Note: I'm writing this as a blog post, rather than a question in the CPU subforum because its more of a rant/speaking my mind question rather than a direct question with a direct answer. Mods, feel free to move it to CPU if you feel its nessesary.
Windows and dualbooting with Linux in general has been annoying me more and more recently and I was thinking about trying hardware passthrough to use Linux full time, but still be able run Windows games.
My system has a 4770K which I have OC'd to 4.5Ghz with an H100i. (16GB RAM, 780 TI). I'm dualbooting Antergos (Arch) and Windows 10 Pro.
Unfortunatly the 4770K doesn't support Intel VT-d, however my brother has a pre-built Lenovo system that has a 4770 non K chip. My thought was to maybe swap the CPUs and use his 4770. Buying a 4790K would be an option as my Asus Z87-K should support one, but its still $400+ (yay, Canadian rupees). Another option would be to upgrade my system to Ryzen 5 or 7, but even that would cost me over $600 CAD (16GB DDR4 + 1600X + MSI Tomahawk B350). Sure, I would get a faster system, but I don't really need to upgrade right now and $600 for hardware passthrough on a platform that has squirelly IOMMU groupings isn't very wise.
I could try Wine. The only game I really play on a day-to-day basis is Overwatch. I saw on Reddit that someone kind of got it to work, but it wasn't really easy/stable. Another problem with this is the possibility of getting my account banned due to unsupported OS and whatever else Blizzard's anticheat comes up with.
Something else I thought of is possibly fixing an AMD FX 8320 CPU I have laying around. Got it from a friend for free but its missing a pin. I have some other AMD CPUs I could steal pins from, so surgury shouldn't be too difficult. I would need to buy a AM3+ motherboard for it though. But then the question is whether this is worth it or not due it being a slower CPU than what I have. I may actually do this anyway, whether I'm replacing the current system or not, but spending $100 on a motherboard for a CPU that may not work is a bit of a risk.
My internal conflict is that I paid for an overclockable chip and won't really be able to use it if I swap. I also have the watercooler which is kind of wasted on a non-OC chip. There is also the matter of how much performance would I lose going from a 4.5 GHz overclock down to 3.5 stock with a boost to 3.9. Probably not much and not noticeable, but it still feels wrong to me.
So basically, swap the CPUs and gain the VT-d and lose performance due to a lack of overlock and also the wrong feeling of wasted money on a CPU that won't get overclocked again.
Seems like the whole thing comes down to one question "How much is VT-d worth to me?".
So are everyone else's thoughts on this?
Thanks for reading.