Question Should I upgrade my i5-4690K for gaming?

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Blu3_Puls3

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Jan 19, 2015
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System Specs:

GTX970
i5-4690K cpu
16 GB DDR3 RAM
H97-PLUS Motherboard
TX650 psu


So lately my games been kinda stuttering, mainly newer games such as Resident Evil 2, Darksiders 3, Monster Hunter World for example. This is at any setting regardless of high or low. I had this build made in 2015 of January so it is 4 years old now. The reason why I think I may need to upgrade my cpu is because for the last 3 years, I only had one fan running in the case and that was in the very front. This resulted in my PC getting pretty hot as I was able to tell just by touching it. I might've damaged my cpu overtime. I don't know how the temperatures were because I recently installed 3 brand new case fans and now its very cool. However my games still stutter/freeze.

I'm not entirely sure how reliable the i5-4690K is today with games being more complex and intensive so should I upgrade my cpu? I don't really have a budget in mind, I can go to maybe $300 range. In terms of what settings I play they run at 1080p 60fps with Vsync on due to an HDTV as my monitor.

If yes, you guys have any specific ideas in mind? Budget isn't too much of an issue.
 
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MrN1ce9uy said:
Since you have an H-series mobo (no overclocking) I'd say sure, plan your next major CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrade. Would your budget be the same?
Click to expand...
I don't really have any specific type of budget. I could probably go to $400-$500. And I do know that I will have to upgrade some parts within the next year or so, so I may as well start looking into it.
 
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400-500 is not enough. Depends what you are aiming for. And even for gaming it may be wise to just get a i7 on sale.
I just upgraded my 7 years old motherboard and it cost me like 600-700 euro. But I went for quality and high end, but cheap/strong RAM also.
Maybe you can save a buck but will lose a lot of fps especially at lower resolutions with a Ryzen build.

Now to your issue, try to clean your PC and keep the case open until you either get better airflow or indefinitely, keeping it open won't kill you unless you live in the desert and have sand or dust all around all the time.
Secondly a Intel CPU can run at 105 and not die. At that point it shuts down the system to protect itself from damage.
Third, those titles are kinda shit and require a lot of power, you barely have the GPU for it also.

Check your temps, blow the dust, keep it open. Run benchmarks for temps. If it's below 80 you're 100% fine. Check your fps and usage of CPU and GPU. Also I'm not sure what PSU you really have, is it high quality?
Stuttering can also happen due to bad vsync gsync. Or maybe your PC is too weak to run those games at higher settings. After you do that come back with the results.
 
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*I suppose you will probably need a CPU cooler also, at least for the Intel build.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-9600K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor ($261.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock - Z390 Extreme4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($139.99 @ Newegg Business)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $521.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-02-19 08:27 EST-0500

or

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor ($164.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus - STRIX B350-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard ($115.00 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $399.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-02-19 08:28 EST-0500
 
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Just out of curiosity, what antivirus are you running? Do you have a SSD as a system drive?

AVG/Avast have been giving me stuttering trouble lately while gaming, and it drove me crazy trying to figure it out because games USED to run so smoothly. The last couple Nvidia drivers gave me some trouble with my GTX 970 as well.

That said, we have a 3570k and a 3770k in the family and both are still fairly competent gaming machines. They are beginning to show their age/lack of cores in multitasking situations, though.
 
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dudeman509 said:
Just out of curiosity, what antivirus are you running? Do you have a SSD as a system drive?

AVG/Avast have been giving me stuttering trouble lately while gaming, and it drove me crazy trying to figure it out because games USED to run so smoothly. The last couple Nvidia drivers gave me some trouble with my GTX 970 as well.

That said, we have a 3570k and a 3770k in the family and both are still fairly competent gaming machines. They are beginning to show their age/lack of cores in multitasking situations, though.
Click to expand...
I rolled back the nvidia drivers a bit to 399 version but no luck. I just switched from Avast to AVG, and even disabled it but no luck there either. I even tried running the games off an SSD and still no difference. I been doing some benchmarking with MSI afterburner and I notice my GPU usage may be close to 100% then t would drop to below 20, causing it to freeze/stutter. I didn't notice anything too off for the CPU, all cores were being used and the temperatures were fine.
 
