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 i7-6950X is on average 51.79 % quicker than the Core i7-6700K.
If we start searching for the benchmarks with best possible scaling on the i7-6950X, then we find that WinRAR runs 279.49% faster on this CPU and Frybench benefits by 236.69%. Apart from that it's interesting to see what happens when we have a look at a single threaded benchmark like Blackhole Single-Threaded. In this case the new Core i7-6950X is 33.20% slower because of a lower max Turbo clock compared to the i7-6700K.
We also had a closer look at power consumption and in idle we notice that our test setup with Core i7-6950X was burning 18.18% more power than the system equipped with Core i7-6700K. In case of load power consumption the difference the new Core i7-6950X is 27.67% less efficient.

4.2 GHz

Overclocking the Core i7-6950X increases the average performance by 14.84%, while the i7-6700K benefits by 6.45%.
A closer look at power consumption reveals that overclocking these CPUs make for quite a difference. With the Core i7-6950X we see system power consumption rise by no less than 63.07% in idle and 61.11% under load, when comparing with the default power consumption values. In the case of the Core i7-6700K system power consumption goes up by 7.27% in idle and 4.26% under full load. This clearly shows that from an efficiency point of view, overclocking these processors is not attractive.

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 3000MHz with both processors, while the stock clocks are DDR4-2400.
Overclocking the system with the Core i7-6950X inside we notice that the performance goes up by 2.74%. In the case of the Core i7-6700K the difference is 3.34% on average.
Looking at idle power consumption, the system with Intel Core i7-6950X turns 16.03% more energy into heat, whereas with the i7-6700K consumption goes up by 6.00%. Under full load the differences are 10.89% in the case of the i7-6700K and 15.52% for the i7-6950X.

Recommendation

A quick look at the performance differences between these two CPUs shows, that only select applications benefit from the additional cores/threads the Intel Core i7-6950X offers compared to the i7-6700K. Nevertheless it is interesting to see that Intel's new flagship performaned 65% faster in Photoshop, when we compared the two CPUs at default clock speeds. The difference in rendering applications is even more impressive. Therefore investing in such a costly CPU can make sense if you're using it in a professional environment. If you're saving precious time, which in translates into increased revenue, then deciding for an i7-6950X over an i7-6700K is going to pay off rather sooner than later. In all other cases justifying the i7-6950X's price tag, which is way north of 1600 Euro, is really difficult.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 8 - WinRAR / 7-Zip
Page 2 - PCMark	Page 9 - Frybench
Page 3 - 3DMark	Page 10 - HandBrake
Page 4 - Microsoft Excel	Page 11 - Photoshop
Page 5 - Cinebench	Page 12 - Performance Rating
Page 6 - SiSoft Sandra	Page 13 - Power Consumption
Page 7 - Blackhole	Page 14 - Conclusion