What CPU should I buy?

[Wild Cobra]

What CPU should I buy? My motherboard uses the LGA 1150 and I already have the i7-4790. I'm looking for single thread performance, and the only CPU I have seen that is better is the i7-4790K. It would only be an upgrade from 3.6 ghz to 4.0 ghz.

Is the a better processor available than the i7-4790K for my motherboard... for single thread performance?

Damn games that only utilize one core...

[baseline bum]

What CPU should I buy? My motherboard uses the LGA 1150 and I already have the i7-4790. I'm looking for single thread performance, and the only CPU I have seen that is better is the i7-4790K. It would only be an upgrade from 3.6 ghz to 4.0 ghz.

Is the a better processor available than the i7-4790K for my motherboard... for single thread performance?

Damn games that only utilize one core...

The i7-4790k is probably the best. If you're on an H series board that will run 4.4 GHz on single or dual core loads, while your i7-4790 runs at 4.0 GHz on those kind of loads, so 10% is nothing to scoff at. With a Z-series board you can usually overclock a i7-4790k to 4.6 GHz on so on all cores, though if you get a lousy chip that needs lots of voltage you might need a heavy duty water cooler like an NZXT Kraken x61 if you can fit a 280 mm radiator in the top exhaust of your case, or something like a Corsair H100i GTX if you can only fit a 240 mm radiator. The 120mm and 140mm watercoolers are shit, you're better off with air coolers then. If you get a really good chip you can get it to maybe 4.8 GHz on all cores on one of these highend watercoolers or a highend air cooler like a Noctua NH-D15.

It's a hot running chip sometimes. Even if you're just running it at stock you might want to pick up a cheap aftermarket cooler like a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, as this chip can sometimes run as high as 1.275V vcore even at stock. If you get a chip that bad the bundled stock cooler is going to have a hard time dissipating that much heat. Another thing, if you're using it on an H81 board you might not be able to run even the stock full speed (you certainly won't be able to overclock), as many H81 boards will only handle up to 1.2V vcore.

I wouldn't bother with the new Broadwell chips like the i7-5775c. That only boosts up to 3.8 GHz on single and dual core loads, and isn't known to be as good of an overclocker as the 4790k is. Plus they're expensive as hell because of the integrated Iris Pro graphics.

[baseline bum]

The Pentium G3258 can also be a real monster on single and dual core workloads. These can often be overclocked up to 4.7 - 5.0 GHz, though only with a Z97 board to get that high an overclock. But it's such an enormous step down from your i7-4790 in any kind of workload that uses more than two cores.

[ElNono]

what bum said, although if you're not going to OC, the 400Mhz bump might be relatively negligible on single core...

[baseline bum]

what bum said, although if you're not going to OC, the 400Mhz bump might be relatively negligible on single core...

I wouldn't pay $315 for the 10-15% or so higher clockrate one could expect with a 4790k. If I was going to spend that much might as well go all out and get a 6700k, a Z170 board, a good cooler, and a couple of sticks of DDR4-3000 RAM. Skylake can has jumps over Haswell clock for clock, probably thanks in no small part to the higher bandwidth of DDR4. Check out this video from Digital Foundry: Far Cry 4 is known to be very dominated by the performance on a single thread (one is almost always above 90% usage while the rest are much lower) when not GPU bound, and the Skylake 6700k beats the Haswell 4790k by 15%-20% in it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sx1kLGVAF0

[ElNono]

The other thing you can do is bug the developers to do a DX12 port... that's supposed to scale really well with multicore...

[baseline bum]

The other thing you can do is bug the developers to do a DX12 port... that's supposed to scale really well with multicore...

I heard only if you build it from the ground up as DX12.

[Wild Cobra]

If 10% is all I'll get, I'm not going to bother upgrading to a processor that's almost $400.

My computer is nothing special. It's the Dell XPS 8700. I paid just under $900 for it January last year.

Windows 7 Professional 64 bit.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 720 (http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-720/specifications) w/1GB

16x DVD rewriter (https://tsstodd.com/eng/Products/Spec/?functionvalue=view&parent_idx=4133&level_idx=4524)

16x Blu-ray Disc Rewriter (http://www.lg.com/us/burners-drives/lg-BH16NS40-internal-blu-ray-dvd-drive) (added after buying)

Barracuda Desktop 6-Gb/s 1TB Hard Drive (http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/barracuda-fam/desktop-hdd/barracuda-7200-14/en-us/docs/100686584r.pdf)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB (http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda%207200.12/100529369b.pdf) (came from my Lenovo desktop I purchased in June 2010)

Came with 2 x 4 GB memory, upgraded to 4 x 8 GB.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x262/Wild_Cobra/Misc/5e8517c4-4958-4f45-b888-fa8a6b3bd2cd_zpsbwtjf15x.jpg

Lots of room for a larger fan. It would really rock if I got a better graphics card!

The 720 hasn't chocked on anything I do though.

[ElNono]

I heard only if you build it from the ground up as DX12.

Nah, you can port it over, but that's without using DX12 specific features. If you want better integration, then yeah, you need to drill down further.