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Cioby said:
400-500 is not enough. Depends what you are aiming for. And even for gaming it may be wise to just get a i7 on sale.
I just upgraded my 7 years old motherboard and it cost me like 600-700 euro. But I went for quality and high end, but cheap/strong RAM also.
Maybe you can save a buck but will lose a lot of fps especially at lower resolutions with a Ryzen build.

Now to your issue, try to clean your PC and keep the case open until you either get better airflow or indefinitely, keeping it open won't kill you unless you live in the desert and have sand or dust all around all the time.
Secondly a Intel CPU can run at 105 and not die. At that point it shuts down the system to protect itself from damage.
Third, those titles are kinda shit and require a lot of power, you barely have the GPU for it also.

Check your temps, blow the dust, keep it open. Run benchmarks for temps. If it's below 80 you're 100% fine. Check your fps and usage of CPU and GPU. Also I'm not sure what PSU you really have, is it high quality?
Stuttering can also happen due to bad vsync gsync. Or maybe your PC is too weak to run those games at higher settings. After you do that come back with the results.
Click to expand...
Do you think a Thermal Throttle could be a problem for me? Like I said in my original post I haven't changed it and for the last few years my PC did get very hot so i don't know if that wore down the thermal or not. Should I try cleaning the thermal paste and reapply a new one?
 
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Avast and AVG actually use the same engine.

Run with just Windows Defender for a bit and see if your gaming performance fixes itself. I noticed the stuttering mostly in Forza 7, but I don't play any of the games that you mentioned.

Thermal throttling - leave HWMonitor open while playing a game. See what it says the max temp is when you quit.
 
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dudeman509 said:
Avast and AVG actually use the same engine.

Run with just Windows Defender for a bit and see if your gaming performance fixes itself. I noticed the stuttering mostly in Forza 7, but I don't play any of the games that you mentioned.

Thermal throttling - leave HWMonitor open while playing a game. See what it says the max temp is when you quit.
Click to expand...
The MAX temp is around 54 degrees C. My temperatures says its fine even with AVG disabled. I'm at a lost here.
 
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Did you check the temps on both CPU and GPU? That's seems way too low for gaming unless you have great airflow and thermal paste applied.
Also check CPU and GPU usage during the game. Just get MSI afterburner and put on-screen display
 
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Goto motherboard manufacturers website. Get the latest motherboard chipset drivers, especially audio and Lan. If you've not gotten those in a hot minute, chances are good you are suffering driver conflicts with recent Win10CE updates. The quarterly major updates are particularly nasty.
 
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Cioby said:
Did you check the temps on both CPU and GPU? That's seems way too low for gaming unless you have great airflow and thermal paste applied.
Also check CPU and GPU usage during the game. Just get MSI afterburner and put on-screen display
Click to expand...
Benchmark Test This is a benchmark test playing Resident Evil 2 with medium settings on 1080p resolution. Notice how the gpu usage goes up and down alot?
 
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Blu3_Puls3 said:
Benchmark Test This is a benchmark test playing Resident Evil 2 with medium settings on 1080p resolution. Notice how the gpu usage goes up and down alot?
Click to expand...
Um, you do realize you're using the maximum allocated VRAM your 970 has, right? Try to lower the size of the textures by one unit so you're using like 3.5GB of VRAM or so. Also didn't the 970 have issues with the last 500 MB of VRAM? Like they were slower?
 
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Can't really go by usage as such. Open world field of grass is brutal on a gpu, high usage, go through a stairwell and usage plummets with lack of details. Even the same scene, one with an explosion will result in drastically different usage. It's all determined by the game code, details, detail settings, lighting etc and changes from frame to frame.

