i5 4690k overclocked vs i7 4790k

[aidenp]

I'm debating on whether or not to try and save a few hundred dollars by running an overclocked i5 setup vs a base i7 setup. The pc will be used for gaming, CAD and light photo/video editing. What would be better!?

[Tim Drake]

For light content creation, the i5 will do wonders.

 

i7 is only need for frequent content creation such as rendering for YouTube

[Majestic]

Why this comparison? You can overclock the 4790K just as well...And last time I checked it was only 100-ish more, not a couple.

[aidenp]

Thanks!

Yeah I know I can oc the i7. I live in aus so the price difference is nearly $260 lol so that's really the only reason why I considered i5

[smcspectre]

Thanks!

Yeah I know I can oc the i7. I live in aus so the price difference is nearly $260 lol so that's really the only reason why I considered i5

 

Wot? There is only $140 difference. When I built my first PC, I bought a locked 4690 and H97 because the K wasn't in stock, and I didn't exactly know a lot and the guy said the K is no big deal. Now I will be upgrading to a 4790K and Z97 when they get cheaper after Skylake processors are released.

 

Why? You might ask, because, i7 and K.

[Not_Sean]

i5, 

 

I do full 1080P editing, and its handling it like a champ. 

[Sakkura]

The 4790K will be some 20-30% faster in the threaded workloads (at the same clocks), but it's not like an overclocked 4690K is slow.

[Sauron]

For your uses an i5 is enough, but if it fits your budget consider a xeon 1231 v3, it's a locked i7 for about the price of an i5.

[-TesseracT-]

Honestly, I'd probably go for the 4690K. Not to mention, the 4790K costs 520 USD in Sweden right now.

[Sakkura]

For your uses an i5 is enough, but if it fits your budget consider a xeon 1231 v3, it's a locked i7 for about the price of an i5.

 

Overclocking the Core i5 pretty much wipes out the Xeon's multithreaded performance advantage from hyperthreading, while the 4690K pulls ahead in singlethreaded performance.

[aidenp]

Wot? There is only $140 difference. When I built my first PC, I bought a locked 4690 and H97 because the K wasn't in stock, and I didn't exactly know a lot and the guy said the K is no big deal. Now I will be upgrading to a 4790K and Z97 when they get cheaper after Skylake processors are released.

Why? You might ask, because, i7 and K.

Right you are ($140 difference) lol. Miscalculation on my part.

[aidenp]

For longevity, would it be cheaper to go with the i7 and not overclock compared to an overclocked i5?

[ExcitezR]

my mate has the I5 and I have the i7 and there is only like 3 fps difference in game I'm sure if he had the same clock speed it would be the same but as I do a lot of photo editing the i7 rekt the i5

[Sauron]

Overclocking the Core i5 pretty much wipes out the Xeon's multithreaded performance advantage from hyperthreading, while the 4690K pulls ahead in singlethreaded performance.

 

Do you have any benchmarks that support that claim? And to overclock a 4690k that high you need an expensive cooler, which kind of defeats the purpose of going for a lower tier cpu. It will also use way more power (which may or may not be an issue, but still), even assuming you get a good chip and reach nice overclocks. For content creation the xeon is clearly the better choice.

[Sakkura]

Do you have any benchmarks that support that claim? And to overclock a 4690k that high you need an expensive cooler, which kind of defeats the purpose of going for a lower tier cpu. It will also use way more power (which may or may not be an issue, but still), even assuming you get a good chip and reach nice overclocks. For content creation the xeon is clearly the better choice.

 

Here we see a Core i5-4690K get a score of 1694 PPS in PovRay at 4.5 GHz, a commonly attainable overclock (they pushed it to 4.7 GHz for a score of 1765). A Core i7-4790K set to 4.0 GHz got a score of 1668. And the Xeon E3-1231v3 runs at less than 3.8 GHz in fully threaded workloads, so its score would be lower than that.

 

Other workloads might get a bigger boost out of hyperthreading, but it's rarely more than 20-30%. Which is not enough to overcome the higher clocks on an overclocked 4690K.

 

The article also shows that power consumption is increased by hyperthreading, just as it is by overclocking. That makes sense - hyperthreading doesn't create extra performance out of nothing, it's just that the physical resources are active a larger proportion of the time, and thus drawing more power on average.

 

A Core i5-4690K and Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo, fine for a 4.5 GHz OC, costs $245 in the US. A Xeon E3-1231v3 costs $242. So for content creation, the Core i5-4690K is a competitive solution, whereas for gaming it's better. Of course it'll depend on pricing in Australia as well, plus how much of a budget board you would accept with the Xeon.

[Sauron]

Here we see a Core i5-4690K get a score of 1694 PPS in PovRay at 4.5 GHz, a commonly attainable overclock (they pushed it to 4.7 GHz for a score of 1765). A Core i7-4790K set to 4.0 GHz got a score of 1668. And the Xeon E3-1231v3 runs at less than 3.8 GHz in fully threaded workloads, so its score would be lower than that.

 

Other workloads might get a bigger boost out of hyperthreading, but it's rarely more than 20-30%. Which is not enough to overcome the higher clocks on an overclocked 4690K.

 

The article also shows that power consumption is increased by hyperthreading, just as it is by overclocking. That makes sense - hyperthreading doesn't create extra performance out of nothing, it's just that the physical resources are active a larger proportion of the time, and thus drawing more power on average.

 

A Core i5-4690K and Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo, fine for a 4.5 GHz OC, costs $245 in the US. A Xeon E3-1231v3 costs $242. So for content creation, the Core i5-4690K is a competitive solution, whereas for gaming it's better. Of course it'll depend on pricing in Australia as well, plus how much of a budget board you would accept with the Xeon.

 

hyperthreading actually lowers overall power consumption, it's an efficiency measure; it may draw a little more power under load, but since it completes the work faster the overall power draw is lower. And to obtain 4.5ghz on a 4690k you may want a better cooler than the hyper 212 evo, on top of the fact that nothing guarantees any overclock at all. On top of that xeons are notoriously binned better and some overclock can be obtained through bclk, which already brings it closer to that 4.5ghz i5. I see your point - but given the use scenario, the xeon still makes more sense. Not to say that the i5 is bad for content creation.

 

-edit-

 

according to the official documentation povray is not multithreaded, which means those results are irrelevant when comparing an i5 to a xeon. http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.2/160/

[Sakkura]

according to the official documentation povray is not multithreaded, which means those results are irrelevant when comparing an i5 to a xeon. http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.2/160/

 

Their POV-ray benchmark is fully threaded. As it says on the POV-ray site:

 

 

This version uses multi-threaded rendering by default. The ability to render

in more than one thread is primarily of use to those users who have SMP

machines (i.e. more than one CPU). There have been reports of benefits for

users of hyperthreading systems, particularly with higher thread counts (e.g.

16 threads).

 

And as Anandtech explains elsewhere:

 

 

The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing.  It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform.

 

and

 

 

PovRay is another 'multithreading takes all'

[vembutech]

For cad, editing i5 4690k is quite good.