Is the Intel i7 4790K good enough for 4K gaming?

[TommyRiley]

I currently have an i5 4690K which bottlenecks my GTX 1080 a lot. I just got a 4K monitor and was wondering what Intel CPU would be the best pair with the 1080 to play in 4K. Would the Intel i7 4790K be a good CPU to pair with the 1080?

Specs:
Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
ASRock Z97 Extreme3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Video Card
EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply

 

[WildCard999]

What issue are you having exactly? Low FPS? Stuttering? At a higher res most of the load is on the GPU and I would think a 4690K wouldn't be a issue for that 1080.

 

[jr9]

Is your card a 1080 or a 1080 Ti? 4K gaming is pretty unbelievably demanding and the only card I've ever seen able to handle 4K reliably is the 1080Ti or an SLI setup or going TITAN! You'll have to buy a new motherboard and RAM as well if you get a current CPU like Skylake or Kabylake. Your 3 best next moves IMO would be:

- Get another 1080GTX, a higher PSU power supply, and set up SLI. I like this path more as you don't have to bin or sell your 1080 for a stronger card.

- Start over on the Kabylake or Skylake platform with an ideal CPU like the 7700k or 8700k, or Ryzen 7 if you want to give AMD a try and save money. You'd need new RAM and a motherboard.

- Do nothing and deal with turning some settings down.

Also is your CPU maxed out during gaming? Have a look in task manager during gaming. If it is, then I'd lean more towards a CPU upgrade but still the regular 1080 has a hard time hitting 60 on 4K.

 

[TommyRiley]

Is your card a 1080 or a 1080 Ti? 4K gaming is pretty unbelievably demanding and the only card I've ever seen able to handle 4K reliably is the 1080Ti or an SLI setup or going TITAN! You'll have to buy a new motherboard and RAM as well if you get a current CPU like Skylake or Kabylake. Your 3 best next moves IMO would be:

- Get another 1080GTX, a higher PSU power supply, and set up SLI. I like this path more as you don't have to bin or sell your 1080 for a stronger card.

- Start over on the Kabylake or Skylake platform with an ideal CPU like the 7700k or 8700k, or Ryzen 7 if you want to give AMD a try and save money. You'd need new RAM and a motherboard.

- Do nothing and deal with turning some settings down.

Also is your CPU maxed out during gaming? Have a look in task manager during gaming. If it is, then I'd lean more towards a CPU upgrade but still the regular 1080 has a hard time hitting 60 on 4K.

I think the CPU is the big problem. It 100% in a lot of the games I play even at 1080p. I think that a CPU upgrade even if i'm not going to be getting 60 fps at 4K would make the games a lot more playable at 4K. Also 1440p is probably where I would settle if I wanted a solid 60 fps in most games.

 

[TommyRiley]

What issue are you having exactly? Low FPS? Stuttering? At a higher res most of the load is on the GPU and I would think a 4690K wouldn't be a issue for that 1080.

I get a lot of stuttering that brings the FPS down to 15 FPS while the cpu is at 100%

 

[WildCard999]

What issue are you having exactly? Low FPS? Stuttering? At a higher res most of the load is on the GPU and I would think a 4690K wouldn't be a issue for that 1080.

I get a lot of stuttering that brings the FPS down to 15 FPS while the cpu is at 100%

I see, yea the 4790K would help if you can find one for a good price.