Is it worth upgrading from an I7 4770 to an I7 4770K and overclock?

[prongs0611]

OK, so right now I have an I7 4770, and I was wondering, since I can get an I7 4770K used for £200, should I sell my old processor and get the 4770K and overclock? Is the performance difference worth it?

I would also be pairing it up with a GTX 1070 and 16GB RAM.

 

[sizzling]

I'd generally say no, the material difference is the ability to overclock but as you haven't told us what motherboard or PSU you have I don't know if that's an option.

 

[neiler0847]

Without overclocking, the chips offer almost identical performance. Overclocking is not guaranteed, so you might go through the exercise and enjoy very little benefit. If you could get a used 4790K, at least you'd be assured some performance gain even before overclocking.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

Do you have a Z series motherboard? If not, you'd need to buy one to overclock the 4770k. You would also need to buy an aftermarket cooler if you aren't already using one. After that, you're looking at going from 3.5-3.9 GHz to whatever the silicon lottery provides. According to bigcyco1:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1836302/high-overclock-4770k.html#11701673

Of the processors Asus has tested, 70% hit 4.5GHz, 30% reached 4.6GHz, and 20% made 4.7GHz. Only 10% were stable at 4.8GHz. Heat is reportedly the limiting factor, and Asus recommends using a dual-fan water cooler to prevent thermal throttling past about 4.5GHz or 1.25V. Going beyond 1.35V is apparently problematic even for high-end water coolers.

But by the same token, 30% couldn't reach 4.5 GHz so it just depends. I would say it isn't worth it, but that's really up to you. If you're CPU bound in every game you play and getting exactly 56 fps, then maybe it would be enough to pass 60 fps and be worth it to you. But I'd much rather put that £200 towards a new higher core count CPU a year or two down the road.

 

[goldstone77]

It really depends on what you want to do with your computer. What type of motherboard do you have, so we can see which CPU's are compatible? If you want a better gaming experience buying a better video card will likely be the best thing to do.

 

[prongs0611]

Without overclocking, the chips offer almost identical performance. Overclocking is not guaranteed, so you might go through the exercise and enjoy very little benefit. If you could get a used 4790K, at least you'd be assured some performance gain even before overclocking.

I plan on overclocking.

 

[prongs0611]

Do you have a Z series motherboard? If not, you'd need to buy one to overclock the 4770k. You would also need to buy an aftermarket cooler if you aren't already using one. After that, you're looking at going from 3.5-3.9 GHz to whatever the silicon lottery provides. According to bigcyco1:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1836302/high-overclock-4770k.html#11701673

Of the processors Asus has tested, 70% hit 4.5GHz, 30% reached 4.6GHz, and 20% made 4.7GHz. Only 10% were stable at 4.8GHz. Heat is reportedly the limiting factor, and Asus recommends using a dual-fan water cooler to prevent thermal throttling past about 4.5GHz or 1.25V. Going beyond 1.35V is apparently problematic even for high-end water coolers.

But by the same token, 30% couldn't reach 4.5 GHz so it just depends. I would say it isn't worth it, but that's really up to you. If you're CPU bound in every game you play and getting exactly 56 fps, then maybe it would be enough to pass 60 fps and be worth it to you. But I'd much rather put that £200 towards a new higher core count CPU a year or two down the road.

I have a Z97P-D3, so does that mean I can overclock with this board?

 

[prongs0611]

I'd generally say no, the material difference is the ability to overclock but as you haven't told us what motherboard or PSU you have I don't know if that's an option.

I have a 600W EVGA PSU and a Z97P-D3 motherboard.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

Yeah, that board can OC and your PSU should be fine. Do you have the 1070 now? If not, I would absolutely wait and see how your system performs with the 4770 before committing to a CPU upgrade. That CPU still holds up amazingly well despite its age and may be fine depending on the games you're playing.

 

[prongs0611]

Yeah, that board can OC and your PSU should be fine. Do you have the 1070 now? If not, I would absolutely wait and see how your system performs with the 4770 before committing to a CPU upgrade. That CPU still holds up amazingly well despite its age and may be fine depending on the games you're playing.

