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Intel Announces Devil's Canyon Core I7-4790K: 4GHz Base Clock, 4.4GHz Turbo
MojoKid (1002251) writes "Last year, Intel launched two new processor families based on the Haswell and Ivy Bridge-E based Core i7 architecture. Both chips were just incremental updates over their predecessors. Haswell may have delivered impressive gains in mobile, but it failed to impress on the desktop where it was only slightly faster than the chip it replaced. Enthusiasts weren't terribly excited about either core but Intel is hoping its new Devil's Canyon CPU, which launches today, will change that. The new chip is the Core i7-4790K and it packs several new features that should appeal to the enthusiast and overclocking markets. First, Intel has changed the thermal interface material from the paste it used in the last generation over to a new Next Generation Polymer Thermal Interface Material, or as Intel calls it, "NGPTIM." Moving Haswell's voltage regulator on-die proved to be a significant problem for overclockers since it caused dramatic heat buildup that was only exacerbated by higher clock speeds. Overclockers reported that removing Haswell's lid could boost clock speeds by several hundred MHz. The other tweak to the Haswell core is a great many additional capacitors, which have been integrated to smooth power delivery at higher currents. This new chip gives Haswell a nice lift. If the overclocking headroom delivers on top of that, enthusiasts might be able to hit 4.7-4.8GHz on standard cooling."
Why don't we ever read about more useful metrics, such as the amount of (floating-point) operations per second per $ of a given CPU?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Better yet, why get this *now* when you can wait til the price drops after the next iteration hits.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Better yet, why get this *now* when you can wait til the price drops after the next iteration hits.
If you wait ten years you can possibly get one from someone for free!!
There are always new parts coming soon, you eventually have to pull the trigger and buy at some point.
Lol, you do realize an i5-5370 is roughly twice as fast at video encoding compared to your old Q9450, right? Just because they haven't double the number of cores doesn't mean they haven't improved performance significantly in the consumer space.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm waiting for the Core i7 4860DX/2 66GHz.
Some of you early-adopters may laugh at this, but this has been my upgrade strategy for decades now and from a bang-for-the-buck perspective it's extremely effective.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Also announced were an i5 and a Pentium-branded Devil's Canyon processors. All three have the same TIM upgrade and overclocking focus. The i5-4690K is similar to the i7-4690K, dropping hyperthreading, a bit of cache and some stock clock, but for $100 cheaper ($242 instead of $339, if reports are accurate).
The really interesting one is the Pentium G3258. Two cores, no hyperthreading, but with an unlocked multiplier, for $72. If you care more about single-threaded performance than multi-threaded, this might be a very cool thing. Buy one, and a good aftermarket cooler, and overclock it into the 4GHz range. If your load is mainly single-threaded, like far too many games are, that can give you the same performance but be much, much cheaper.
My 2 year old Ivy Bridge Core i7 is fast enough, and will be fast enough for the foreseeable future with no overclocking. Neither Intel nor AMD will get any money from me for at least 3 more years ;)
Last time an overclock was meaningful for me was when I had a Pentium 1 at 233 Mhz. The bus was 66 Mhz, and that was the ram speed as well. Upping it to 250 Mhz on a 100 Mhz bus (remember back when multipliers went in 0.5 steps?) speed greatly improved the overall responsiveness of the system.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
When Ivy Bridge came out, popular Sandy Bridge chips' prices went up and Intel also bumped Ivy Bridge chip prices up $10-20.
When Haswell came out, many of the more popular Ivy Bridge chips went up $10-20 again.
How many years has it been since the last time Intel made major price cut announcements after introducing newer higher-end models within a product line or even introducing a new product line? I do not remember reading about such announcements in over five years; instead of slashing prices, Intel simply discontinues models altogether. If you want to buy Intel chips at prices significantly below launch prices, you have to either buy second-hand or find a vendor who has surplus stock they need to get rid of. (Or buy from Microcenter which appears to have some sort of sweetheart deal with Intel for unlocked chips.)
3D Animator here. I made the same mistake as you, thinking my 2.8GHz i7 920 (overclocked to 3.7GHz) would be as fast a current 3.7GHz i7. Each new generation of i7 has been ~5% faster clock for clock. For example my new i7 laptop at 2.6GHz is roughly the same speed as my desktop at 3.7GHz in both single and multi threaded tasks.
Some of you early-adopters may laugh at this, but this has been my upgrade strategy for decades now and from a bang-for-the-buck perspective it's extremely effective.
It's not just about the bang, either, but about the boon or the bane. If you wait for a while, you get to see whether something has massive fail built into it. When I buy based on hope I usually fail. When I buy based on what seems to have held up, I am usually happy. Leaving time for the 1.1 or 2.0 rev motherboard and some bios updates, and for some video driver updates, really improves system stability.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've been waiting years for the quad-core 65W Socket 775 CPUs to come down. The Q9550S was released in January of 2009 and still goes for over $200. Meanwhile the Core 2 Duo in the system I would upgrade is working fine; I just check ebay a couple times per year to see if I can pick up a quad core for cheap, but no.
Yup. I usually buy somewhat trailing edge stuff myself.
A friends aunt once asked what kind of computer she should buy, and she said "you're going to tell me to buy the most expensive computer around, aren't you?". To which I said "nope, I'm going to tell you to buy the cheapest machine you can find which can have its memory upgraded to at least double what entry level is, because you don't need anything faster, but more memory is always better".
Several years later, she was still happily running the same machine, and never once found it too slow. She had passed on the advice to several friends, all of whom felt they ended up with a better computer as a result.
I know for me, I'm pretty much never CPU bound, and haven't been in quite some time. Memory, however, is something you should buy as much as the machine can hold.
I know some people will need this much CPU power, but for most people I suspect CPU speed hasn't really mattered in years. The early adopters just ensure that in a year or so we'll all be able to buy it for half the cost.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Or, with just a small amount of risk, you can get one for free soon after they are released...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Quite possibly, but by then, the memory modules will cost you an arm and a leg! (Or an x86 and a leg?)
Ezekiel 23:20