i7-4770 to i7-4790K: Worth it?

[Armenius]

I had been saving money to upgrade to Skylake-X for the past year, but none of the chipset upgrades I was hoping for happened. So I really think it's not worth it at this point to put that kind of cash down and upgrade my whole platform when new features such as PCI-E 4.0 are just around the corner, and have resolved to wait another year for Ice Lake. This would still fall into my 5-7 year platform upgrade cycle.

In the meantime, I was just contemplating whether or not getting a Devil's Canyon CPU was worth it as a stopgap and while you can still buy them firsthand. It kind of feels like my cooler and mobo are going to waste now. My system config in my signature is up-to-date. My Z87 motherboard supports the i7-4790K with the BIOS I currently have installed on it. If it was worth it, then would getting faster memory to go with it be a logical move?

The total cost of changing out the CPU and memory would be about $500. The CPU alone I can get for $290-$320.

I'll leave the poll open for 2 weeks, but I look forward to your comments.

 

[Shintai]

Either wait for Icelake or go 8700K. There is a lot of benefits outside the CPU. But it depends how soon you need more power. The #waitforever game is useless and boring too.

 

[ccityinstaller]

I'd ignore most of what Shintai says. He gets paid to preach to everyone about the great Intel and how it will make every aspect of your life better!

Is your 4770 overclocked? Your sig doesn't really make that clear (or if you even have a 4770K or the regular locked 4770). If you have a 4770, then jumping to a 4790K wouldn't be a bad idea, especially since you can 3D print an easy de-lidding tool and put some quality TIM on that die. You should easily see a 4.6Ghz all core clock on a mediocre chip or 4.8-5Ghz on a great chip. Since you can resell the 4770 (easy $100-125 on ebay or amazon, $150+ if you have a 4770K.)

I see you have 32GB of ram, so I am unsure why you are considering replacing it? If anything I would try giving the ram a mild OC to 1866 or 2133 with relaxed timings if it will accept it. If it won't OC, then try to get your timings as tight as possible (9-9-9- or if you are lucky 8-8-8) I just went from 16GB of DDR 2133 CAS 11 to 16GB 2400 CAS 10 and saw a nice little bump in my minimum FPS in several games. That being said, if it weren't a no cost upgrade, as I sold the old ram to a buddy for an upgrade on his ancient DDR3 1333) I wouldn't have bothered doing it. The FPS boost was nice but FreeSync makes it kind of a wash since I have no problems staying in the FS range.

So to recap you could be gaining an easy 400~800Mhz of all core CPU speed for a total cost of $150~$200ish. I'd say do that and bank the rest of the money away and see what Zen+ and Icelake bring next year. With the jump to "7nm" and "10nm" we should hopefully see 5Ghz+ OCs on the better chips, along with the IPC increase.

 

[Decibel]

That sounds like a huge expense for a side step.

If that 4770 is a K series, crank the clocks. If it isn't, you can still up the multiplier by 4x and get a 400mhz overclock out of it.

 

[defaultluser]

That sounds like a huge expense for a side step.

If that 4770 is a K series, crank the clocks. If it isn't, you can still up the multiplier by 4x and get a 400mhz overclock out of it.

His signature says it's not K.

They stopped allowing that 400MHz turbo increase starting with Haswell.

If you can get the upgrade for around $250 AND ARE WILLING TO OVERCLOCK AGGRESSIVELY, I'd do it. If you overclock to 4.6-4.7, you'd get up to 30% higher performance out of your current system.

But don't waste your money on 32GB of faster memory. You'll be limiting the maximum performance with DDR3 1600, but not more than 5% in the vast majority of games. Also, you will find that memory clocks are more limited with four sticks.

Wait until you buy a DDR4 system to go overkill on the bandwidth. You're just going to throw all that away with your next upgrade.

 

[Decibel]

They stopped allowing that 400MHz turbo increase starting with Haswell.

Those bastards.

I still wouldn't spend more than $100 upgrading that generation. Save it, go big once Coffee Lake hits.

 

[Armenius]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'd ignore most of what Shintai says. He gets paid to preach to everyone about the great Intel and how it will make every aspect of your life better!

Is your 4770 overclocked? Your sig doesn't really make that clear (or if you even have a 4770K or the regular locked 4770). If you have a 4770, then jumping to a 4790K wouldn't be a bad idea, especially since you can 3D print an easy de-lidding tool and put some quality TIM on that die. You should easily see a 4.6Ghz all core clock on a mediocre chip or 4.8-5Ghz on a great chip. Since you can resell the 4770 (easy $100-125 on ebay or amazon, $150+ if you have a 4770K.)

I see you have 32GB of ram, so I am unsure why you are considering replacing it? If anything I would try giving the ram a mild OC to 1866 or 2133 with relaxed timings if it will accept it. If it won't OC, then try to get your timings as tight as possible (9-9-9- or if you are lucky 8-8-8) I just went from 16GB of DDR 2133 CAS 11 to 16GB 2400 CAS 10 and saw a nice little bump in my minimum FPS in several games. That being said, if it weren't a no cost upgrade, as I sold the old ram to a buddy for an upgrade on his ancient DDR3 1333) I wouldn't have bothered doing it. The FPS boost was nice but FreeSync makes it kind of a wash since I have no problems staying in the FS range.

