Question GTX 1660 ti 'Gaming X' too much for i5-4670K? At what OC level?

[VirtualLarry]

So, like, I've had my MSI Z97 PC Mate mobo for ages now, I got them a long time ago @ Newegg in a combo with G3258 CPUs. I ended up using the CPUs on some rigs with H81 OC boards, and I think that I sold one of the Z97 PC Mate boards, so I have one left.

I ordered an i5-4670K off of ebay, for cheap money. I want to see how much I can OC it. I have another Gammaxx 400 heatsink, as well as a CNPS5X Zalman 92mm fan heatpipe heatsink. Not sure which one will work better.

So, I also ordered a GTX 1660 ti. I keep waffling between GTX 1650, 1660, and the 1660 ti. I usually end up at the ti model. For what I paid for the 'Gaming X', I could have bought a reference RX 5700 again, ah well.

I think that I have some 8GB DDR3 sticks, I see that Newegg has some GSKill DDR3-2400 for ~$80 for a 16GB kit. If I need them, I guess.

Is this a decent config, or is the GPU pure overkill for that sort of rig, and what kind of average OCs will I see on the CPU? I'm hoping for 4.2Ghz or maybe 4.5Ghz, but maybe I'm thinking of Skylake OCs.

At what clock speed do I need to run that CPU at, not to be a bottleneck? I'm thinking 4.5Ghz, but that's just a guess.

 

[Arkaign]

It's an excellent balance IMHO. Other than the obvious limits of 4C/4T (primarily seen in Dice titles in my experience), even stock that combo should offer very good 1440p performance with judicious settings (eg; easy on the AA and shadows, high/ultra textures). With a light OC of 4.2-4.5Ghz you'll probably see GPU be the limiting factor in most 1440p situations, or very little limitations at 1080p Ultra.

Haswell has pretty much all relevant feature sets that are gaming relevant, and thus far has aged brilliantly. If you want to get everything out of it possible, use InSpectre to click off the Meltdown/Spectre patching and it should give a tiny lift as well. From following the security blogs and sites, the vulnerabilities don't seem relevant to individual home users/gamers due to the extreme nature of how slow gaining this data is, and the difficulty in implementation if you're not being targeted say on a vulnerable public hotspot or other extremely one to one manner. OBVIOUSLY this is at your own judgement, and wouldn't be advisable for a work system or anything you'd have sensitive data on even if the odds of actual exposure were astronomically small as they seem to be. Fwiw I turn this stuff off on my Intel and Ryzen boxes alike that are not running anything personal (yes, even Zen products have elements of exposure and effect by the mitigations, thus maximum performance is with fewer/none of the patches activated).

The 1660ti is in the ballpark of 1070 to 1070ti, just with a bit more efficiency.

 

[mopardude87]

I think the 1660ti will be a good fit. Its ballpark 1070 performance with less vram. Speaking of cheap gpus, why not go for a used 1070? I had a 4670 non k and with a 1070ti it was a bottleneck in everything i played at 1080p and in some cases 1440p too. BF4 and GTA V is what i mainly play and while i got well over 60 in both often times the 1070ti felt like a waste with the 4670.

Recent events i managed to get back my old 4670/h81/8gb combo and i am about to pair it very soon to a 3gb 1060. I think honestly for a older non k chip the 1060 JUST may be the most i would want to pair with it. I don't play nothing actively that pulls even 3gb of vram and the newer games that usually gobble up vram usually also tank on the 4670. BF1/BF5 newer COD games are examples. I like my shooters obviously.

4c/4t will prob be the biggest bottleneck unless your like me and just enjoy older titles. Not sure if there is any new good games that can run smoothly on a 4c/4t. Last one i played that ran smoothly was Doom from 2016. I played it last year. Ran like a top on a i5 2500 and 1050ti that a friend of mine has.

 

[Guru]

Even at stock that cpu is more than capable of feeding a 1660ti.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's an excellent balance IMHO. Other than the obvious limits of 4C/4T (primarily seen in Dice titles in my experience), even stock that combo should offer very good 1440p performance with judicious settings (eg; easy on the AA and shadows, high/ultra textures). With a light OC of 4.2-4.5Ghz you'll probably see GPU be the limiting factor in most 1440p situations, or very little limitations at 1080p Ultra.

I think the 1660ti will be a good fit. Its ballpark 1070 performance with less vram. Speaking of cheap gpus, why not go for a used 1070? I had a 4670 non k and with a 1070ti it was a bottleneck in everything i played at 1080p and in some cases 1440p too. BF4 and GTA V is what i mainly play and while i got well over 60 in both often times the 1070ti felt like a waste with the 4670.

Thanks guys. I'm a little confused by your post, @mopardude87 , was the 1070 a bottleneck for your 4670 non-K, or was your 4670 non-K a bottleneck for your 1070?