Here's an article from Square Enix about that:
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/square-enix-on-dx12-it-took-around-three-weeks-to-get-the-basic-rendering-working-on-directx-12/

[Wild Cobra]

I wouldn't pay $315 for the 10-15% or so higher clockrate one could expect with a 4790k. If I was going to spend that much might as well go all out and get a 6700k, a Z170 board, a good cooler, and a couple of sticks of DDR4-3000 RAM. Skylake can has jumps over Haswell clock for clock, probably thanks in no small part to the higher bandwidth of DDR4. Check out this video from Digital Foundry: Far Cry 4 is known to be very dominated by the performance on a single thread (one is almost always above 90% usage while the rest are much lower) when not GPU bound, and the Skylake 6700k beats the Haswell 4790k by 15%-20% in it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sx1kLGVAF0

What I want single core speeds for are the math functions. Not graphics.

Besides, according to PassMark, my i7-4790 isn't much slower than the i7-6700K, and they are not compatible sockets. K version vs. K version has the 4790K at 2530 and the 6700K at 2326 for the single thread rating.

I was looking for a significant change that will drop right in my current motherboard.

PassMark has the 4790K at the very top of the Single Thread performance, with my 4790 in 7th place:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

[baseline bum]

Lots of room for a larger fan. It would really rock if I got a better graphics card!

The 720 hasn't chocked on anything I do though.

With all the RAM you have your integrated graphics on the 4790 is probably better than your GT 720. I couldn't find the GT 720 benchmark here, but the HD Graphics 4600 is only 1% behind the GT 730.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GeForce-GT-730-vs-Intel-HD-4600-Desktop-125-GHz/m12582vs2168

I was surprised to see they'd put a Z87 board in the XPS 8700, but they do. So you'd be able to use a 4790k to its full speed, though you'd want to buy a low profile cooler for it, assuming Dell motherboards can use standard compliant Intel coolers. If you get a better gpu you may need a bigger power supply. Dell's power supplies are pretty good quality (usually made by Delta), but if it's less the 350W you might have a hard time running say a GTX 960 off of it. Though AMD is supposed to have a really low power GPU coming in around June called Polaris 10 that seems to be about on par with a GTX 950 while using about 45W.

[baseline bum]

What I want single core speeds for are the math functions. Not graphics.

Besides, according to PassMark, my i7-4790 isn't much slower than the i7-6700K, and they are not compatible sockets. K version vs. K version has the 4790K at 2530 and the 6700K at 2326 for the single thread rating.

I was looking for a significant change that will drop right in my current motherboard.

PassMark has the 4790K at the very top of the Single Thread performance, with my 4790 in 7th place:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

Those CPUs in that video above aren't used for graphics, they're used for physics, AI, draw calls, stuff like that. The graphics are all done by the Titan X they paired it with. I hope the devs behind Kerbal are using AVX2 heavily if they're not going to multithread, as almost all the recent advances in Intel cpus (other than moar corez and power consumption) have been for vector operations.

[Wild Cobra]

With all the RAM you have your integrated graphics on the 4790 is probably better than your GT 720. I couldn't find the GT 720 benchmark here, but the HD Graphics 4600 is only 1% behind the GT 730.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GeForce-GT-730-vs-Intel-HD-4600-Desktop-125-GHz/m12582vs2168

I was surprised to see they'd put a Z87 board in the XPS 8700, but they do. So you'd be able to use a 4790k to its full speed, though you'd want to buy a low profile cooler for it, assuming Dell motherboards can use standard compliant Intel coolers. If you get a better gpu you may need a bigger power supply. Dell's power supplies are pretty good quality (usually made by Delta), but if it's less the 350W you might have a hard time running say a GTX 960 off of it. Though AMD is supposed to have a really low power GPU coming in around June called Polaris 10 that seems to be about on par with a GTX 950 while using about 45W.

It's a 460 watt.

[baseline bum]

It's a 460 watt.

You should be fine then with any Nvidia 900 series card other than a GTX 980 Ti or Titan X, though probably no need if you're just playing KSP.

[DJR210]

You already got a pretty bad ass CPU, even if it aint the unlocked version.. If you simply must upgrade get the 5960X I believe it's the most powerful As its usually the processor used for benchmarking from what I've seen..

I don't think any processor is worth a grand or more though.

[baseline bum]

You already got a pretty bad ass CPU, even if it aint the unlocked version.. If you simply must upgrade get the 5960X I believe it's the most powerful As its usually the processor used for benchmarking from what I've seen..

I don't think any processor is worth a grand or more though.

You'd have to have a golden 5960x watercooled to compete with even an average 4790k in single and dual core workloads.

[DJR210]

If I was building today I'd go with the 4790k anyway.. I've seen overclock vids pushing 6 Ghz iirc

[baseline bum]

If I was building today I'd go with the 4790k anyway.. I've seen overclock vids pushing 6 Ghz iirc

On liquid nitrogen on one core? If you're impressed by that I have seen Pentium G3258's at 7.5 GHz on one core. :lol

[Wild Cobra]

I put out feelers with a few local people. If someone wants to buy a used i7-4790 for a reasonable price, I'll buy the 4790K. I'm not going to pay ~$340 without first knowing I'll, get some back. The added performance from 3.6 to 4 ghz isn't worth the full price to me.