So to recap you could be gaining an easy 400~800Mhz of all core CPU speed for a total cost of $150~$200ish. I'd say do that and bank the rest of the money away and see what Zen+ and Icelake bring next year. With the jump to "7nm" and "10nm" we should hopefully see 5Ghz+ OCs on the better chips, along with the IPC increase.

defaultuser is correct. If it were a 'K' unlocked processor I would say so. I've been starting to do more CPU-intensive tasks and have also noticed a CPU bottleneck affecting minimum FPS in some of the newer games I've played. I can see what I can do with the memory.

His signature says it's not K.

They stopped allowing that 400MHz turbo increase starting with Haswell.

If you can get the upgrade for around $250 AND ARE WILLING TO OVERCLOCK AGGRESSIVELY, I'd do it. If you overclock to 4.6-4.7, you'd get up to 30% higher performance out of your current system.

But don't waste your money on 32GB of faster memory. You'll be limiting the maximum performance with DDR3 1600, but not more than 5% in the vast majority of games. Also, you will find that memory clocks are more limited with four sticks.

Wait until you buy a DDR4 system to go overkill on the bandwidth. You're just going to throw all that away with your next upgrade.

Yes, I am willing to overclock aggressively. I am 90% sure I will delid it if I were to get the 4790K.

Those bastards.

I still wouldn't spend more than $100 upgrading that generation. Save it, go big once Coffee Lake hits.

Much as I'm not willing to put the money down on Skylake-X, I also don't think putting the money down for Coffee Lake is appropriate for me at this time, especially with the prices of DDR4 in the current market.

 

[ccityinstaller]

Considering the easy $100 you can get for the 4770, the upgrade is a no brainer. Hell I would probably take the 4770 from you if you still have it next month. I am about to lay out a good bit for a pair of Vega 56s and the friggin gpu blocks are $159 each. I swear these WC companies are getting a bit insane with their pricing. I remember when $100 was a LOT for a full cover block. I paid $120 for my Koolance nickel plated blocks since I didn't wanna wait for them to hit the channel and that was a hard pill to swallow.

 

[Armenius]

Considering the easy $100 you can get for the 4770, the upgrade is a no brainer. Hell I would probably take the 4770 from you if you still have it next month. I am about to lay out a good bit for a pair of Vega 56s and the friggin gpu blocks are $159 each. I swear these WC companies are getting a bit insane with their pricing. I remember when $100 was a LOT for a full cover block. I paid $120 for my Koolance nickel plated blocks since I didn't wanna wait for them to hit the channel and that was a hard pill to swallow.

I'll be sure to let you know.

 

[mda]

If you are waiting one year for icelake anyway... no point in swapping CPUs IMO.

I don't really notice the difference gaming on 1080p on both PCs in my sig. Based on the numbers alone, the GTX 780 > 970 should be a big difference, and the 4770K@4GHz vs the [email protected] a lot smaller...

That said, I don't play a lot of very very demanding video games nor try to game at all ultra.

The most demanding game I think I've tried recently is The Witcher 3.

 

[Revenant_Knight]

Good lord no unless you literally have cash to burn.

 

[kalston]

From 4770 non K to 4790k would be a pretty damn good upgrade honestly. Even at stock you'll notice a substantial difference. If you're not concerned about Coffee Lake coming in a couple of months (truth to be told it's gonna be really expensive for people like you and me because of the DDR4 prices) just go for it.

As for faster memory... fast RAM is really nice but if you need your 32GB it's going to be costly and you risk running into stability/compatibility issues. It's not fun. If you are willing to go down to 16GB (it's OK for gaming but definitely not hard to fill up nowadays) a pair of 2133mhz (or possibly 2400-2600) sticks should be somewhat affordable and perfectly safe but I still would be hesitant to recommend it - DDR3 is not all that fast so the gains aren't going to be huge let's be honest.

I think defaultuser is right when he says "Wait until you buy a DDR4 system to go overkill on the bandwidth".

 

[SvenBent]

Impossibel to answer without knowing whats the purpose of the system is.

Getting a 2000% faster CPU is not going to help you if the CPU is not your current bottleneck.
Propper upgrading of a system starts with finding out what part it is that is holding you back.

 

[Shintai]

So to recap you could be gaining an easy 400~800Mhz of all core CPU speed for a total cost of $150~$200ish. I'd say do that and bank the rest of the money away and see what Zen+ and Icelake bring next year. With the jump to "7nm" and "10nm" we should hopefully see 5Ghz+ OCs on the better chips, along with the IPC increase.

There is no 7nm next year. Zen+ is 14nm+ with no IPC change. Zen2 on "7nm" is 2019 or 2020 followed by Zen3 on 7nm+.