I hope that this rig-to-be will at least be able to play up to 2018 AAA Games, @ 1080P or maybe 1440P. I have a friend in mind for this rig, I don't think that he has a 1440P monitor yet, but I want it to be open to that possibility.

Or maybe I'll just sell it.

I've had this Z97 board for SO long, and I've been wanting to do something with it. I've offered it to a few people here, sometimes for cheap, but no-one took me up on it, so I've finally taken it upon myself to build with it, after I snagged a 'K' Haswell i5 CPU on ebay for under $70.

Hopefully, the final build will allow both the CPU and GPU to stretch their legs a bit.

Friend that I have in mind for this rig, currently has a Sandy or Ivy quad, and a GTX 1050. So this should be a bit of a step-up, if he's willing to upgrade. Not sure if he's down with the system being overclocked, I realize, that's kind of dicey, selling or even giving people overclocked systems. Because, in my experience, inevitably, something gets screwed up with the rig at the customer's site, even though it was running "just fine" with the OC in my lab, and they'll blame me, LOL. Maybe if I test really well, and make it a conservative OC.

Also, as an aside, any recommended air coolers for a Z97 / i5-4670K / 16GB / GTX 1660 ti rig? Do the Haswell i5 CPUs get really hot? I guess the pre-DC versions weren't soldered, right?

Edit: Hmm, I DO have a CoolerMaster MasterLiquid Lite 120 120mm AIO WC kit still BNIB, could use that I suppose. I think that I will.

 

[Keysplayr]

That CPU should be fine for a 1660Ti.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That CPU should be fine for a 1660Ti.

Hey, good to see you around, @Keysplayr . Haven't seen posts from you in some time.

I've been buying a bunch of NVidia cards this time around, this will be my third GTX 1660 ti. Crazy, eh?

Edit: (Actually, not that crazy, I've always been a bang-for-buck buyer, and I've been buying recently more with an eye for power consumption, and NVidia arguably has some pretty-good products, at the lower end. Plus, I'm into "mining", and the GTX 1660 ti is fairly well revered for a good performance / Watt for mining.)

Though, I could have picked up another RX 5700. I might have, if AMD had their OpenCL / GPU compute stack in order, for these new products, but it appears that they're still unsupported ("RDNA") in Folding@Home and a bunch of other GPU compute projects.

For comparison, my RX 570 and RX 580 cards, do around 300K-330K PPD in F@H, whereas a GTX 1660 ti does 575K-600K PPD, for like 120W per card. RX 570 was 80W (GPU only), and 580 Nitro+ (6+8 pin) was up to 133W (GPU only), with a max (IIRC) of 170W (GPU only).

So for Folding@Home, GTX 1660 ti wins hands-down over RX 570/580.

 

[mopardude87]

Thanks guys. I'm a little confused by your post, @mopardude87 , was the 1070 a bottleneck for your 4670 non-K, or was your 4670 non-K a bottleneck for your 1070?

The 1070ti was bottlenecked by the 4670 non k. I only suggested a used 1070 cause its maybe one of the cheaper higher performance 8gb vram model gpus. Not sure if any newer games could both run good on a 4c/4t and also consume more then 6gb vram. Used 1070s constantly go for about what $200?

GTA V and BF4 ran lovely 60+ minimums either way with the 4670/1070 ti combo. Let me know if you find some 2018 games that play nice with 4c/4t. BF1 for me was what got me to upgrade to a 8700/16gb ram upgrade in the first place. I am select with my titles so maybe there is some titles that play a bit nicer that i missed or obviously wasn't interested in.

You must love your builds, going out of your way to match up a new gpu to a 4670k in 2019 is a bit wild. I almost upgraded a Optiplex 790 from a i3 2100 to a i5 2500 and i found how cheap they can be at like $23 for a 2500. How much did that 4670k run you? 2500k Still outrunning the new 2c/4t stuff from what i saw in benchmark videos so i guess there is still some validity to them in 2019.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You must love your builds, going out of your way to match up a new gpu to a 4670k in 2019 is a bit wild. I almost upgraded a Optiplex 790 from a i3 2100 to a i5 2500 and i found how cheap they can be at like $23 for a 2500. How much did that 4670k run you? 2500k Still outrunning the new 2c/4t stuff from what i saw in benchmark videos so i guess there is still some validity to them in 2019.

Well, it was kind of an impulsive thing, I thought, "hey, here's a recent listing for a i5-4670K, for $65, I've got a Z97 mobo BNIB, hey, WHY NOT!". Then I bought a GPU to go with it, I was toying with the idea of a used GTX 1660 for $180, but then I was thinking, maybe that won't be enough to play modern games, let's get another GTX 1660 ti. And then I saw Newegg's listing, for the MSI 'Gaming X' model, and it had some sort of limited coupon discount for 7% off, like $21 off, so I said, "HEY, WHY NOT!".

Of course, my bank account feels in it in the morning.

 

[Arkaign]

A $30 212+ Evo will run that 4670K @ 4.4-4.6 guaranteed. I ran my old 4790K @ 5Ghz under one, was a little sad that it wasn't up to 8086k @ 5Ghz though, bumped up to Noctua for that. I love my air coolers

Single fan, stock, decent paste, good to go with low temps on stock volts! Probably 4.7 or more is actually on the table, but given your description of wanting this to be a turn key stable setup you can feel good about, staying at say 4.5 might be wisest. That mobo isn't the most ideal for heavy OC, but 4.5 is something I'd feel comfortable betting my house on.

 

[Ranulf]

$65 aint too bad. Last I looked a few weeks ago many haswell i5's were up in the $80s.

 

[happy medium]

Overclock it to 4.1 and it will be fine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Overclock it to 4.1 and it will be fine.

Good of you to suggest that, I guess, because... I had a rig, with a DIYPC RGB-Stripe case, looks pretty slick, not the greatest cooling, but I think that it has a top vent, so probably not as bad as I suspect. Anyways, I had built it with a Gigabyte H81M-H rev2.1 mobo, F2 BIOS (from 2015, newest ever released for it, "Support Pentium AE microcode update for Win10"). I had a G3258 in there, actually, but I decided, rather than do a new build, I would "recycle" that build, and put in the (used) i5-4670K.

I hadn't reset the OC settings for the G3258, so it was defaulting to 4.0Ghz (40x multi) and stable, and SpeedStep was working.

I fiddled with the OC (after doing the Win10 1903 upgrade @ 4.0Ghz with the new CPU), and set it to 1.200V (highest it would go!), and 43X multi.

CPU-Z shows it hitting 4.3Ghz while web browsing with Firefox, but CPU-Z CPU stress-test, only shows it hitting 4.1Ghz, for some reason. Oh well.

So, I put a Zalman CNPS5X heatsink on there, instead of the stock one, which could have been the copper-cored G3258 heatsink, which might not have been SO bad, but the Zalman is rated to 125W or 140W TDP, and the stock G3258 heatsink is rated at 95W, I think.

Runs good, now just need to put in a decent GPU, like the GTX 1660 ti. Am waiting to hear from a friend if he's interested in trying this baby out.

Oh yeah, put in 2x8GB Kingston DDR3-1866, but the H81 only runs it @ 1600, 1.5V. (I didn't try bumping up the DRAM voltage manually.)

So far, so good, though, I wish I could have managed to OC a bit higher. (I initially tried 44x and 45x, got a BSOD, "WHEA UNCORRECTABLE ERROR")

 

[Arkaign]

I think the H81 is not exactly an overclock board for the K series CPUs. :/

 

[mopardude87]

I think the H81 is not exactly an overclock board for the K series CPUs. :/

Whatcha talking bout Willis? H81 is a legend.

 

[Arkaign]

Whatcha talking bout Willis? H81 is a legend.

Heh. Is this an inside joke I'm not aware of?

Some of the H81s can do some ok unofficial overclocks with the unlocked Pentiums, and even a little bit with some Ks, but they were extremely budget oriented with basic VRMs, phases, etc.

 

[mopardude87]

Heh. Is this an inside joke I'm not aware of?

Some of the H81s can do some ok unofficial overclocks with the unlocked Pentiums, and even a little bit with some Ks, but they were extremely budget oriented with basic VRMs, phases, etc.

Yeah i kept on hearing how G3258 owners would manage to overclock on H81. Makes it a legend.

 

[Arkaign]

Yeah i kept on hearing how G3258 owners would manage to overclock on H81. Makes it a legend.

Ah, well in that respect, I can see it being a budget value for that kind of CPU. It definitely makes far more sense than with the 4670/4690/4770/4790K stuff.

More in the vein of the legendary ECS + Duron/Athlon XP combos + hacked BIOS value, or the Celeron 300A @ 450+ types of legendary

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, it's only PCI-E 2.0 (even the x16 slot!), and only two out of the four SATA ports are SATA6G. No front USB3.0 header. Really deluxe here.

Only 1.200V vcore, max, apparently. There's a setting option for "K OC", not sure how that changes up things. I set it to "Enabled" just in case, but it didn't seem to make a difference.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Now I'm thinking of keeping the MSI 'Gaming X' GTX 1660 ti in my main machine as my secondary GPU, and getting maybe another GTX 1660 Super at the beginning of next month.

BTW, isn't the release date for the GTX 1660 Super coming up any day now? When is that supposed to come out officially?

Edit: Sigh. Oct. 29th. Five more days.

Nvidia GTX 1660 Super set for an October 29 launch… and an AMD Navi showdown

The latest 'Super' card looks to be coming to spoil the RX 5500-series party

www.pcgamesn.com

 

[Shmee]

For that board, I would grab a 4790 or 4790k, if budget permits. The extra threads could help and the k version especially has a high turbo, even not OCed.