Devil’s Canyon Review: Intel Core i7-4790K and i5-4690K

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• Timur Born - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link

  My 4770K needs 1.25 volts just to hit stable 4.2 GHz on all cores. So a 4790K looks tempting. On the other hand I can get 4.4 GHz Turbo out of my 4770K at single/dual core operation, so in essence it is the same thing, just using higher voltages than a stock 4790K. Worth paying lots of money for that? Not so sure.

• doggghouse - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  If you already have a 4770K, then buying a 4790K is basically just buying another ticket in the silicon lottery, unless you have a need for the extra enabled features (ex. VT-d). One good thing about 4790K is it's a higher binned chip, guaranteed to run at least 44-44-43-42 with default voltage (1.1v?). However, beyond that it may or may not have any overclocking headroom.

• Timur Born - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link

  I agree. My 4770K needs 1.1v stock, hardly reaches those 44-44-43-42 at 1.3v (jury is still out on stability) and doesn't go to 43-43-43-43 at *any* voltage. So any lottery can only be better than what I already got. ;)
  
  I'm haggling with a friend who might want my CPU. Else I might just wait for Broadwell.

• wrayj - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link

  I work in media production, and when dealing with 6k raw footage that must be decoded and debayered, our editing performance scales tremendously with more cores. The idea of an upcoming overclockable 8-core CPU with the fresh x99 platform is much more exciting to me than Devil's Canyon. Even at $1k, we're talking about a huge amount of value compared to xeon platforms.

• JanieEMontgomery - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link

  hyyy

• mfenn - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link

  Ian, you can't have your cake and eat it to when it comes to proselytizing your overclocking viewpoints. For example, in the very same page of this review, you make the following statements:
  
  " A fair number of regular end-users ... can be concerned about overclocking..."
  
  "To put the concept of 'overclocking death' into perspective: ... Out of the 250+ CPUs I own, I have only ever had one CPU fail."
  
  "Personally, I shudder when a user suggests a system is not stable unless it passes ‘72hr Large FFT Prime95’, because I have seen users irreparably damage their CPUs with it. "
  
  On the one hand you say that you've only broken one CPU by inputting wildly out of range values, the purpose of that statement is to tell people that they're probably not going to break their machine. On the other hand you're telling users that running a piece of application software could damage their (overclocked) CPUs.
  
  So is overclocking a safe an fun hobby or isn't it? You need to make up your mind before trying to convince people of your position.

• xeizo - Sunday, July 13, 2014 - link

  Well he didn't, or did he? He just shared his reality which isn't black or white. It's grey, like the reality is. Of course there is danger for damaging the hardware when overclocking, what Ian means is that when sensibly doing so there is very little risk but he also warns about ridiculous stability testing(not "application software") which makes the chance of damaging the hardware much more likely. When in doubt, don't OC, and when doing it for fun the risk is part of the fun. Really.

• DeathMetroll - Sunday, July 13, 2014 - link

  I'm currently using a I7 920@3.7Ghz, is it worth to go for a I5 4690K ? I'm just a gamer (BF4 and other 3D games)

• ZeDestructor - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  Wait till Skylake would be my opinion. You'll get an even better boost, and move up to DDR4 and other good stuff.

• DeathMetroll - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  Thanks for the answer, that's what I was thinkng about. But I don't know if I'm able to wait till then !!! ;)