4790K @ 4K Bottleneck Issue?

[imsirovic5]

I had 4790K since 2014, and it has been one of the most amazing processors sitting in my setup for nearly 6 years. It is paired with 1080 Ti at 3440x1440 resolution, and I am aware that in certain instances it may act as a bottleneck in games. I plan on getting a 4K display (LG 48” OLED) and Ampere Ti GPU as soon as its out. Assuming Ampere is out in June / July this may force me to use my 4790K with Ampere for 6+ months @4k resolution until Zen 3 (or Intel response) is out. Would rather wait to see what develops on CPU front than upgrading CPU now. So my question is, has anyone seen any stats on how big of a bottleneck 4790K is in 4k? Most CPU benchmarks are done at lower resolutions where CPU limitations are a much bigger issue.

 

[Denpepe]

That's because at 4K the bottleneck is usually the GPU not the CPU (unless you grab something like a 2c/4t CPU).

It's not something you sould be bothered about if you are going to upgrade the CPU in a relative short time after the GPU

 

[defaultluser]

You should be fine. There are no current games that play below 50fps on a 4790k; most of them still play around 100 fps. You will usually be limited by by your video card (especially if you play with RTX on at native res).

But I'm not sure you will ever run into this problem - 7nm EUV is a cutting-edge process node, so they may delay introduction of the Ti version. You will porobably have to wait until next spring for that release, and by that time you will have Zen 3.

I see no reason you can't run the LG on HDMI 2.0 4:2:0 at 120 hz for games, and 60hz 8-bit for browsing the internet/video. I ran my LG C7 on my old HTPC's GTX 750 Ti at 4:2:0 60hz (older games at 1080p high, newer games at 720p high), until I could upgrade my GTX 960 in my main rig and make use of that (it plays older games just fine at 4k 60, and newer RPG games at 1080p med/high).

But with only the GTX 1080 Ti, you will be more GPU-limited at 4k.

 

[imsirovic5]

You should be fine. There are no current games that play below 50fps on a 4790k; most of them still play around 100 fps. You will usually be limited by by your video card (especially if you play with RTX on at native res).

But I'm not sure you will ever run into this problem - 7nm EUV is a cutting-edge process node, so they may delay introduction of the Ti version. You will porobably have to wait until next spring for that release, and by that time you will have Zen 3.

I see no reason you can't run the LG on HDMI 2.0 4:2:0 at 120 hz for games, and 60hz 8-bit for browsing the internet/video. I ran my LG C7 on my old HTPC's GTX 750 Ti at 4:2:0 60hz (older games at 1080p high, newer games at 720p high), until I could upgrade my GTX 960 in my main rig and make use of that (it plays older games just fine at 4k 60, and newer RPG games at 1080p med/high).

But with only the GTX 1080 Ti, you will be more GPU-limited at 4k.

Interesting perspective, I just assumed NVDA would start with Ti model before introducing lower end. But to your point this release may be different than last time and we may not see Ti until early 2021. All I know I am getting Oled as soon as possible, been waiting very long time for a display like this. I dont see 1080 Ti being capable running things at 4K above 60fps anyway.

 

[defaultluser]

Interesting perspective, I just assumed NVDA would start with Ti model before introducing lower end. But to your point this release may be different than last time and we may not see Ti until early 2021. All I know I am getting Oled as soon as possible, been waiting very long time for a display like this. I dont see 1080 Ti being capable running things at 4K above 60fps anyway.

Right - the GTX 2080 Ti broke the usual delay for big GPU in the modern "new process tech is hard" era, because 1: it was using an existing node, just BIGGER, and 2: without it the performance improvement over existing cards would have been ZERO (and when you're selling a hot new tech like RTX, performance improvement is king)!

In every card since he GTX 480, they've released the big boy 6 months to a year later. AMD has also followed this cadence (Hawaii, then Fiji, then Vega, then Big Navi).

 

[luisxd]

At bigger resolutions the CPU use doesn't scale but the GPU use does. If you want more FPS you should get a better GPU like a 2080 maybe.

 

[Dan_D]

Except, that's not true. Faster CPU's will see higher minimums, maximums and averages in games. Even at higher resolutions, this holds true. Granted, I don't think a 4790K with a decent overclock would hold the OP back a whole lot, but a CPU that can clock higher like a 9900K will produce higher minimums at 4K. I found this out the hard way when my Threadripper 2920X had me dropping into the 45FPS range quite often at 4K playing Destiny 2 at max settings. On a 9900K, this doesn't happen. The worst I've seen at 5.0GHz was 56FPS @ 4K.

 

[tno]

I think this is pinging a "Just Enough" problem that was part of the conversation back when Haswell was new: At what point is compute power "just enough" to last a very very long time. I'm in a similar boat, and I don't even have a 4790. And while I think Dan_D is right, there will be an impact versus newer higher clocked chips, ultimately it is all about clocks and with work you can close the gap enough to make it hardly worth worrying about.

That said, when you do upgrade, let's talk.