[Wild Cobra]

I'm also contemplating buying two 2 TB hard drives. I get the message: "The disk where your backups are being saved doesn't have enough free space." I figure I'll replace the 500 GB I'm using for backup with a 2 TB, and clone what I already have to the other 2 TB. Then put windows 10 on the 1 TB, and have a dual boot.

Thoughts?

[DJR210]

I put out feelers with a few local people. If someone wants to buy a used i7-4790 for a reasonable price, I'll buy the 4790K. I'm not going to pay ~$340 without first knowing I'll, get some back. The added performance from 3.6 to 4 ghz isn't worth the full price to me.

Are you looking to overclock the processor? 4 Ghz is stock speed, so unless you're gonna push that 4790K to 4.8-4.9 Ghz (should be possible on air cooling) why bother? My 3570K is overclocked to 4.5 Ghz now and tbh I think I saw a gain of like 5 FPS or less when I benched

[Wild Cobra]

Are you looking to overclock the processor? 4 Ghz is stock speed, so unless you're gonna push that 4790K to 4.8-4.9 Ghz (should be possible on air cooling) why bother? My 3570K is overclocked to 4.5 Ghz now and tbh I think I saw a gain of like 5 FPS or less when I benched
That's just it. I may or may not overclock it. I've never done it before, but it doesn't look like a hard thing to do. I figure if i get $200 for the 4790, I'll pay the $300+ and get the K version. It can probably be overclocked to the 4.4 GHz without worrying about a different cooling system. The 3.6 to 4.4 would be a 22% improvement. Probably yield a 15% to 20% system improvement. Without the overclocking, I'll probably still see a 10% improvement.

I expect a K version to cost me about $320 to $340. If I can get $200 for mine, I'll splurge the money. I just won't spend more for such a small improvement.

The i7-4790K by PassMark is rated as the best single thread processor. My i7-4790 is number 7. So many complex application only utilize one core for their primary operations. KSP for example will utilize 100% of one core on larger designs, and share only about 2.5% of it's work among the other logical cores. Other programs are similar in that they only effectively use one core. I have no need at this time for a processor that's rated faster with program,s that use multiple cores. As it stands, I can multitask several windows, play a bluray, and play intense games at the same time on my three monitor setup. I don't even have the need for a better graphics card. All my delays are in the single core limitations, which I get about a 6% improvement on running in 4 core mode over 8 core mode.

[baseline bum]

Are you looking to overclock the processor? 4 Ghz is stock speed, so unless you're gonna push that 4790K to 4.8-4.9 Ghz (should be possible on air cooling) why bother? My 3570K is overclocked to 4.5 Ghz now and tbh I think I saw a gain of like 5 FPS or less when I benched

It makes an enormous difference when you're cpu bound in a game, as WC is. 4.9 GHz on air cooling is a fantasy, that's what the best 4790k get on water cooling. It's really rare to see a 4790k hit 5.0 GHz on water.

[baseline bum]

That's just it. I may or may not overclock it. I've never done it before, but it doesn't look like a hard thing to do. I figure if i get $200 for the 4790, I'll pay the $300+ and get the K version. It can probably be overclocked to the 4.4 GHz without worrying about a different cooling system. The 3.6 to 4.4 would be a 22% improvement. Probably yield a 15% to 20% system improvement. Without the overclocking, I'll probably still see a 10% improvement.

I expect a K version to cost me about $320 to $340. If I can get $200 for mine, I'll splurge the money. I just won't spend more for such a small improvement.

The i7-4790K by PassMark is rated as the best single thread processor. My i7-4790 is number 7. So many complex application only utilize one core for their primary operations. KSP for example will utilize 100% of one core on larger designs, and share only about 2.5% of it's work among the other logical cores. Other programs are similar in that they only effectively use one core. I have no need at this time for a processor that's rated faster with program,s that use multiple cores. As it stands, I can multitask several windows, play a bluray, and play intense games at the same time on my three monitor setup. I don't even have the need for a better graphics card. All my delays are in the single core limitations, which I get about a 6% improvement on running in 4 core mode over 8 core mode.

That stock cooler is really only rated to 4.2 GHz on quadcore loads for the 4790k. You should be running at 4.0 GHz on dual core loads with your 4790 though. You can use a program called CPU-Z to check the speed your cpu is currently running at. With 4 cores under load your 4790 should go to 3.8 GHz, but with only one or two under load it should run at 4.0 GHz. For example, here is a screenshot of it running on my CPU, which turbos to 3.8 GHz when two cores are under full load.

http://i.imgur.com/7TxolAP.png

If you run KSP in a window while doing something intensive I bet you're going to see your clockspeed at 4.0 GHz as long as you're not running a bunch of other crap in the background so that you're on a quadcore load.

Don't be alarmed if your cpu is dropping to 800 MHz a lot of the time, that's a power saving feature Intel built into their newer cpus. Here is the download link.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html