i7-4790, Old but Gold

[Guest]

Some might say the i7-4790 sucks either because it's Quad core or that it's older then them. Wrong! The i7-4790 is a great bang for your buck CPU, capable of running lots of games. 3.6 Ghz and 4 cores is great for even high-medium gamers. Many games work well, such as:

• BeamNG
• Elite Dangerous
• Garry's Mod
• Subnautica
• Ark
• Half Life Franchise
• Portal Franchise
• Superhot
• Etc.

These games range from basic game processes to Unreal engine stuff. Even at 90% utilization, this processor goes right along. Even an average cooler works well with this, and it pairs well with medium level cards like a 1650. Want to buy it for yourself? Here you go:

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KASFZTI?tag=pcpapi-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1

[podkall]

Of course, any CPU with at least 4 cores and 3,5Ghz or faster is still powerful enough,

 

but depends on what games you want to play, since all of your games you listed aren't very recent or CPU dependant.

 

A person who only plays games like this would find a Quad-Core CPU similar to this one more than enough for their use.

[heimdali]

Why would anyone want to buy a CPU for that kind of kind of money with only 4 cores?  You can get 14 cores for less, and 4 cores aren't the way to go anymore.

 

[aren332]

Can i pair it with a 2060? what do you think?

[MrHaydenJr]

i used mine for fusion360 and light gaming with no issues, now a friend of mine has it (his old HP laptop finally kicked the bucket so i gave it to him) and he uses it for his gaming machine (he plays older MMORPGs) 

I never once complained about its use, paid less than $100 for it as it came in a old Dell Optiplex SFF, I upgraded ram, cooler, and threw a gtx1650 GDDR6 LP in it and let it eat, runs twos displays at his place and he started streaming with it, CPU never gets over 65-70* and is only running about 70% full tilt while he streams and plays, for a cheap build id definetly still use one today...   

 

since it was a SFF i even mounted it under my desk (to the bottom of the desk) so i wouldnt have a tower laying in the floor... 

I just with theyd come out with a new SFF video card, it would be nice to have the benefits of nvidias broadcast app but sadly theirs no LP RTX cards....

[Guest]

4 hours ago, aren332 said:

Can i pair it with a 2060? what do you think?

Probably can! Technically, this CPU would work with any GPU, but yeah! 2060's are good for a medium-high gamer, maybe if you have enough budget you could get a 2060 ti or even a 2070, in some cases it might go a long way!

[Vishera]

41 minutes ago, TheCarGuy said:

Probably can! Technically, this CPU would work with any GPU, but yeah! 2060's are good for a medium-high gamer, maybe if you have enough budget you could get a 2060 ti or even a 2070, in some cases it might go a long way!

I don't think so,

I remember that people had to overclock their 4790K CPUs so it won't bottleneck their 1080 Ti.

[aren332]

but 1080 ti is a lot faster than a 2060

[Guest]

15 hours ago, aren332 said:

but 1080 ti is a lot faster than a 2060

 

20 hours ago, Vishera said:

I don't think so,

I remember that people had to overclock their 4790K CPUs so it won't bottleneck their 1080 Ti.

It seems @aren332forgot to quote @Vishera, so I'll do this so Vis is notified of Aren's response.

[Sarra]

I had an i5 4440 in my gaming PC back in 2016. By 2019, I was ready to move up to 1440p. I really wanted a 4790k, but I had a low end board and the CPU's were $300 used. I found a Xeon E3 1280V3 for $100, bought it, and got a year out of that machine before I couldn't handle it anymore and got a Ryzen 9 3900XT.

 

The Xeon is basically a 4790 non-K with locked down boost limits, but going from 4C/4T 3.1ghz to 4C/8T 3.6ghz was a noticeable boost. It did give my machine an extra year of life as a gaming PC, and it actually runs well enough as a small server, though it's lacking PCIE lanes which is going to get it bumped down from a storage server to just a backup storage server. If it could handle 10GBE, a graphics card, and an add-in SATA controller, I'd keep it as my primary storage server, but it can't. So, it'll be more of a vault than active storage.

[LloydLynx]

On 11/9/2022 at 3:55 PM, heimdali said:

Why would anyone want to buy a CPU for that kind of kind of money with only 4 cores?  You can get 14 cores for less, and 4 cores aren't the way to go anymore.

