Core performance
Our decade-old number-crunching test evaluates the single-threaded performance of the processors. The Core i7-4960X is marginally quicker than the 3960X, mainly due to a higher peak speed, but the benefits of the Haswell architecture, which include a slight boost to the instructions per clock cycle, means that the 4770K is top dog. AMD, meanwhile, is way, way off the pace.
Cinebench is a great tool in stressing cores and threads. A 6C/12T chip has obvious advantages over the 4C/8T 4770K. But scale up the Core i7-4770K's performance to a 6C/12T 'Haswell Extreme' and we'd likely see a score of 12.
Core i7-4960X's sub-10 per cent lead over the 3960X is a combination of a modified architecture and higher all-core frequency.
Better cores and a faster speed also play well in wPrime, where the 4960X is the first consumer CPU to run the test in under 150s. What's clear thus far is that, to get the best out of the processor, you really need workloads that can stress all available threads.