Toward the end of 2014, Intel released a trio of fourth-gen Extreme processors: the i7-5820K, the i7-5930K and the i7-5960X. These are the premium end of the processor scale, so you can expect to pay a pretty penny to get your hands on one.
The i7-5930K is a beast of a CPU. A six-core, 12-thread powerhouse, with a base clock speed of 3.5GHz and an oddly meagre turbo boost of just 200MHz to 3.7GHz.
As you would expect from a processor of this calibre, you’ll need to make sure you have the right components in place to begin with. The TDP of 140W is eye watering, but you can take advantage of DDR4 memory up to 2133MHz. And the 15MB of L3 cache is just as impressive.
As impressive as the i7-5930K may be, it’s also a kind of a backward step in terms of the technology used. By this we mean there are no integrated graphics available, so you’ll need to invest in a dedicated card to push the pixels across the screen. This will ultimately drive up the overall cost of an i7-5930K system, but if you’re already considering spending the £490 price for this CPU, we imagine you’ll also be able to afford a graphics card to go with it.
Naturally, since this is a K-model chip, it’s unlocked and can therefore be overclocked. While there doesn’t seem to be quite the leap in megahertz as we’ve already seen from the K-version CPUs, the i7-5930K has been clocked to a stable 4.6GHz with some pretty dramatic results. From what we’ve seen, the benchmarks of such an overclocked processor are among the highest listed.
As far as its stock speeds go, though, the benchmarks we ran are just as good. The PassMark 8.0 overall CPU score was 13,635, the highest we’ve seen so far. Unsurprisingly, the singlethread score was a far lower 2,082 – not that much better than the i5-6500 and certainly less than the i5-4690K.
The Cinebench R15 singlecore test score was also quite unremarkable. At just 140 it’s the lowest of the entire group – two points less than the entrylevel i5-6400. The multi-core score, though, was impressive at 11,54.
With those scores in mind, it’s worth considering the uses the i7-5930K will be put to before you go out and buy one. If you’re planning on running multi-core applications and you need to address a huge amount of system memory, then this is an exceptional processor and will happily see off the competition. On the other hand, if all you’re doing is running single-core programs and pure clock speed is more important, then you’re better off with one of the standard desktop processors.
Obviously, the Extreme Edition CPUs have their place, but £490 is a lot of money to fork out for only a slight gain in the benchmarks compared to the i7-6700K. If you factor in an overclocked i7-6700K, then you could be looking at a processor that will beat the i7-5930K in pretty much everything.