the two CPUs we've tested here. To keep things as simple as possible, we've averaged all the results that we gathered at different resolutions. This allows us to create an overall performance index. The Core i7-4960X is defining the 100.00% baseline, to which we're going to compare all other results. On average the Core i7-5960X is 7.15% quicker than its predecessor.

A closer look at the different resolutions reveals, that at FullHD the Core i7-5960X performs 6.79 percent faster. In the case of 1440p the 5960X offers on average 7.44 % higher frame rates. Last but not least we’ve tested the games at UHD and the differences are very similar. The system with Core i7-5960X runs games 7.23 % quicker than equipped with the i7-4960X.

Another interesting value to investigate is power consumption. In idle our test system with Core i7-5960X burns 2.22 % more power than the setup with Core i7-4960X. At this point we have to mention, that the two CPUs have to be tested with different motherboards. With the system under full load – the graphics card is also loaded – the percentage differences are smaller. The system with Core i7-4960X needs 4.93 percent more power than the setup with i7-5960X, despite the fact, that the latter has two cores more.

Overclocked

Following the same approach – but much shorter - like with the CPUs at stock clocks we’re now going to talk about the results gathered with the CPUs overclocked to 4.5 GHz. Again, the Core i7-4960X is setting the 100.00% baseline. On average the new Core i7-5960X opens a 9.02 percent gap. In other words, overclocking the CPUs to 4.5 GHz has no effect on performance scaling and it doesn’t open any bottleneck. The reason for this is simple: the CPU isn't the limiting factor, it's the graphics card and this is the case even at FullHD.

Recommendation

As we've already mentioned in the overclocking part of this conclusion it's not the CPU, which is limiting performance in recent gaming systems, it is the graphics card. This already implies that the CPU only plays a secondary role when it comes to gaming performance in general. In other words: if you upgrade from an Intel Core i7-4960X to its successor only for gaming performance, you're going to pay more than 1000 Euro for on average 7.15 percent higher frame rates.
Should you be thinking about upgrading to the latest Intel Core i7-5960X, then we recommend you to do so if you really see a benefit in having a CPU with eight cores and 16 threads. These days only demanding applications are capable of fully loading this many cores and threads simultaneously.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 12 - Thief
Page 2 - Test Setup	Page 13 - GRID Autosport
Page 3 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 14 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 4 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 15 - Metro Last Light
Page 5 - Borderlands - The Pre-Sequel	Page 16 - Assassin’s Creed Unity
Page 6 - BattleField 4	Page 17 - Far Cry 4
Page 7 - Watch Dogs	Page 18 - Power Consumption
Page 8 - Tomb Raider	Page 19 - Performance
Page 9 - Sniper Elite 3	Page 20 - Prices
Page 10 - Crysis 3	Page 21 - Conclusion
Page 11 - Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare