Upgrade to 4790K or wait?

S

Snel

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 19, 2011
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Hi. I'm considering upgrading my i5 750, it's always been running at stock speeds which is bad but I just haven't found the need to overclock before and never read any guides (well I have given some guides a quick look but I don't understand much) so I have no idea how to do it.
The new 5820K is interesting but it is too expensive for me right now. I was also looking at the 4790K.
Would you say that is a good upgrade for my i5 750? Do you think I will I notice a big difference in games? Do you think it will be good for gaming for many years to come?
I mostly play games, and I do so in 1440P. But I also do some 3D modelling and photo and video editing.
It's either the 4790K or try to hold on to my i5 750 and wait for something else. But that's more than a year away if I'm not mistaken?

Would appreciate some thought on this.

Thanks in advance.
 
I went last year from a i5 750 @ 4.0 to a 4770K and did indeed notice an improvement in games however this is going to be dependent on the games you play and what graphics card you are using.
 
Hard to say without knowing what you play and what video card you have.
 
lol even a i7 2600K its a big upgrade over the i5 750 specially at stock speeds... the 4790K will offer a huge upgrade in each term and its also high clocked which its even better for you so you do not have to overclock.. prices are falling so its cheaper to buy specially in the matter of RAM which DDR4 are seriously pricey....
 
Thanks for the replies. I have a GTX 580 right now but I bought a GTX 980 and will recieve it tomorrow.
I play lots of different games. One example that I've been playing recently is DCS World which I think is pretty cpu heavy.
 
I'm just worried that I'll regret buying the 4790K because of these new 6 and 8 core CPUs. Do you think games will start utilizing 6 and 8 cores better soon? Well perhaps the 4790K won't suddenly become useless because of that..
 
even if all games start to utilize 8 cores, that mean the i7 4790K will be optimal because that chip have 8 Threads of processing due to hyper threading.. so 4 physical cores + 4 logical cores.. you will be fine..
 
If price is a major concern, get a 4690k.

You will be hard pressed to find a game where the 4790k offers a significant performance increase over the 4690k at similar clock speeds. It does cost $100 more though!

If price isn't your main concern, get a 5820k since you don't seem to upgrade your hardware very often and it should be more future-proof.
 
Kueller said:
If price is a major concern, get a 4690k.

You will be hard pressed to find a game where the 4790k offers a significant performance increase over the 4690k at similar clock speeds. It does cost $100 more though!

If price isn't your main concern, get a 5820k since you don't seem to upgrade your hardware very often and it should be more future-proof.
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Price isn't that much of a concern for the 4790K but 5820K and the expensive DDR4 is starting to get a little to much. After some thinking I can't really justify the extra cost for a 5820K and I think I will go with the 4790K.
I noticed in a few games today how much my CPU really is holding me back, since switching to GTX 980 didn't even increase 1 FPS.
 
Snel said:
Price isn't that much of a concern for the 4790K but 5820K and the expensive DDR4 is starting to get a little to much. After some thinking I can't really justify the extra cost for a 5820K and I think I will go with the 4790K.
I noticed in a few games today how much my CPU really is holding me back, since switching to GTX 980 didn't even increase 1 FPS.
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thats correct.... go with the 4790K if you need a couple more of Horsepower those can overclock really well to 4.8ghz..
 
Araxie said:
thats correct.... go with the 4790K if you need a couple more of Horsepower those can overclock really well to 4.8ghz..
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I think read on some forums that they seem to get really hot even with expensive coolers, even at stock clock if I'm correct (maybe not). Is that anything you've heard about?
Perhaps I'm confusing it with another CPU.
 
Is now a good time to buy a 4790K?
I am in the exact same situation, I have i5 750, and I was looking to upgrade and I want to do it when the time is right.
 
Snel said:
I think read on some forums that they seem to get really hot even with expensive coolers, even at stock clock if I'm correct (maybe not). Is that anything you've heard about?
Perhaps I'm confusing it with another CPU.
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probably you are confused.. you can run that chip safely even with the crappy stock cooler... even you can "overclock" to the max turbo speed to make it run 4.4ghz in all the cores and you still will be fine.. some motherboards have a feature to make the turbo aggressive so it will make it run as fully speed in full load instead of 4.4ghz 1 core load, 4.3ghz 2 core load and 4.2ghz 3 core and 4 load loads.. in example asus call it MultiCore enhancement.. other brands have their names..
 
Scolecite said:
Is now a good time to buy a 4790K?
I am in the exact same situation, I have i5 750, and I was looking to upgrade and I want to do it when the time is right.
Click to expand...

with the prices falling in the 4790K yes its a good time, and that will offer a gargantuan upgrade over your setup..
 
Araxie said:
probably you are confused.. you can run that chip safely even with the crappy stock cooler... even you can "overclock" to the max turbo speed to make it run 4.4ghz in all the cores and you still will be fine.. some motherboards have a feature to make the turbo aggressive so it will make it run as fully speed in full load instead of 4.4ghz 1 core load, 4.3ghz 2 core load and 4.2ghz 3 core and 4 load loads.. in example asus call it MultiCore enhancement.. other brands have their names..
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Okay thank you.
I will go with the Asus Z97-A and 8GB of Corsair CL9 1600MHz (2x4GB). I already have 8GB of those so I'll end up with 16GB, 4x4GB.
If I understood it correctly, using only 2 channels with 2x8GB is better. But I won't really notice a difference I assume.
 
Just overclock. That will do so much more for you than upgrading to another stock cpu with minor IPC gains. Most of the gains from your proposed upgrade will be in clockspeed, which you can easily unlock for yourself by overclocking your own chip.

Put it at 3.8 GHz and watch your problems disappear. Get a cheap CM Hyper 212+ to cool it and you'll have no thermal problems.
 
wabbitseason said:
Just overclock. That will do so much more for you than upgrading to another stock cpu with minor IPC gains. Most of the gains from your proposed upgrade will be in clockspeed, which you can easily unlock for yourself by overclocking your own chip.

Put it at 3.8 GHz and watch your problems disappear. Get a cheap CM Hyper 212+ to cool it and you'll have no thermal problems.
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Are you sure about that? I don't know much about overclocking but when I used my motherboards Auto OC setting to 3.6GHz that only gave me a 5-10 fps boost in the CPU heavy DCS World.
Same setting gave me only around 2 fps increase in another game.
It feels like 4790K would do a huge difference overall.
 
Araxie said:
probably you are confused.. you can run that chip safely even with the crappy stock cooler...
Click to expand...
My recent experience is quite the opposite. My CPU may be bad, but the stock cooler isn't stable under load, it gets to 100C within seconds and crashes. We'll see how it goes when my proper heatsink arrives.
 
wabbitseason said:
Just overclock. That will do so much more for you than upgrading to another stock cpu with minor IPC gains. Most of the gains from your proposed upgrade will be in clockspeed, which you can easily unlock for yourself by overclocking your own chip.

Put it at 3.8 GHz and watch your problems disappear. Get a cheap CM Hyper 212+ to cool it and you'll have no thermal problems.
Click to expand...

This is just simply BS and untrue... trashtaking.. the jump from lynnfield to sandy bridge its already big in IPC.. add another 10-15% from sandy to ivy and another 10-15% from ivy to haswell and you have a gargantuan upgrade.. don't confuse people..

Bobalias_LeShay said:
My recent experience is quite the opposite. My CPU may be bad, but the stock cooler isn't stable under load, it gets to 100C within seconds and crashes. We'll see how it goes when my proper heatsink arrives.
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what chip are you using..? was you sure to be mounting correctly the stock cooler?.. if a CPU crashes at stock speed with stock intel cooler then it should be RMA'd as chip should not crash under any circumstances at stock speed even at 100C the chip will just throttle and undervolt to prevent damages..
 
Araxie said:
what chip are you using..? was you sure to be mounting correctly the stock cooler?.. if a CPU crashes at stock speed with stock intel cooler then it should be RMA'd as chip should not crash under any circumstances at stock speed even at 100C the chip will just throttle and undervolt to prevent damages..
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No kidding, which is why I suspect it's a bad chip/IHS. Although I have more testing to do to rule out other possible causes. It's a 4790k. The mount is fine as it did the same thing through 3 remounts. I've been researching since this happened to me and seeing scattered reports of people with absurdly hot 4790k parts. Not sure if we're all incompetent at mounting heatsinks or some of them are actually defective.
 
wabbitseason said:
Just overclock. That will do so much more for you than upgrading to another stock cpu with minor IPC gains. Most of the gains from your proposed upgrade will be in clockspeed, which you can easily unlock for yourself by overclocking your own chip.

Put it at 3.8 GHz and watch your problems disappear. Get a cheap CM Hyper 212+ to cool it and you'll have no thermal problems.
Click to expand...

Not true going to a 4790 even at stock clocks will be a major improvement over a 750 even heavily overclocked. If he had a 2600k or a even a 2500k I'd agree just overclock because they would get high enough that the speed would offset the IPC gains but not a 750 it just won't go high enough to compete with SandyBridge let alone Haswell.
 
What games are we talking about here that are highly cpu-limited at 1080p, let alone higher resolutions with eye-candy on? WoW?

An i5-750 at 3.8 will eat nearly every modern game for breakfast, making the GPU the bottleneck. If you're aiming for 120Hz at 1080p, upgrading might be a good choice though.

OP: it seems like you're hesitant to overclock, and in that case I'd just buy a new processor now. You'll get a big jump out of it. But don't discount the untapped potential of your system. Lots of folks here have blindly purchased each new generation.

SB did great things for power consumption, raised the OC ceiling to 5 GHz, and bumped IPC by 10%.

Ivy lowered the OC ceiling but raised IPC--it was a wash. Of course Intel saw fit to replace the perfectly functional solder between chip and IHS with garbage TIM, ruining temperatures. So that was a silly buy.

Haswell lowered the OC ceiling even further, but actually provided another IPC gain of roughly 10%.

Add all this up, and by a small margin OC-Haswell is going to perform better than OC-Sandy, in gaming. Clock that Sandy down to 3.8 and it will perform slightly better than your i5-750 at 3.8, in gaming.

All this frantic purchase justification isn't going to change the facts. Ivy was a terrible buy in all respects, and Haswell brings almost nothing to the table over Sandy for gamers.
 
Bobalias_LeShay said:
No kidding, which is why I suspect it's a bad chip/IHS. Although I have more testing to do to rule out other possible causes. It's a 4790k. The mount is fine as it did the same thing through 3 remounts. I've been researching since this happened to me and seeing scattered reports of people with absurdly hot 4790k parts. Not sure if we're all incompetent at mounting heatsinks or some of them are actually defective.
Click to expand...

I would RMA it no questions.. my cousing its using his 4790K with stock cooler in a mini iTX case.. and temps are goods, idling ranging from 40 to mid 40s and loads depending on the task form 60 to 80..
 
Okay I have to admit that I'm very unsure what to do again. I assume I would be able to run my i5 750 with my Corsair h50 cooler at around 4GHz with good temps.
It's just that I've never been interested in overclocking and I don't know how it works. There are the Automatic settings in BIOS ranging from 3.6GHZ to 4.2 I think. Does anyone know if those would work or would I be better of learning how to do it on my own?

I was thinking I'd buy 4790K today but now I think I'll wait, try some overclocking and see how that goes.
 
there are too many guides in the internet, google a bit and document yourself very good to be familiar with each setting in your motherboard so you can understand what to do and how to proceed to overclock successfully... overclock its easy nowadays just a couple of changes in BIOS and done... your h50 its optimal for a good overclock and keep good temps so you will be fine..
 
This is a well-timed thread. I'm in a similar situation, and have been running my i5-750 overclocked to 3.6 GHz for probably 4 years now. However, that's as high as I could get it and have it be stable. My 580SLI setup isn't cutting the mustard at 1080P anymore, and I'm not certain if a GPU upgrade would be wasted without doing a complete rig rebuild. It has been 5 years now so I'm definitely open to doing so.
 
Anti-Hero said:
This is a well-timed thread. I'm in a similar situation, and have been running my i5-750 overclocked to 3.6 GHz for probably 4 years now. However, that's as high as I could get it and have it be stable. My 580SLI setup isn't cutting the mustard at 1080P anymore, and I'm not certain if a GPU upgrade would be wasted without doing a complete rig rebuild. It has been 5 years now so I'm definitely open to doing so.
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GTX 580 SLI setup should be completely fine for 1080P specially those 3GB versions which are the main problem of the 580s actually.. its more probably lack of CPU power with recent games than any other thing... =) it should be a really bad experience in games like crysis 3, far cry 3 hitman absolution and others...
 
Did you mean "it shouldn't be a bad experience"? It's not terrible, not at all. But I can't run Ultra config (I know, poor me) on newer games at all and maintain 50ish FPS average. I just got around to playing Witcher 2 and it dips in to the 20s and 30s often in big fights. I'm also really itching to try out 1440P and I can only imagine I'd have to make more IQ compromises than I'm comfortable with on the current setup, necessitating a Maxwell chip and I'm just not sure if my 3.6 GHz i5-750 will be able to adequately feed that GPU.
 
Araxie said:
I would RMA it no questions.. my cousing its using his 4790K with stock cooler in a mini iTX case.. and temps are goods, idling ranging from 40 to mid 40s and loads depending on the task form 60 to 80..
Click to expand...
Whelp, not sure what was wrong before, but cranking the fan profile, updating my BIOS, and turning off my XMP profile fixed it. Idling around 35C now, really weird.
 
Anti-Hero said:
This is a well-timed thread. I'm in a similar situation, and have been running my i5-750 overclocked to 3.6 GHz for probably 4 years now. However, that's as high as I could get it and have it be stable. My 580SLI setup isn't cutting the mustard at 1080P anymore, and I'm not certain if a GPU upgrade would be wasted without doing a complete rig rebuild. It has been 5 years now so I'm definitely open to doing so.
Click to expand...
Well now that I'm running a GTX 980 and my i5 750 I can tell you what I've experienced so far.
I ran some benchmarks in Mafia 2 yesterday with my single GTX 580 1.5GB at 1440P and all settings to max, including PhysX to High.

These are some results.

GTX 580
Stock 2.6GHz
Highest settings, Vsync OFF - PHYSX HIGH
2560x1440: 30.6 fps

Highest settings, Vsync OFF - PHYSX OFF
2560x1440: 44.7 fps


3.6GHz
Highest settings, Vsync OFF - PHYSX HIGH
2560x1440: 33.0 fps

Highest settings, Vsync OFF - PHYSX OFF
2560x1440: 45.2 fps



And from today.
GTX 980
Stock 2.6GHz
Highest settings, Vsync OFF - PHYSX HIGH
2560x1440: 32.7 fps

Highest settings, Vsync OFF - PHYSX OFF
2560x1440: 84.4 fps

Seems to be very heavy on the CPU since I get the same FPS with 580 and 980 when PhysX is set to high.
But when PhysX is turned off I'm getting about twice as many FPS.


In Far Cry 3 I had to lower the settings and switch to DX9 to be able to run it somewhat okay i 1440P, that was around 30-40fps with my GTX 580.
With my 980 I have just tested it a little bit but I was able to run at at DX11 everything maxed out with 2xAA in 1440P and I was getting around 60-70fps.

I don't know if this helps anything at all. And mafia 2 is also pretty old.
 
