Intel Core i7-860 vs AMD Athlon X4 860K

Core i7-860 vs Athlon X4 860K benchmarks

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i7-860 is faster than the Athlon X4 860K. Despite this, the Athlon X4 860K has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i7-860 has significantly more cores with 4 cores compared to the Athlon X4 860K that has 2 cores. It also has more threads than the Athlon X4 860K. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Athlon X4 860K has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-860. Both these chips have an identical TDP (Thermal Design Power). This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i7-860 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.