Is it worth it to upgrade to the current generation of intels cpu i7 8700k over the 4970k for 1440p and 4k gaming? I seen some improvement’s in framerates where the 8700k helped gaming at 4k resolution. But can’t help but wonder if it’s at all worth it to upgrade considering that 4k monitors do not go a above the 60 to 75 hertz refresh rate.
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Short answer - no…
Long answer:
https://tpucdn.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i7_8700K/images/perfrel_3840_2160.png
The difference between Ryzen3 1200, i7 8700K and everything in-between is within the margin of error.
https://tpucdn.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i7_8700K/images/perfrel_1920_1080.png
At 1440p there is slightly larger margin, but again, we are talking 10% difference between R3 1200 for 100$ and i7 8700 for 380$…
No dude, it’s not worth the investment in entirely new platform if the goal is gaming…
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Your 4790K should still be enough for gaming, it’s comparable to an OC’d R5 1400.
Wow that makes the 4790k about a 150$ chip now. I guess 200$ was a fair price for it used.
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I wouldn’t think so. Im running a 4670K and see no point in upgrading, at this point.
It largely depends in the use case. If you are performing tasks that take advantage of more cores than you have, it may be worth it.
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Worth it? For gaming? Maybe, if you were running on a Core 2 Quad or a Sandy Bridge i5, but failing that, there’s no real point. I was running a 2600K until recently and even though it’s 6 years old, it still goes toe-to-toe with all the modern stuff if you overclock it to say, 4.5GHz, and doing that on Sandy Bridge is child’s play.
Haswell is fine.
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GTX780 reviews: OMG, 4K is actually feasible…
GTX Titan: 4K is actually playable.
GTX 980: OMG, 4K with playable framerate.
GTX Titan XP: WoW, finally playable 4K…
GTX1080, 1080Ti…
Maybe Volta will finally give us 4K…
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it seems like a game of cat and mouse between graphics card designers and game devs, because as soon as a new series of cards comes out, video memory usage in new games goes through the roof.
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The GTX 1080 Ti can do 4K.
So did the 980Ti back in the day, and the 780Ti before it…
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Most modern CPUs with at least four physical cores at 3+GHz are sufficient for gaming, even more so when you up the resolution and shift responsibilities to the GPU. A 4790K has eight threads and 4.4 turbo. That’s enough horsepower for at least a couple generations of graphics cards.
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No, it isn’t. It isn’t worth it under any circumstances, really.
Here is what I think and yes, I am making assumptions here:
The Intel side
The 8700k is the maximum performance Intel can squeeze out of six cores. I don’t think there is any headroom left. It is still skylake mostly with optimized production process (kaby) and added two cores (covfefe). We are hitting 5GHz on some of those chips, as we saw on kaby lake. But you can only optimize so much. The increase from 6700k to 7700k was already marginal at best. So, the only way to get even more performance would be adding even more cores.
Here is the problem: Some of these Z370 boards have VRM designs that are subpar for overclocked six cores and will explode if someone just mentions eight cores. I honestly don’t think all of these boards were meant to be Z370. The specs for those boards given out by Intel can not be meant for high frequency or more cores, let alone both. I mean, just look at this:
That looks worse than some B350 boards. Yes, this is the cheapest Z370 board at alternate (still 115,- bucks) and it is the worst example I could find. But it is not the only one.
Intel is packing every single die that isn’t completely broken just to get some chips out the door as fast as possible. Think about how different some oc results were. That is not the Intel way, usually we should be seeing very consistent maximum clocks.
I think they want to just get this over with and move on, I think Z370 is the stop gap and we might see only very few lower budget boards, if any. I also think there won’t be any upgrade path for Z370 at all.
The AMD side
Ryzen is doing fine and still improving. There are still some things to improve on, the memory controller needs work, the clock rates have to go up. Both is manageable with coming iterations of the architecture. Meanwhile the boards are already designed for eight cores, at least at stock speeds. And AM4 is here to stay, 2020 was AMDs plan and I don’t see that changing.
TL;DR
Buy Covfefe Lake and you are already stuck.
Buy B350 or X370 and enjoy what is about to come.
… that became way more text than I wanted to write.
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Yeah the new intel boards remind me of eMachines. Remember those old memes? But I guess that the 4790k will last well into 2024. Wow that is some predicting Maybe we will actually have optical traces in our mother boards by then. And oil cooled machines like what razer made. That would be a dream come true.
AdoredTV shines some more light on Intels newest BS:
Well of course a i7 that has fewer more cores and fewer more threads and has a stock clock of 5ghz. It’s gonna be better than a 4790k any day of the week because it is preactaclly a xenon chip. But are you gonna wanna overclock above 5ghz?
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I commented before I watched the video.
Well that is what happens when you react to fast to competition in the market.
Why am I not surprised? Oh, right. Because Intel’s got a pretty rich history of pulling off crap even worse than this. They cheat even when they don’t have any competition. They cheat A LOT when competition appears.
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