Core i7-4790K Review: Devil's Canyon Tantalizes Enthusiasts

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Really nice read. I am very excited to see how well the i7-4790k performed, and that means in 2-3 years the CPUs that will be out are going to be amazing. It will be nice to start seeing stock clocked 4 GHz to 4.5 GHz Intel CPUs to better keep up with the AMD overclocking that many builders do. I prefer Intel and really feel that they offer the best performance for their CPUs.

I built my PC at the end of last year, beginning of this one and went with a i7-4930k. I really wanted a six core processor and have not been disappointed. I have been itching to build another PC because it was really fun to put the plan of components together and although my hands were to big and my medical conditions prevented me from getting to do a lot of the building, my wife helped a lot with that part and it was nice to see the finished product in action. With that being said, I don't have a lot of money for anything right now and hope that my disability pay finally comes through so I can start picking together parts for a computer for my wife. She won't need anything as powerful as I have, and the i7-4790k sounds pretty sweet.
 
The average overclock based upon my Google Doc of about 185 overclocks now averages at 4.55ghz for Haswell. A tim change isn't going to gain an extra 200mhz and even then, it's being generous.

On a side note, this website annoys me. I click to add comment and the default fields are for signing up, no logging in, and when I do, I am back to the homepage. Great.
 
It would've been nice to show benchmarks and temps vs sandy bridge (2600K) at same frequency to help us gauge the progress (or the lack of) that's been made in the last three and a half years.
 
nice improve :) please where i put my razor? no way 6ºc improve. my ambient temp hits 45ºc my old 3770k 4.6ghz hit 88ºc on core. with this "new shinning old tech" i can't hit the 4.2ghz. intel miss and miss Hard!
 
I think that the whole real point of releasing this new processor and the others to follow it is simple. Intel wants to offer a better stock clock for those that do not want to or do not know how to overclock their processor. And since AMD allows easier overclocking, or at least a whole lot more processors that can be overclocked than the ones that Intel specifies for their own products. This will help a lot of consumers decide Intel over AMD if they continue to offer comparative clocks.
 
First problem: 6C between the old and new TIM is something, but not much. As one of the big improvement features, that is disappointing.

Second problem: Why is Tom's using 1.275 V for 4200MHz on both units? Is that actually 1.275v with LLC disabled or is LLC on a setting resulting in the lowest load voltage? If one of those units need 1.275v to be stable at 4200 you have a real donkey sample on your hands. Even the worst i7-4770k are stable at 1.20v @ 4200. Or was the over voltage designed to test an unrealistic incompetent situation to either emphasize or DE-emphasize the TIM difference?
 
Sorry, but I'm entirely unimpressed. Improved TIM is a waste of time. I thought this was going to release with fluxless solder. 6° worth the wait ? 6° is the difference between air cooling and water cooling.

Voltage wall is still at the approximate same place. Heat is still the limiting factor. I expect some of the better binned 4670K will hit equal or better than the 4690K.

I'll stay with my 3570K @ 4.3ghz - this clearly isn't much of a step up. Looks like I'm waiting for a DDR4 system in a couple years.
 
In the comparison chart vs the 4770k on page 1, it lists the stock Turbo boost clock for the 4790k @ 4.4Ghz. Why then are you limiting it to 4.2? Seems unfair not to let us see what it's capable of even in stock form!
 
I'd be more interested in the i5 - 4690K overclocking ability than the i7 - 4790K. As a freelance 3d artist in the architecture and engineering field, I'm constantly running renders/animations that go for multiple days. With a very limited hardware investment budget, an unlocked i5 at the same clocks as an unlocked i7 will run ~15% slower or so once all translations etc are complete, yet the i5 costs ~30% less than the i7.

My interest lies in, will the devils canyon i5 4690k be able to hit the same clocks and temperatures as the i7 4790k at the same voltages, or for the i7 is there just a more extensive binning process or something of the sort? Your comment at the beginning of the article when discussing these realistic and sustainable overclocks really hit home in relation to this.
 
First problem: 6C between the old and new TIM is something, but not much. As one of the big improvement features, that is disappointing.

Second problem: Why is Tom's using 1.275 V for 4200MHz on both units? Is that actually 1.275v with LLC disabled or is LLC on a setting resulting in the lowest load voltage? If one of those units need 1.275v to be stable at 4200 you have a real donkey sample on your hands. Even the worst i7-4770k are stable at 1.20v @ 4200. Or was the over voltage designed to test an unrealistic incompetent situation to either emphasize or DE-emphasize the TIM difference?
Click to expand...

The point of running both CPUs at the same voltage and the same clock rate is measuring the difference of the TIM. For the rest of the tests, each chip is pushed as fast as it'll go, stably.
 
Another few percent faster than the 4770 but at the same price, 6c cooler, and 4.4GHz turbo out of the box. I anticipate some nice OC results with this one.

Still, even though the performance is another step faster than AMD, for my purposes the cost is still a bit high. Still, I'd love to see what it can do at 5.0 GHz.
 
Having jumped from an i7 960 to a 4770K for gaming (both had a GTX 780), and seen pretty much no performance improvement across the board between the 2 (960@4.1Ghz and 4770K@4.2Ghz), I definitely can't buy into this, these are minuscule performance increases overall from my personal experience.
 
While the lack of competition may limit intels drive to make better chips it does help that at some point power users / gamers will just stop upgrading their cpu and I think slowly but surely intel is feeling that people won't upgrade. Honestly I would not really recommend gamers who are on sandy bridge to upgrade to haswell because it's just not worth it. I think a h100 would be a more economical upgrade then a new cpu.
 
So intel now offers an I7 with a 500 MHz stock clock increase, more overclock over head, and all at the same price as the i7-4770... and most the comments so far have been complaints? Seriously, you people need to get out of your basements. This is amazing.
 
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