And 10nm+ with ICL is unlikely to clock higher than CFL on 14nm++. However its a new uarch.

I'd ignore most of what Shintai says. He gets paid to preach to everyone about the great Intel and how it will make every aspect of your life better!

Didn't you just buy Vega? And not just 1, but 2? Talk about bad decisions.

And feel free to prove your statement, unless its just slander and BS.

 

[thebufenator]

I have my 4790K running with 2666 DDR3. I can't remember what my bclk is set to but I had the memory at one point over 2700. It does help when the core is at 4.5+

 

[AlexisRO]

It mostly depends on what you want. By looking at your system, i"m guessing you mostly play GPU bound titles. So your CPU should last you a while longer. Gunning for PCIe 4.0 and DDR5 may be more of a stretch in time, more so if they don't get implemented at the same time.

IMO get what you want, when your comfortable doing so. I'm in the process of upgrading my rig in the sig to a x299 system because of 3 reasons: 1. Need a new PC in the house (this is the main excuse) 2. In some cases going from a 1080 to a 1080TI got me almost no gain in GPU intensive scenarios. 3. I kinda just had the upgrade bug.

 

[Armenius]

Impossibel to answer without knowing whats the purpose of the system is.

Getting a 2000% faster CPU is not going to help you if the CPU is not your current bottleneck.
Propper upgrading of a system starts with finding out what part it is that is holding you back.

My PC is used for both work and play. A couple of the more CPU intensive tasks I do include real-time debugging of C++ code and working with Big Data (talking about millions of rows and dozens of columns, and the data I'm working with is starting to get larger).

As far as gaming goes I game at 2560x1440 and was actually shocked to see I was CPU limited in a few instances. The 4K monitor may come next year and eliminate that particular issue.

 

[SvenBent]

My PC is used for both work and play. A couple of the more CPU intensive tasks I do include real-time debugging of C++ code and working with Big Data (talking about millions of rows and dozens of columns, and the data I'm working with is starting to get larger).

As far as gaming goes I game at 2560x1440 and was actually shocked to see I was CPU limited in a few instances. The 4K monitor may come next year and eliminate that particular issue.

if you really want a bullet proff answer use process explorer ( from microsoft) and look into the threads CPU load.
if any of those hits 100%/"number of cores" then you need more corespeed.
if you see a lot threads with usage on them and a total cpu usage of near 100% then you need more cpu cores

if you dont see any of these , then benfits fomr cpu upgrade is going to be marginal

 

[Dan_D]

It's not worth it. Wait for something else.

 

[Raendor]

Sell your 4770 and get 4790k, delid and OC to the comfortable stable clock and temps andwIt for Ice Lake. If your main purpose is gaming - done, that's your plan for upcoming years. You might want to get CFL, but I see no reason at the moment as 4/8 i7 is perfect for current games. It has some spare juice where 4/4 struggles and there're no games that take advantage of higher core count, or the difference in performance (around 10-15 fps max when already above 100) is simply not worth it. Upgrade when there will be games worth getting highe core count. Remember, skylake/kabylake and even haswell chips still give much better fps (both lows and averages) in gaming than higher core Ryzens oced to 4 GHz, which is their ceiling.

 

[rive22]

I wouldn't bother with memory. But if you can sell your current cpu and buy a used 4790k for a few bucks more then sure why not. Not worth forking out a bunch of cash though.

I'd just do the quick & cheap cpu swap and wait like you plan. In this particular scenario that is.

 

[Deleted member 278999]

I had been saving money to upgrade to Skylake-X for the past year, but none of the chipset upgrades I was hoping for happened. So I really think it's not worth it at this point to put that kind of cash down and upgrade my whole platform when new features such as PCI-E 4.0 are just around the corner, and have resolved to wait another year for Ice Lake. This would still fall into my 5-7 year platform upgrade cycle.

In the meantime, I was just contemplating whether or not getting a Devil's Canyon CPU was worth it as a stopgap and while you can still buy them firsthand. It kind of feels like my cooler and mobo are going to waste now. My system config in my signature is up-to-date. My Z87 motherboard supports the i7-4790K with the BIOS I currently have installed on it. If it was worth it, then would getting faster memory to go with it be a logical move?

The total cost of changing out the CPU and memory would be about $500. The CPU alone I can get for $290-$320.

I'll leave the poll open for 2 weeks, but I look forward to your comments.

I believe we have almost identical systems. Pretty darn close anyways from what I've gleamed.

I've been thinking about doing this myself, but meh.

I'm at 4.4 right now. A 4790K might pick up what, 300mhz? I just don't think it'd be worth it to jump.

I think that I'll upgrade when the 10000k series come out.

My system is pretty built right now. My real issue at the moment is AIO reliability. Just had the H90 on my 980 Ti go :/

Thinking about going back to all air. Better water cooling is a lot of change and I'm a bit sick of dealing with problems.

I may also start using the computer for development again and I need better reliability. Almost every issue I've had is due to AIO problems.

Anyways. Yeah wait