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

[dvanburen]

So where is the variant with 4GHz base clock, without the 'K' modifier, and with vt-d?

There isn't one. This K model does have VT-d though.

That's exactly the point of my post, but thanks for the answer. It's hard to convey sarcasm in a text only medium.

Edit: Ok. second attempt to edit. Intel updated the ark page for the 4790K, when I checked last week it did not support vt-d. I'm surprised as just about every non-extreme i7 'K' variant hasn't supported vt-d. Thank you for the correction.

 

[therogerwilco]

Is it just me or is this chip just a min/max frequency increase and "delidded".

I get the same numbers on my delidded 4770k... lol And they're calling it a NEW chip?!

Am I missing something here?

 

[babernet_1]

Is it just me or is this chip just a min/max frequency increase and "delidded".

I get the same numbers on my delidded 4770k... lol And they're calling it a NEW chip?!

Am I missing something here?

Actually makes a lot of sense. They updated the cooling to about match that of a de-lidded processor.

 

[Adroid]

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.

The point is it isn't anywhere close to groundbreaking like we hoped, so it's a bit of a letdown. I'm sure a number the people who are leaving negative comments would buy one if they weren't running a sandy bridge or above.

For gamers and 95% of other users, the 4690K is the chip to buy, because the 100$ premium for the hyper-threaded i7 isn't worth the money from a performance standpoint. 50% more cost for sub-5% performance gains (talking about gaming FPS)? No thanks - that extra 100$ is going into a better GPU. Hence, your 4.0ghz stock setting doesn't really apply, because most will buy the 4690k and overclock it to the same 4.3-4.6 the i7 chip will reach (AKA no improvement from the Haswell 4670K - silicone lottery and more expensive coolers notwithstanding).

If fluxless solder was re-introduced, we might see some more 5ghz range overclocks which makes the enthusiast sector exited and gets bonus points on the nerd scale. Intel could get there if they were motivated to do so. Now the disillusionment is setting in, and false hopes and the months of anticipation is all for naught.

At the end of the day, if I buy a 4690K I will get close to the same clocks and near identical performance with the same limitations of my single GTX 770, hence not worth a $350-400 upgrade.

Guess we will all have to wait for the DDR4 and multiple 16x PCIe lanes of the future.

Edit : The more overclock headroom is where you are completely missing it. There is no more overclocking headroom compared to the 4770K, period. Stock clocks are somewhat irrelevant for a "K" series chip. You might get an extra 100-200mhz which is boring...

I would rather see a 4690 @ 4.0ghz and not bother overclocking

 

[manicmike]

I always love these articles, but I wish you'd post approximate costs of the Test Systems. I sometimes run it thru PCPartPicker.com, but it'd be nice to get a rough idea what your systems would cost ^^

 

[kittle]

Intel is getting better. Someday I'll find a reason to upgrade my i7 980x

 

[babernet_1]

Intel is getting better. Someday I'll find a reason to upgrade my i7 980x

I think the Skylake with the 128MB Cache will do the trick!

It is supposed to be stupid fast.

 

[brucek2]

I was hoping this was the excuse to finally move off my i7 920. Now I'm feeling maybe wait for Haswell-E (or beyond)? I don't really need more than 4 cores but maybe the extra lanes will be helpful given the coming PCIe based storage solutions?

 

[photonboy]

To the complainers:
I thought the article was very well written, and that Intel did a great job of the refresh.

What many people seem to not get is that it is a SUSTAINABLE overclock we are looking at. Sure some people got up to 4.7GHz on their i7-4770K's but as said this is NOT the norm.

Jumping from 3.9Ghz to 4.4GHz for the default settings is to be commended. If people keep complaining that even this is unacceptable perhaps Intel won't even bother in the future to give us what we're asking for.

Seriously, what does it take to keep people happy?

 

[Achoo22]

"Intel just doesn't seem like an enthusiast-friendly company"

What a stupid thing to say. The enthusiast isn't the guy rushing to pay an extreme premium for something new with 1% gains, the enthusiast is the guy who studies processor manuals and patches machine code with a hex editor. Truly, Intel has always been highly supportive of enthusiasts.

 

[Demorthus]

An enthusiast is a person who does things because of self joy & fun, even if it's not the most practical thing.. Like water cooling...I think you have your definitions mixed up buddy.

 

[Demorthus]

An enthusiast is a person who does things because of self joy & fun, even if it's not the most practical thing.. Like water cooling...I think you have your definitions mixed up buddy.

 

[jasonelmore]

Overclocking headroom on these haswell cpu's is LARGELY related to how much RAM is installed. If you just have 2 dims of 4GB each, it will overclock like a champ. However if you fill all 4 dimm's, the weakness of the "Mainstream" on die memory controller comes into fruition.

