CPU Performance
The Skylake architecture, represented by the 6700K, wins out here because it has a slightly higher IPC and, more importantly, at 4.2GHz, a 20 per cent higher frequency. The latter is what causes the Skylake chip to beat the eight-core 5960X and 10-core 6950X.
But hold on a second. Shouldn't we be focussing on applications that can take advantage of lots of cores?
Here's a doubling of the Core i7-6700K's performance. This is what you're paying for. We're also seeing a tidy 30 per cent leap over the 5960X, with most of the gain coming from more cores and threads, a bit from architecture, and perhaps a smidgen from the faster memory speed.
Again, we're getting a bit more than twice the performance of a Core i7-6700K. What's of more importance to the kinds of buyers Intel is targetting is how well the new chip supplants the fastest Core i7 of the Haswell generation. The answer is, due to cores, a reduction in time of close to 30 per cent.
Got cores? Will use, but the increase isn't as great because CPU utilisation across 20 threads drops to an average 75 per cent.
