I don ' t think I can give a fair comparison because the 5930 k I had would not OC at all . I had to run it at stock auto settings in the BIOS to ever get it to work . I should have RMA ' ed it when I first bought it in 2014 , but didn ' t because I wasn ' t trying to OC it then however , that changed when I built my custom waterloop and even on water at 34 c , the 5930 k never really OC ' ed very well . I think the best OC I ever got out of it was 4 . 2 ghz , but it wasn ' t stable very long would get a BSOD at least once a week . A week before the 5930 k truely died , I had to turn the clock speed DOWN for my PC to even POST . I think messing with the voltages in an attempt to OC it , finally killed it completely . Note before I ' m asked , I never went above 1 . 3 volts when OCing and my temps never went above 40 cRegarding the 6850 k , after I stopped the automated OC LOL 8 ghz and my PC did not POST 8 ghz as expected , lol , I turned on the XMP profile for my RAM , and increased the clock speed to 100 x 40 4 ghz in the BIOS and left it at that for now 5930 k could never load the XMP profile btw . I haven ' t had a chance yet to see how high I can go with the OC , but needless to say , I am quite happy with my 6850 k , given how crappy of a 5930 k I was using . The main difference between the two CPUs is that the 6850 k supports faster RAM and has faster base and turbo speeds . However , I think as long as your 5930 k is working normal , you won ' t see any noticeable difference between the two . The 6850 k might benchmark better , but IMO , it won ' t be significant enough for you to tell .