i5-4690 vs i7-4790 for music production

[antobag]

I know that CPU clock speeds and cores are important for music production. I was wondering if there would be any point in spending an extra ~£70 or so on an i7. How much would the hyperthreading technology actually affect music production performance? I'll be using Pro Tools most of the time, sometimes alongside Ableton and Reaper.

Follow-up question: would I receive more performance out of an overclocked i5-4690K or just a standard i7-4790? In other words: are the higher clock speeds of an overclocked i5 more important than the 8 virtual threads of the i7 (for music production)? (The cost of a good aftermarket cooler, Z97 motherboard etc to allow for overclocking comes to about the same as an i7-4790 with no overclocking)

 

[photonboy]

Not my area, but it looks like you should investigate the forums and look for other info such as:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU0WW7SoE6s

Other:
i5-4690K vs i7-4790?

The following isn't likely 100% accurate but close enough:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4790+%40+3.60GHz
vs
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-4690K+%40+3.50GHz

Let's assume an overclock of the i5-4690K to 4.4GHz, and the Turbo scales about the same (it tend to drop as more cores are used, but that can be manually changed.. blah blah.. it's too complicated to work out exactly and you can reduce it to NOT drop at all in many cases).

So basically let's assume the i5 runs 4.4/3.9 faster or almost 13%, thus gets a score of 8717 vs 10,019 on the i7.

8717/10019 = 87%

*So basically your program performs about the same (ignoring minimal background tasks) at the 87% mark. If the programs aren't well threaded then the i5 does better. If well threaded the i7 does better.

In my experience most programs don't scale that well, but you'd really need to find specific info for your software, and ALL of your software or at least the most critical (especially if it's real-time or stuff you are sitting there waiting for).

Summary:
Again, not my area but hope it's useful.

Other:
Another way to look at those two CPU's is that the i7-4790 is at BEST about 15% faster (assuming all threads 100% used). The i5-4690K would at best be 10% faster (4.4GHz vs 4GHz Turbo).

So either way it's not a huge difference.

 

[wasupmike]

All good info from up ^ there.. But I suggest possibly a different route - if you're willing and able to overclock (the 4690k option) and willing to spend more for an i7 (the 4790).. Then why not just spend a tad more.. And get the 4790k and get the best of both worlds?

If you hunt wisely, you can find the i7-4790k for really good deals and match, or very close to matching your locked 4790 prices anyway