 

If you have a fully built Optiplex and can take advantage of the hyperthreading. That was the case for me and I don't regret the upgrade one bit. 

[Speedbird]

Got any benchmarks?

 

I had the exact same model of CPU, and now my dad has one.

[DankIsnt]

On 11/9/2022 at 9:16 AM, TheCarGuy said:

Some might say the i7-4790 sucks either because it's Quad core or that it's older then them. Wrong! The i7-4790 is a great bang for your buck CPU, capable of running lots of games. 3.6 Ghz and 4 cores is great for even high-medium gamers. Many games work well, such as:

• BeamNG
• Elite Dangerous
• Garry's Mod
• Subnautica
• Ark
• Half Life Franchise
• Portal Franchise
• Superhot
• Etc.

These games range from basic game processes to Unreal engine stuff. Even at 90% utilization, this processor goes right along. Even an average cooler works well with this, and it pairs well with medium level cards like a 1650. Want to buy it for yourself? Here you go:

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KASFZTI?tag=pcpapi-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1

I assume you want us to look at used pricing correct? Even then this cpu isn’t worth the money as you can buy a equally dead platform Ryzen 5! Don’t get me wrong this is a good cpu still but ehhh I would test my luck finding it in a old prebuilt than buying it straight up.

6 core core gang where ya at!!

[Vishera]

5 hours ago, DankIsnt said:

I assume you want us to look at used pricing correct? Even then this cpu isn’t worth the money as you can buy a equally dead platform Ryzen 5! Don’t get me wrong this is a good cpu still but ehhh I would test my luck finding it in a old prebuilt than buying it straight up.

6 core core gang where ya at!!

The most CPU intensive game that i know of is Cyberpunk 2077,

I wonder how the 4790 fares in comparison to newer CPUs.

In Cyberpunk 2077 My Ryzen 5 2600@4.1GHz was bottlenecking my GTX 1660 so i upgraded the CPU to a 5700X and the bottleneck was gone.

Keep in mind that the GTX 1660 is at the same performance class of GPUs as the GTX 1070, 980 Ti and the RTX 3050.

[divito]

I had a 4570 for like 12 years; my latest cards with it were a 1070 and then a gifted 6800XT. While I didn't play a plethora of the newest games always, anything I did performed more than adequately. While I don't remember the specific framerate before finally getting something more recent, Cyperpunk was more than playable and is probably the most demanding. 

[TVwazhere]

On 11/9/2022 at 4:31 PM, Vishera said:

I don't think so,

I remember that people had to overclock their 4790K CPUs so it won't bottleneck their 1080 Ti.

Can confirm.

 

I'm STILL using my 4790k bought new in 2014 and my 1080ti FTW3. The CPU @ 4.4ghz is starting to show it's age especially in Higher end AAA titles made after 2020 where games actually utilize more than 8 threads. 

 

That being said, it's 2023. For $100 you can get a i3-12100F which uses considerably less power, but also gets more performance.

 

 

I love my 4790K and will keep it after I retire it.... But I plan on retiring it very soon.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

5 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

Can confirm.

 

I'm STILL using my 4790k bought new in 2014 and my 1080ti FTW3. The CPU @ 4.4ghz is starting to show it's age especially in Higher end AAA titles made after 2020 where games actually utilize more than 8 threads. 

 

That being said, it's 2023. For $100 you can get a i3-12100F which uses considerably less power, but also gets more performance.

 

 

I love my 4790K and will keep it after I retire it.... But I plan on retiring it very soon.

Yeah I think the 4790k, 6700k, 7700k etc. were fine until about a year or two ago when games started to be more optimized for the newer consoles with 8 cores. I have a Ryzen 7700x and my buddy still has a 4670k. He thought his CPU was fine, until he came over to my house, used my 7700x once, said word for word, it was like a rocket ship, then went on a Microcenter spending spree the following day and grabbed the 7700x+free ram deal. People on 4790k, 6700k, 7700k, etc. , if you're financially able, it is definitely time to upgrade to a 13600k/7700/7600 etc.

[Brian McKee]

Quadcores are still fine but I'd never suggest anyone buy into old platforms. Getting a newer platform's motherboard and buying the quadcore from there will always feel better when you actually have an upgrade path.

 

It largely depends on what you're doing obviously. Your average person's workflow isn't really helped much by 8 or more cores...