Conclusion

FullHD

Having a closer look at the results measured with FullHD resolution we see, that the performance differences are rather small. Comparing the Core i7-5820K with stock clocks to the Core i7-5960X also running stock clocks we find a difference of 4.63 percent on average. A closer look at the values gathered reveals that Battlefield 4 shows the largest difference at this resolution. In this case we're talking about a 12.7 percent gap between the Core i7-5960X and the i7-5820K at stock clocks. Overclocking the processors to 4.5 GHz there is only 4 percent difference.

1440p

With the resolution set to 1440p we basically see the same tendencies like with FullHD although scaling with the Core i7-5960X is a little bit better. The average performance difference between a Core i7-5820K and a Core i7-5960X at stock clocks is 5.03 percent. Apparently this is virtually nothing. Browsing through all the individual results we a spike with Metro Last Light, where the difference is 10.68 percent towards the i7-5960X.

UHD

Even at UHD things are not becoming more interesting. Having a look at the average values, we see that the Core i7-5960X at stock clocks is 6.67 percent quicker than the Core i7-5820K with standard settings. The overall results might not be impressive again, but nevertheless there is an interesting spike again this time. It's Watch Dogs where we see a 13.55 percent gain and Tomb Raider with 16.47 percent performance difference. This is actually quite something if we consider that only the CPU is different in the our test system.

Power consumption

This is where we start to really see big differences. In idle the system with Core i7-5960X needs 35 percent more power than the same system with Core i7-5820K and under load the difference is 9 percent. Overclocking the Core i7-5820K to 4.5 GHz makes the system pull 56 percent more power from the wall in idle and 10 percent more when under full load. In the case of overclocking the Core i7-5960X to 4.5 GHz system power consumption goes up by 85 percent in idle and 8 percent regarding load.

Recommendation

Overall we see that CPUs aren't bottlenecking todays gaming rigs. Even at FullHD the impact of a faster graphics card is much bigger than the CPU. Nevertheless it was interesting so see that there are some games where the framerates at UHD are quite a few percent higher when using an i7-5960X. It appears that additional cores as well as the larger L3 cache are helping.
Should you be thinking about buying one of the CPUs we've had a look at in this article, we can tell you that the performance difference in case of gaming is marginal. Considering that the Core i7-5960X costs 264 percent more than a Core i7-5820K the average performance difference between 4 and 6 percent in the case of gaming simply can't be justified. For gaming a Core i7-5820K is definitely more than sufficient.

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