Is an i5-4670K overclocked to 4.6Ghz better than i7-4790

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andycal

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Oct 14, 2012
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As the title states, is an i5-4670k at 4.6Ghz better than a i7-4790 @ 4.0Ghz with turbo boost turned off. I've noticed fps dips while recording gameplay @ 1440p with my EVGA 980ti. I'm also growing tired of overclocking which is why I'm considering heading to a locked i7-4790. I picked up a brand new i7-4970 for $238.50, but I'm having trouble deciding if I want to upgrade or sell the i7. My setup is listed below.

i5-4670k @ 4.6Ghz @ 1.25V
MSI Z87-GD 65 Gaming board
Cooler Master Geminii S524
G.Skill 16GB (4x4) @ 2133Mhz Ram
Samsung 840 series 240gb SSD
Seagate 4TB HDD
EVGA GTX 980 Ti
Cooler Master HAF XB
OCZ Z Series 850W 80+ gold
Windows 10 Pro
 
Solution
Redneck5439
Honestly it depends on what you want to do with your computer. If its just playing games then your not going to see any real advantage going to an i7 from an i5 (especially overclocked vs stock i7). If on the other hand you are doing a lot of heavily multi-threaded tasks (such as video editing) and doing heavy multi-tasking then you will notice better performance with the hyper-threading of the i7. Another thing to keep in mind is the i7 is going to be totally stock, if you have any system instability at all with your i5's overclock you won't have that instability with the stock i7.

Really is comes down to what do you as a user do with your computer? If its just gaming, no reason to go to the i7. If you are doing more such as...
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I'd want to check where the problem was. It may be your motherboard being unable to drive the GTX 980ti.

I'd want to do a whole bunch of tests before I threw money at the problem.

The i5 will have issues if you are recording and play, especially at that resolution, and a Hyperthreaded CPU is likely to be better, but I'd want to identify the limit first.
 
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FX-8350 is out of the question since I would have to buy a new board and reinstall everything. I'm also on crappy DSL internet, so it takes 22 hours to download a 40GB game. Besides I prefer Intel over AMD. Had a AMD FX-6300 when it first came out. It was a good starter system, but the heat generated by AMD products maybe it a nightmare to cool the system during 100+ degree summer days on the Eastern Shore of VA.
 
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Honestly it depends on what you want to do with your computer. If its just playing games then your not going to see any real advantage going to an i7 from an i5 (especially overclocked vs stock i7). If on the other hand you are doing a lot of heavily multi-threaded tasks (such as video editing) and doing heavy multi-tasking then you will notice better performance with the hyper-threading of the i7. Another thing to keep in mind is the i7 is going to be totally stock, if you have any system instability at all with your i5's overclock you won't have that instability with the stock i7.

Really is comes down to what do you as a user do with your computer? If its just gaming, no reason to go to the i7. If you are doing more such as video editing, gaming and recording at the same time, heavy multi-tasking then you will have a good performance increase with the hyper-threaded i7.
 
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Solution


Sorry I just want to clear this up, so you have a 4670k and a 4790?

I am confused by the bit that states ' I picked up a 4970'
 
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I apologize for the confusion. Currently I'm running a 4670K at 4.6Ghz. I recently bought a i7-4790 for a build for a customer who decided to buy a rifle instead of a pc that would help him in his engineering and CAD classes. I was thinking since I'm having problems with massive frame drops while trying to record gameplay at 1440p with my i5, the i7 would give me a boost and clear up the lag issue. The i7-4790 is still brand new in its box.
 
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The short uncomplicated version of the answer is yes, hyper-threading will help with your drop in performance while gaming and recording at the same time. It is a bit of a situation you find yourself in though as with the i7-4790 you are actually going to have an overall drop in FPS in all games you play because your going from 4.6Ghz to 3.6Ghz and an i5 in DX 11 games has basically the same performance as an i7 as the hyper-threading doesn't help the actual gameplay.