@Toms, take half the ram out and rerun your test. Also removing Turbo and all those C-States will greatly increase stability. it has in my experience with my 4770K on a Maximus VI Extreme.

 

[jasonelmore]

Also another thing people dont realize is, the K series SKU's are usually the worst binned cpu's of them all. All the good shit gets binned to the 45w SKU's.

 

[Hendel]

Gonna stick with my i5-2500k @ 4.6ghz

 

[neon neophyte]

2500k might go down in history as one of the best cpus ever. i bought mine 3.5 years ago for 180 dollars, clocked it to 5ghz and it still holds damn strong.

at the time, sandybridge was a pretty big leap over previous generations. markets were good, so parts were cheap comparatively to today and then development completely slowed down for the desktop enthusiast. was really the perfect time to buy into a desktop pc.

 

[photonboy]

GAMING:
People seem to forget that GAMES have largely been bottlenecked by the graphics when using modern Intel CPU's. AMD has a lot of issues, but if you got a good Intel CPU (like the 2500K) there's been very little incentive to upgrade.

Don't blame Intel for that, it's a multi-threading issue that's only now being really addressed aside from games like BF4 that did a good job of it.

I intend to keep my i7-3770K for at least another three years with an upgrade of the graphics card to a GTX880 or GTX980 at some point. I'm quite happy NOT to have to upgrade my core system.

I am also very happy with the POWER IMPROVEMENTS Intel has made. I'm in a room that gets very hot much of the year and the extra 100Watts the FX-8350 would add was unthinkable.

I think the i7-4790K is a truly awesome CPU for those who are due for an upgrade, otherwise I largely don't care and again I'm happy NOT to need to.

 

[Hendel]

Gonna stick with my i5-2500k @ 4.6ghz

 

[wdmfiber]

Dam... I really thought it would be soldered.
I'll be keeping my 2700K. Looking forward to high-end "Maxwell" GPU's even more now ...nothing else to get excited about.

 

[In3rt1a]

Is anyone else a little miffed that Intel has just started using better TIM, something they should have done in the first place, and passing it off as a new line of cpus? Granted, they OCed a bit as well, but still..

 

[eddieroolz]

A good review. Seems to be a small step up from the original flagship that doesn't cost Intel much extra. Power consumption went in the wrong way though.

 

[rickzor]

As powerful as this cpu might be i'll be keeping my i5 750 for a while more. Even though it has a bit more than 4 years now, it still does rather well at 3.8Ghz when compared to newer stuff.
Some might not agree but indeed CPU technology seems to be stalling a bit. Imagine saying in 2004 that regarding the new cpu technology there was no reason to upgrade from your AMD Thunderbird 900 Mhz, or in 1994 saying that you're still fine with your i386 or first generation of i486.
I'm not saying that there were no such people, just making a statement that cpu technologies evolution from 4 years apart isn't so great at the moment that makes you really want to upgrade.
Opinions may differ.

 

[aldaia]

Overclocking has become totally useless, lots of cons and no benefits. Don't get me wrong, overclocking is OK if someone does it for fun or for bragging rights, but certainly is not as it was in the old days. The reason behind overclocking was to get a significantly more powerful system with a moderate cost.
What are the benefits of (sustainable) overclocking on 4790K vs stock?
about 2-3% more performance and that´s all. Nobody is going to notice a 2-3% performance improvement over stock, much better to invest the money in SSD, RAM, GPU.
What are the cons? extra $ on a unlocked CPU, extra $ on cooling, about 15% more power consumption over stock, in many cases a noisier system, and a potentially shortened processor life.
As others have pointed out, 2500K was the last CPU where overclocking was worth the effort.

 

[aldaia]

Overclocking has become totally useless, lots of cons and no benefits. Don't get me wrong, overclocking is OK if someone does it for fun or for bragging rights, but certainly is not as it was in the old days. The reason behind overclocking was to get a significantly more powerful system with a moderate cost.
What are the benefits of (sustainable) overclocking on 4790K vs stock?
about 2-3% more performance and that´s all. Nobody is going to notice a 2-3% performance improvement over stock, much better to invest the money in SSD, RAM, GPU.
What are the cons? extra $ on a unlocked CPU, extra $ on cooling, about 15% more power consumption over stock, in many cases a noisier system, and a potentially shortened processor life.
As others have pointed out, 2500K was the last CPU where overclocking was worth the effort.

 

[Sherwin Ianne Caliva]

So basically, in simple terms 4790k is just an overclocked version of 4770k?
The higher the clock speed is, the hotter the temperature goes and much power is consumed.