i7 4790 vs i5 4690k

[morgan2190]

long story short i know these two cpus are identical in gaming but what is the more beneficial. A i7 4790 with a high end h97 mobo or a i5 4690k with a mid range z97, overclocked? thanks

 

[rhysiam]

It depends on the workload is the answer. Let's say you get to 4.6Ghz on the i5, that's 15% faster than the i7 at boost clocks, so in lightly threaded tasks the i5 would be up to 15% faster. In threaded tasks though, hyperthreading can make a pretty big difference, 50% faster in some (fairly unusual) workloads.

Have a look at these benchmarks comparing the 4770k (at stock) to the 4690: Identical clock speeds and architecture, so it's literally comparing an i5 to the identical chip in i7 guise (so with hyperthreading and the extra 2MB of lvl 3 cache): http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/836?vs=1198
You can see that most benchmarks show very little difference, but there are a few where the i7 is faster by a good margin (WinRAR, Agisoft PhotoScan stage 1, 3D particle movement multi-threaded).

If you're only ever gaming, the additional clockspeed on the OC'd i5 is probably better, but if you ever intend to do any content creation, editing, that kind of thing, the i7 would be the better pick IMHO.

 

[morgan2190]

Thanks for the help, really good answer!

 

[lodders]

I bet you will never tell the difference when gaming.
If you want more bang for your buck, get a 4690k with a H81 motherboard, and stick with the stock CPU cooler. You can still overclock to roughly 4.2Ghz, and you can spend the money you saved on a SSD, which will make your computer very much faster.