Or a cheap, otherwise vastly inferior AMD CPU. Like noted they'd probably have to do something that really depends on those 8 threads to cancel out how much faster and more effective Intel CPUs have been, and I can't help but wonder if they could've better optimized for 4 cores without sacrificing anything.
Though I imagine if it IS doing something like that going with 8 threads will shut it up.
Or they are lying?
The 8350 does have the theoretical performance of something between the K-series i5 and i7 (quad core sans or with HT) and in certain tasks beats the i7, but an overclocked 2600k/3770k/4770k should be more powerful than even the 5Ghz eight core. You also have the simple fact that the AMD cores are really weak so if a thread is suddenly heavy to run (explosion/physics/whatever) the game will chug down more. Crysis 3 seemed to do that though I sadly have no better proof than this.