As you can see from a few different graphs, the game clearly uses at least 8 cores, if not more. Where much lower clocked 8 core/16 thread CPU's are beating out Skylake 4 core/ 8 thread CPU's.
Did no one in this thread bother to ask the question of how a 4.2Ghz 6700K is 63% faster than a 4.5Ghz i7 2600K? That's almost a 75% increase in IPC for Skylake over Sandy.
Before we even try to compare Zen, I dare anyone in this thread to find me 1 AAA PC game made in the last 10 years where a stock 6700K is 63% faster than a 4.5Ghz 2600K....Go ahead, I'll be waiting.
While at it, then explain to me as well how i5-6400 gets leveled by i5 2500K 4.5Ghz in the same benchmark after seeing > 70% IPC advantage for Skylake over Sandy....
I have 0 interest in Zen as I already bought a 6700K a long time ago but CPU benchmarks from Ashes are about as useful as used toilet paper to me. I don't know a single game in the world where a stock 6700K would level a 4.5Ghz 2600K by more than 60%. The only way I see something like this happen is with the latest AVX/2 instruction set(s). What developer makes AAA games with that?
Finally, we know that 6700K can't overclock much beyond 4.8Ghz on air. How do we know that 3.2Ghz 8-core Zen cannot overclock to 4.8Ghz? I am not saying it can, but we also cannot yet rule out that Zen could have a lot better % overclocking headroom than Skylake.
Either way, I would pick 6700K over 6900/6950X, which means Zen was always a non-starter for me. Even if 8-core Zen matched 6700K in IPC, I still wouldn't buy it since 99% of PC games don't use more than 4C+HT, which means I'd be wasting $$$ I could use to get a 4K monitor or a faster GPU instead. That's why to me AMD should have went all in on 4 core fast IPC CPU. I have 0 use for an 8 core CPU as I have moved away from distributed computing over the years.
OTOH, let's say I actually needed an 8-core CPU -- Intel's cheapest is $1089 USD. That gives AMD room to price Zen between $350-699 and still undercut the 6900K to the point where they aren't competitors. Thus, for me Zen was never going to live up to gaming expectations but for someone who wants a multi-threaded CPU for [insert whatever tasks] a $545 8-core Zen would cost 1/2 of a 6900K. Is that a FAIL? I don't know, I don't buy $1090 CPUs for productivity but on paper if 6900K isn't 2x faster, 8-core Zen priced < $600 has a market.