Is the i7 4970K worth if even if you are not going to overclock?

[john52200]

I saw something interesting the 4790 is 3.5GHZ base and 4790K is 4.0 GHZ base.

The 4790 can do 4 GHZ only with turbo boost but I am going out on a limb here and going to assume this makes it rather inferior to the K since turbo boost don't even work on all 4 cores and is nothing like a CPU manually clocked to 4 GHZ?

 

[atomicWAR]

if you have no plan to overclock i think its not worth the money for an extra 500mhz...unless you plan on a lot of video editing or gaming with multiple GPU's then save some cash and get the locked version.

 

[TechyInAZ]

While 4.0ghz on all 4 cores is nice, 3.5 and 4.0ghz isn't much of a difference. If you want to save, still go with the 4790.

 

[theunliked]

I would get the 4790 like atomicWAR said. The non-K version is pretty powerful in itself.

 

[mrmike_49]

it's not too hard to overclock a K to 4.5GHz, THAT is a big increase over non K @ 3.5GHz, that's a 28% speed increase for a 14% increase in cost

 

[Tradesman1]

The price difference is slight and down the road it's like having a free CPU upgrade already sitting there waiting for you 😉

 

[Johan Kryger Haglert]

I saw something interesting the 4790 is 3.5GHZ base and 4790K is 4.0 GHZ base.

The 4790 can do 4 GHZ only with turbo boost but I am going out on a limb here and going to assume this makes it rather inferior to the K since turbo boost don't even work on all 4 cores and is nothing like a CPU manually clocked to 4 GHZ?

I wouldn't buy the i7 4790 instead of the i7 4790K.

It's clocked 1/10 less / the 4790K is clocked 11% higher and doesn't cost as much more. It's also more future proof since you can overclock it.

I wanted to say i7 4790 was a useless product and that I don't get why it even exist but supposedly it has support for trusted computing so if you need that and want integrated graphics that's your choice I guess.

If you just want to save the money and still have a hyper-threaded four core chip there's the Xeon E3 1231v3 which cost quite a bit less than the 4790, it's 3.4 rather than 3.6 GHz but at least the price difference against the i7 4790K is higher.
That's of course a server CPU so it have some other features among others support for ECC RAM. On the other hand it lacks the integrated graphics so I guess that make up the price difference.

Here's a comparison of all three:
http://ark.intel.com/sv/compare/80910,80807,80806

Personally I wouldn't consider the i7 4790.

If you're not going to over-clock and will use dedicated graphics then I think the E3 1231v3 is a good alternative to the i5 4690K. The i7 4790K is still a stronger chip and over-clockable so I don't really want to put that as equal to the E3 1231v3 or say that the E3 1231v3 is better choice.

 

[Johan Kryger Haglert]

it's not too hard to overclock a K to 4.5GHz, THAT is a big increase over non K @ 3.5GHz, that's a 28% speed increase for a 14% increase in cost

Here in Sweden the price increase is more like 7% so I don't see why one would ever consider the i7 4790.
Except the "I need to have trusted computing"-part.

 

[rmpumper]

Get the K version. You might change your mind and decide to get an extra free 500mhz bump on it (that would be +1ghz over non K), + the resale value will be a lot better.