Eh Frederick, seems you are a bit confused.
With the brand new PHP 5.5 branch, just released yesterday, Zend Optimizer+ is directly built in. This is pretty major, the first time an opcache has been a part of the core PHP package.
APC is actually discontinued (it will never support PHP 5.5), and will never be integrated into the PHP core. I think integrating APC was the plan years ago, but they decided to go with Zend Optimizer+ instead since it was open sourced and determined to be a much better choice.
I don't know what went wrong with your benchmarks, but Zend Optimizer+ has been shown to consistently be a little bit faster than APC. The PHP developer team aren't stupid, they chose Zend Optimizer+ for a reason.
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/optimizerplus
https://managewp.com/boost-wordpress-performance-zend-optimizer
http://halfelf.org/2013/trading-apc-for-zend/
To not support PHP 5.5/Zend Optimizer+ in W3CT would be a really weird and stupid decision. Sure, web hosts are incredibly slow in updating to the newest PHP versions, but deliberately not supporting an official feature of PHP 5.5 that can dramatically boost the performance of those lucky enough to have it, seems weird.