Anti-Hero said:
Did you mean "it shouldn't be a bad experience"? It's not terrible, not at all. But I can't run Ultra config (I know, poor me) on newer games at all and maintain 50ish FPS average. I just got around to playing Witcher 2 and it dips in to the 20s and 30s often in big fights. I'm also really itching to try out 1440P and I can only imagine I'd have to make more IQ compromises than I'm comfortable with on the current setup, necessitating a Maxwell chip and I'm just not sure if my 3.6 GHz i5-750 will be able to adequately feed that GPU.
Click to expand...

You are thinking about this all wrong. If you jump to 1440p AND games with awesome graphics and eye-candy, you are virtually guaranteed to be GPU limited even with a GTX 980. A CPU upgrade will do next to nothing for you in that situation.
 
I understand that I would be GPU limited, no doubt there. But it sounds like what you are saying is my current CPU will not be providing a GPU bottleneck, either. Any upgrade done would only be done for some of the tangible benefits of the newer Motherboard chipsets, but I'm not going to see a direct gaming benefit in eye-candy, min fps, etc. Correct?
 
Anti-Hero said:
I understand that I would be GPU limited, no doubt there. But it sounds like what you are saying is my current CPU will not be providing a GPU bottleneck, either. Any upgrade done would only be done for some of the tangible benefits of the newer Motherboard chipsets, but I'm not going to see a direct gaming benefit in eye-candy, min fps, etc. Correct?
Click to expand...

At 1440p, in a modern game with at least medium settings? Without a doubt. That is even more true for graphically demanding games like Witcher.
 
man even a 2500K at 4.5ghz ins't able to provide the enough horsepower in recent games, not matter the resolution.. of course the higher the resolution the more GPU limited you are but that does not mean you will use less CPU power.. do not confuse people.. you are underestimating the CPU power needed to feed recent games and how weak its today a CPU like that old i5 750.. as i said even a 2500K overclocked isn't just able to provide more than 45-50FPS stables much less to talk being locked at 60FPS which its what more people aim.. and that apply to any resolution specially with multi GPU as the CPU overhead its increased even a recent i3 haswell will do a better job gaming than that old i5 750..
 
I changed my mind once again and ordered 4790K. I can post some comparisons between i5 750 @3.6GHz and 4790K in different games if you want.
 
benchmark aren't completely necessary, post your feelings and own personal comparison with the gameplay experience.....
 
Snel said:
I changed my mind once again and ordered 4790K. I can post some comparisons between i5 750 @3.6GHz and 4790K in different games if you want.
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It should be about 50% faster at benchmarks, and probably be a little bit less improvement in games. But still worth the upgrade, since I researched your killer game:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=92012

It's a beefy flight sim that only uses two cores, and needs a whole lot of CPU. This will benefit very much from a new CPU, especially if you overclock it more.
 
defaultluser said:
It should be about 50% faster at benchmarks, and probably be a little bit less improvement in games. But still worth the upgrade, since I researched your killer game:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=92012

It's a beefy flight sim that only uses two cores, and needs a whole lot of CPU. This will benefit very much from a new CPU, especially if you overclock it more.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I've been playing it some recently to learn it, and I was hoping to be able to play it with Oculus Rift later and maintain the minimum of 75/90 FPS.
Probably doable if I lower some settings.

But now to the boring part of having to reinstall Windows, going through the computer for things I want to back up. I can spend hours doing this and still realize when it's too late that I forgot to deactivate some software or back up something etc.
 
Snel said:
Thanks. I've been playing it some recently to learn it, and I was hoping to be able to play it with Oculus Rift later and maintain the minimum of 75/90 FPS.
Probably doable if I lower some settings.

But now to the boring part of having to reinstall Windows, going through the computer for things I want to back up. I can spend hours doing this and still realize when it's too late that I forgot to deactivate some software or back up something etc.
Click to expand...

you don't have to do that.. just use your same driver and install the OS over the same partition.. it will recognize already a version of windows installed and then it will proceed to create a Windows.old folder with ALL your information, software, apps, games etc.. you have just to Cut and paste in your new Program Files folders, User folders etc.. then when you have all done just delete the windows.old folder to save again the space.. you will have all your files but with a fresh install of windows..
 
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