AMD Athlon II X4 860K vs Intel Core i7-4960X. Specifications, performance, tests

Background information about the processors being compared, series, generation and market segment.

• Segment
  Desktop / Server Desktop / Server
• Family
  AMD Athlon II Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition
• Generation
  1 4
• CPU group
  AMD Athlon II (Kaveri) Intel Core i 4000X

Basic parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base and turbo frequency, and cache size. These parameters indirectly tell about the speed of the processor, the higher they are the better.

• Frequency
  3.70 GHz 3.60 GHz
• CPU Cores
  4 6
• Turbo (1 Core)
  4.00 GHz 4.00 GHz
• CPU Threads
  4 12
• Hyperthreading
  No Yes
• Overclocking
  Yes Yes
• Core architecture
  normal normal

Internal Graphics does not affect the performance of the CPU, performs the work of the graphics card in its absence or on mobile devices.

• GPU name
  no iGPU no iGPU
• GPU (Turbo)
  No turbo No turbo

Built-in codecs used to encode and decode content. Significantly speeds up the required operations.

• h265 / HEVC (8 bit)
  No No
• h265 / HEVC (10 bit)
  No No
• h264
  No No
• VP9
  No No
• VP8
  No No
• AV1
  No No
• AVC
  No No
• VC-1
  No No
• JPEG
  No No

Types, channel quantity of RAM supported by Intel Core i7-4960X and AMD Athlon II X4 860K. Depending on the motherboards, higher or lower memory frequencies may be supported.

• Memory type
  DDR3-1866 DDR3-1866
• ECC
  Yes No
• Memory channels
  2 4
• PCIe version
  3.0
• PCIe lanes
  40

• AES-NI
  No Yes

Compare the TDP requirements of TDP AMD Athlon II X4 860K and Intel Core i7-4960X to select a cooling system. Note, the TDP value refers to thermal watts, not electrical watts.

• TDP (PL1)
  95 W 130 W

Architecture, interfaces, additional instructions supported by AMD Athlon II X4 860K and AMD Athlon II X4 860K, virtual machine technologies and process technology.

• Instruction set (ISA)
  x86-64 (64 bit) x86-64 (64 bit)
• Virtualization
  None VT-x, VT-x EPT, VT-d
• ISA extensions
  SSE3 SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX
• L3-Cache
  4.00 MB 15.00 MB
• Architecture
  Kaveri Ivy Bridge E
• Technology
  32 nm 22 nm
• Socket
  FM2+ LGA 2011
• Release date
  Q4/2014 Q3/2013