What you will achieve by going from the i5 4670K @ 4.6Ghz to the i7-4790 @ 3.6Ghz is better multi-tasking capabilities by far. This will help with running a game and recording it at the same time. However you will take a hit in overall performance while actually playing games due to a 1Ghz loss of clock speed. If you absolutely need to be recording the games you play while playing them then I would suggest doing the switch. However if you really don't need to be recording them I would keep the better overall game play, you will get higher FPS in game with the 4670K @ 4.6Ghz.

Really the best advice I can give to keep your in game performance and be able to record it without loss of performance is to sell the 4790 (and the 4670K if you no longer need it) and buy a i7 4790K. That way you can overclock it to get your in game performance and it will have the hyper-threading necessary to record your game play without loss of performance.
 
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The i5 is OC to 4.6GHz on all 4 cores. A stock i7 4790k with turbo enabled sees 4.4GHz on 1-2, 4.3GHz on 3 and 4.2GHz when all 4 cores are used. So in single thread apps like skyrim, the cpu will be at 4.4GHz, the loss of 200MHz being negligible. In games like bf4 multi-player, 4.2GHz across 8 threads is much faster than 4.6GHz across 4 threads.
 
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Are you able to return the 4790 for a credit then put the extra funds towards a 4790k? As Redneck5439 said, it will handle multiple tasks better but will game performace may be slightly lower (maximum 5-10fps) as it just isn't clocked up enough. Whereas with the 4790k you get the best of both worlds.

What recording software are you using?
Have you tried using ShadowPlay? I have heard that it is quite good and has minimal performance decreases.
I personally use DxTory and when tweaked properly has nearly no performance decrease when recording.
 
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Both are 4 core CPUs
The i5 will be 10% faster at running 4 threads than the i7 (because higher clock speed)
The i7 will be 20% faster at running 8 threads than the i5 (because hyper threading makes an i7 30% more efficient than an equivalent i5 for 8 threads.
But not a huge difference either way.

Question is, how much processor power do your games and streaming and any background tasks need? If your game maxxes out your i5 without doing any streaming, and your streaming program needs a lot of CPU power, then you need an i7. You could use windows resource monitor to find out.......

 
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1. You can see it's a close call.

2. Make sure the limit is in the CPU and not elsewhere. Do some testing.

I spent a lot of time last summer, benchmarking and overclocking Haswell processors. A simplistic calculation to predict RELATIVE performance derived from my data would be this:

For gaming and streaming (relative performance)

4670K = 99 x 4.6 x 4 = 1,820
4790 = 100 x 3.6 x 5.6 =2,016

The i7 has about 10% more throughput.

The first term is the slight difference between stepping and cache in the two CPUs.
The second term is the clock speed
The third term is the effective cores. The i7 behaves as if it has about 5.6 cores when loaded with 8 threads.

For just gaming using modern games (relative performance)

4570K = 99 x 4.6 x 3 = 1,366
4790 = 100 x 3.6 x 3 = 1,080

so the 17 has about 20% less relative throughput.

The CPU is not the only part of your system. In a complete system I would expect to see only about half of the difference in gaming (and all of it in calculation or streaming) So the i7 would be about 10% slower than the i5 in gaming alone.

All of this data was determined by repeated runs of an assortment of controlled synthetic benchmarks, so like road tests and cars, YMMV.

My Xeon 1231v3, is slightly worse than your i7, games and records in OBS, fluently, although at 60Hz 1080p. I have bot tried streaming and gaming.
 
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Sorry work was been crazy lately and I haven't been able to do anything with my pc. Unfortunately I can't return the processor for credit, since I got it cheap off of eBay. I'm probably going to sell it since I don't see a reason to go from 4.6Ghz on 4 cores across 4 threads to 4.0Ghz across 8 threads. The extra threads would have been nice if I went with an i7 when I first built my pc, but as everyone has pointed out, the upgrade to an i7 is pointless unless I go with an i7-4790K. Even then it's still not worth the wasting money for a slight performance increase.
 
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