Thuban will be 45nm and its the same thing as i7 920 vs i7 980x other than that.

Thuban and Deneb are different architectures but Thuban does have similarities to it.
Gulftown and Bloomfield are different architectures but Gulftown does have similarities to it.

For your application and core question just look at any i7 980x review the applications where it performs much better than the i7 quad at same clock is where the added cores are being used it will a similar case for Thuban.