Cpu sets fps, gpu lives upto that limit. Play a scene for 10 minutes at medium, then replay the same scene again at ultra. If fps really didn't change much at all, then the cpu is maxed out for fps as the gpu can do either details. If the fps drops dramatically, then the gpu isn't handling its business and the cpu is fine.

Usage depends on threads. Very easy to be at 60% usage and capped out, that as much of the cpu the game code requires, but the game code is maxing out that 60% at low fps. That's common with new titles, they are badly optimized. Assassins Creed is notorious for this, very long code strings of info, that don't use many threads. Tends to make for low fps, but also low cpu usage as a result.
 
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Cioby said:
Um, you do realize you're using the maximum allocated VRAM your 970 has, right? Try to lower the size of the textures by one unit so you're using like 3.5GB of VRAM or so. Also didn't the 970 have issues with the last 500 MB of VRAM? Like they were slower?
Click to expand...
Yes, vram usage over 3.5GB uses the slower 500MB that Nvidia included in the GTX 970 and causes performance loss and "dramatic stutter." https://www.pcgamer.com/why-nvidias-gtx-970-slows-down-using-more-than-35gb-vram/
 
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MrN1ce9uy said:
*I suppose you will probably need a CPU cooler also, at least for the Intel build.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-9600K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor ($261.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock - Z390 Extreme4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($139.99 @ Newegg Business)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $521.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-02-19 08:27 EST-0500

or

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor ($164.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus - STRIX B350-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard ($115.00 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $399.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-02-19 08:28 EST-0500
Click to expand...


I own the 4690K and yes it is in need of an upgrade.

Make sure your Win 10 license is connected to your M$ account. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530/windows-10-reactivating-after-hardware-change prior to your hardware change.

I like the first build.

What's the difference between a like and a thumbs up?
 
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Blu3_Puls3 said:
Benchmark Test This is a benchmark test playing Resident Evil 2 with medium settings on 1080p resolution. Notice how the gpu usage goes up and down alot?
Click to expand...

Which benchmark test was that? Did you perform the test multiple times and with multiple utilities? 1 test is never enough and a second(or third...) opinion is always needed to avoid kneejerks.

With 4068MB of VRAM being used I would expect issues because the 970 only has 4GB(3.5+.5 slower).

I suggest a 1070 Ti first and then move on to a new foundation.
 
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aquielisunari said:
Which benchmark test was that? Did you perform the test multiple times and with multiple utilities? 1 test is never enough and a second(or third...) opinion is always needed to avoid kneejerks.

With 4068MB of VRAM being used I would expect issues because the 970 only has 4GB(3.5+.5 slower).

I suggest a 1070 Ti first and then move on to a new foundation.
Click to expand...
This isn't a bad idea (GPU upgrade) since you are using all your vram and the GTX 970 has .5GB of slower vram. Not sure if I'd choose the GTX 1070 Ti, maybe an RX 1060.
 
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MrN1ce9uy said:
This isn't a bad idea (GPU upgrade) since you are using all your vram and the GTX 970 has .5GB of slower vram. Not sure if I'd choose the GTX 1070 Ti, maybe an RX 1060.
Click to expand...

That just wouldn't do it for me with me being the key word there. Looking at user benchmark the 1060 seems like it will offer a 10% average boost in performance but the 1070 Ti offers a 40 or 50% performance boost. The 1070 Ti seems to be a better value but that is just one site. Always get a second opinion.
 
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aquielisunari said:
That just wouldn't do it for me with me being the key word there. Looking at user benchmark the 1060 seems like it will offer a 10% average boost in performance but the 1070 Ti offers a 40 or 50% performance boost. The 1070 Ti seems to be a better value but that is just one site. Always get a second opinion.
Click to expand...
Userbenchmark tests in DirectX10. Virtually no AAA games use DX10 today. Not a good benchmark to compare GPUs. Compare 3DMark FireStrike scores (DX11) or TimeSpy (DX12).

 
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