I have the 1070 now. I was just in my BIOS, and I have never overclocked before, but I could change the ratio from 34 to 39. Does this mean I can overclock my locked CPU mildly to 3.9 Ghz?

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

Yeah, that board can OC and your PSU should be fine. Do you have the 1070 now? If not, I would absolutely wait and see how your system performs with the 4770 before committing to a CPU upgrade. That CPU still holds up amazingly well despite its age and may be fine depending on the games you're playing.

I have the 1070 now. I was just in my BIOS, and I have never overclocked before, but I could change the ratio from 34 to 39. Does this mean I can overclock my locked CPU mildly to 3.9 Ghz?

Not exactly, it's a 3.5 GHz chip that can turbo up to 3.9 GHz on 1-2 cores, 3.8 GHz on 3 cores, and 3.7 GHz on all 4 cores. So technically, you could force it to always run at its maximum all core boost of 3.7 GHz by changing the multiplier and disabling speedstep. But there's a couple problems.

Most games rely on single core performance. They can still make use of other cores/threads, but they all depend on that one main thread to manage them. So most games would rather have 1 core at 3.9 and the rest at 3.5, rather than all 4 at 3.7. It's not universally true, some newer game engines have better multithreading, but it will depend on the game.

The other issue is related to power and temps. Disabling speedstep means it won't ever idle. It'll stay at max speed the entire time, which can cause overheating issues. You'd probably be fine even with a stock cooler, but expect the fans to get pretty loud and stay that way.

Out of curiosity, which games are giving your 4770 the most trouble?

 

[prongs0611]

Yeah, that board can OC and your PSU should be fine. Do you have the 1070 now? If not, I would absolutely wait and see how your system performs with the 4770 before committing to a CPU upgrade. That CPU still holds up amazingly well despite its age and may be fine depending on the games you're playing.

I have the 1070 now. I was just in my BIOS, and I have never overclocked before, but I could change the ratio from 34 to 39. Does this mean I can overclock my locked CPU mildly to 3.9 Ghz?

Not exactly, it's a 3.5 GHz chip that can turbo up to 3.9 GHz on 1-2 cores, 3.8 GHz on 3 cores, and 3.7 GHz on all 4 cores. So technically, you could force it to always run at its maximum all core boost of 3.7 GHz by changing the multiplier and disabling speedstep. But there's a couple problems.

Most games rely on single core performance. They can still make use of other cores/threads, but they all depend on that one main thread to manage them. So most games would rather have 1 core at 3.9 and the rest at 3.5, rather than all 4 at 3.7. It's not universally true, some newer game engines have better multithreading, but it will depend on the game.

The other issue is related to power and temps. Disabling speedstep means it won't ever idle. It'll stay at max speed the entire time, which can cause overheating issues. You'd probably be fine even with a stock cooler, but expect the fans to get pretty loud and stay that way.

Out of curiosity, which games are giving your 4770 the most trouble?

Rust is a pain to run at max settings and so is PUBG.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

That probably explains it, both those games are still in development and have very inconsistent performance. Even across identical components. It's probably more of an optimization issue than resources. People have had to resort to tweaking all kinds of settings you would normally never touch, like core affinity. That should really be handled by the OS for a release product.

 

[prongs0611]

That probably explains it, both those games are still in development and have very inconsistent performance. Even across identical components. It's probably more of an optimization issue than resources. People have had to resort to tweaking all kinds of settings you would normally never touch, like core affinity. That should really be handled by the OS for a release product.

True, but I know for a fact that overclocking would increase my performance.

 

[goldstone77]

You have a non K model Processor. It's might overclock 100 or 200MHz higher than it's boost clock that is it. It won't amount to any perceivable performance gains. Some games that are not optimized or poorly optimized sometimes will not provide much performance enhancement even with overclocked processors. A 1070 is powerful, but even then you are likely GPU bound. Can you monitor CPU and GPU utilization while in game, and see if you are hitting 100% on either. That will let you know what is possible.