Should I be sad about my i7-4770? [Sort of solved, feel free to add]

Hardware CPU
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I have an i7-4770. I definitely need a new mobo, and this is making me worry about the future of my CPU socket..

is my 4770 okay? should I even sweat it?

if I upgrade, should I go, say, a 4790k? or skylake... or 7th gen?
Should I look at i7 or i5? Everyone's saying that Hyper-Threading will be necessary for DX12 games...

and If I don't choose 4th/5th gen, thats a different mobo...

As you can tell, I've got a lot going through my head. Some guidance or specific recommendations would be very appreciated.
Cheers guys and gals!

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Why?

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you're fine for now. One of my builds still uses an i5 3570k and a 970 (soon to be a 1060) and everything is fine at 1080p compared to my main rig witch has a i7 5820k and two 970s and getting basically the same fps at 1080p with sli turned off.
if you're going to upgrade you're motherboard id not stop there and upgrade the cpu and ram too and go with either an unlocked i5 skylake or the cheapest i7 skylake and a z170 board that way you're ready for kabylake, though in my honest opinion you're fine for at least one more gen

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see, going z170 sounds nice, but every time i look at gains from skylake and (speculated) kaby over broadwell and even haswell, all I can say is "meh." Intel loves money more than I love their new generations.

EDIT: Should point out that the only reason I would is CPU. new ram and more lanes is nice but not necessary for me.

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if you need a new mobo stay on socket 1150 and you'll be fine for years to come. right now you have hyper threading and if you get a decent cpu cooler like the 212 you can set the turbo as the normal clock speed of your 4770 and the gains from that will be greater then the gains from switching to z170 and the 6700. i suggest a asus board like the z97 A as the uefi makes it simple.

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ahh, I like the way you think. I think I'm going to do this. I don't feel comfortable with 14nm. It's a whole lotta money for a whole lotta meh.

Clock for clock, haswell, broadwell, and skylake have very similar fps, and since I don't do any editing or notably CPU intensive games, i wouldn't see those gains.

EDIT: Also, how do you do that, set the turbo boost clock to stay constant?

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im not sure if you can get away with h81/h or z87/h97 boards but i tested this with a locked cpu + z97 and it works. you should be able to get away with 3.901 and be sure to disable turbo or it'll try to go above 3.9

edit asus boards auto tune does it for you

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Im pretty sure Im getting a Gigabyte G1 z97.

having a non-k and a shit dell Mobo, I know next to nothing about messing with cpu clocks. is that something you do in the UEFI?

I gotta set it to 3.9, but not let it try to boost? why?

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I have the 4770k myself, and I can assure you that I won't ditch it for anything else for at least 2-3 years. I mostly game, but I video edit and render too and man it's fast.

The only thing that's sad about this socket is pci SSD compatibility, but if you can cope with that you'll have this cpu for years and years.

When you are finally ready to upgrade to a new platform in 2-3 years, take the 4770k, pair it with any gpu and use it as a livingroom, server,gaming setup.

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i have a non k though. which can mean over a 1 GHz difference, depending on the cooling and silicon

If the price delta is small enough, I may be able to sell the 4770 and get a 4790k.

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it's locked. if you tell it to go above 3.9 it wont. im unsure if it will crash or just boot at a lower clock speed, but it wont go above 3.9 for sure. the idea of base and boost clocks is the base is normal and the boost is temporary to let it get faster but not stay that fast. intel made these intending it to work in the hottest places on earth with a shitty intel cooler. with a actual decent cooler + you living somewhere that is not a desert, you can set the boost as the base clock. however if you dont turn off boost clock, the cpu will try to boost above the base clock then hit the intel lock and i dont know what will happen. i do know that intel messed up on the skylake chips and the only locked the multiplier not the blck or something like that allowing it to be sort of overclocked and they freaked out and pushed a update that locked them. intel will not allow overclocking on non k parts and trust me people have tried. that being said the turbo is where the lock is not the base so that can be upped.

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How do I set it to stay at 3.9? Is that a setting in the UEFI? I looked it up but google didn't know what I was talking about

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im using a asus board which has "EZ Mode" which does it all for you. you have 2 things that determine your clock speed. the blck(base clock) and the multiplier. you should be able to up the multiplier to hit 3.9. this will require a small amount of math and a decent cooler as you max temp will now be your normal temp and the stock intel cooler may not be sufficient. nothing spectacular like water cooling or one of the expensive ones, but a cheap one with a 120mm fan and copper heat pipes should be what you are aiming for. you should use the uefi to do this. their are software that can be used for this, but it has to run in the background all the time. this takes up less of the cpu and ram leaving more for games. every manufacture has a different uefi so step by step instructions depends on your motherboard. it should be the same as overclocking, except your limit is not the point where the cpu will die if you go any further, but 3.9

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I think you should keep it and save money for newer generations. I mean why pay 350$ for a 10% gain in IPC right now? Just keep it and, if you need to, buy a new motherboard for the time being.

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