You make it seem like intel doesn't have HT... :screwy: On the 2600K and the 980, it's more like 8 threads and 12 threads instead of 4 and 6. While undoubtedly, HT is nothing like adding full cores, it's has been shown to add 30-50% performance increases.

Still though, on the topic of single threaded performance not mattering, somebody needs to read up on Amdahl's Law :p. Applications can only be threaded so far until the scaling stops. In which case, the performance on each individual thread is once again the most important aspect.