Can I just upgrade my CPU ?

superawesomeALVIN

Reputable
Mar 15, 2015
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4,510
Hi, my PC is using i5-4670 and Gigabyte B85M-D3V (rev 1.1) with a GTX 560. And I wasn't sure if I can directly upgrade to a i7-4790k. If not, any good suggestions for motherboard ? Thanks.

P.S. Sorry for my bad English.
 


I mean no disrespect, Sir - but I think you may be underestimating your 4670's power. This CPU can cope with SLI of the heaviest graphics cards; it will not be the bottleneck until years to come. As Mr.@de5_Roy pointed out, the sensible solution would be to wait until Skylake - perhaps even a bit longer. Granted this is a gaming PC all of your money ought to be spend on a GPU and a quality PSU now. Unless you are extremely unlucky and your specific 4670 unit is of inferior quality, I fail to find any coherent and sensible reason to upgrade your CPU. For the money left over from not upgrading the CPU, you can get a 970 or even a 980.
 


Please, PLEASE listen to Whateverworks!!! I am a heavy gamer and run my desktop on a 70" 1080p TV (granted it's not 2K or 4K) and my i5-4670k does everything I could ever ask for when it comes to playing the latest AAA titles maxed out at this resolution, and I run at completely stock settings! I will be starting my overclock journey this week for the sole purpose of just cause why not.. That aside, I am using a Zotac GTX 970 AMP! Extreme and from what I have read the GTX 970's can handle 2K no issue and a wide range of 4K titles at Medium to high settings as long as you don't go over 4GB in textures. Hell, even the i3's support 4K with their HD Graphics, granted it's not for gaming but you should not feel the i5 is inferior in any way in this category. Many people are actually able to have a higher stable overclock than the i7's due to less generated heat from lacking HyperThreading.

The ONLY reason I see you should go with an i7 (or a 6 or 8 core from the extreme line) is because you have spare money to dump into the system, you care drastically about running benchmarks, you are rendering models from CAD or game development software, running an insane amount of processes, the list goes on, but not necessary for gaming. I love my i5-4670k, and will only see myself upgrading when quad core technology becomes obsolete and games require 8 threads of processing power or more. Actually many more reasons but you get the point.
 


Here here! Har har!