i5-760 to i5-4690K, worth the upgrade?

[Ryanrenesis]

Hi guys,

I was just about to pull the trigger on an upgrade to my CPU/MB but decided to ask here first...

Currently I have:
i5-760 @ 4059Mhz
MSI P55-CD53
16GB Patriot Xtreme & Kingston HyperX @ 1866Mhz 9-11-9-27
EVGA GTX 780 ACX @ 1202Mhz/3251Mhz

Looking towards:
i5-4690K @ around 4.5-4.8Ghz
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI
Same RAM
Same GPU

Is my GTX780 being bottlenecked by my i5-760? A lot of people online say it will, but my own brother who is a computer engineer, says the i5-760 is plenty enough.

Other reasons to upgrade:

• My current motherboard only supports PCI-E 2.0 and not PCI-E 3.0, which is a further bottleneck to my GTX780 (right?)
• My current motherboard only supports SATA2, not SATA3, which is a bottleneck to my 2x SATA3 SSDs (right?)
• New motherboard (GA-Z97X-SLI) can support SataExpress and SataM.2 which will enable me to upgrade my SSDs in the future.
• New motherboard supports SLI for future 2nd GTX 780 or use my old GTX 670 as a dedicated PhysX card.

What I will use this PC for:
90% Gaming, especially AAA titles and MMOs like SWTOR, which is CPU-intensive
10% Other daily tasks

How much I will be paying for said CPU/MB upgrade:
It will be $379 Canadian before taxes & rebate ($249 CPU, $130-$10 rebate MB).
In Canada it seems we pay a lot more for our PC parts than our American counterparts

Would I be receiving a lot of gains? Should I pull the trigger? Or wait for Broadwell or Skylarke? I DO feel like a Grandpa still running 45nm CPU, PCI-E 2.0, and SATA2 though...

 

[Yuriman]

You'll need to look at benchmarks for the individual games you play. Some games you'll see no difference in, some you'll see an improvement. You'll likely end up closer to 4.5 than 4.8, most Haswell chips don't overclock that high.

-PCI-E 2.0 is not a bottleneck
-SATA2 is a bottneck for sustained transfers, but general usability will probably not change much from that alone

 

[Ryanrenesis]

Honestly, I've looked around so much on Google and reputable review sites but no one compares the 1st gen i5s to the 4th gen i5s. The closest I've seen is a comparison between i5-2500K and Ivy Bridge (which are only 1 generation apart).

How's the motherboard I chosen for the price I'm paying? I noticed it only has 4 VRM phases. Will this limit my overclocking capabilities?

 

[beginner99]

I would say also depends on you display. The higher the resolution the more likely you are GPU bound.

Games which will benefit are BF4 64 player Maps and probably Crysis 3. In general it's multiplayer that is limited and since you can't consistently benchmark multilayer it is rarely done plus single-player reviews can be highly misleading.

The question is: Do you play any games that currently have stutter due to frame rate dips? Do you have a 120 hz display? if not, I doubt you will see much difference.

 

[Ryanrenesis]

Yes, I have a BenQ XL2411 running @ 1920x1080, 120Hz

I do have frame dips in certain games, especially the old CPU-intensive games such as SWTOR and even the latest AAA titles like Shadow of Mordor.

This is why I wanted to upgrade my CPU. But I'm afraid I won't see any difference at all. My thought process was that my GTX 780 should handle any game at max settings, yet that is not the case, even with an old 2011 game like SWTOR.

 

[Deders]

I'm surprised you get frame dips in Mordor, I have a very similar setup and it plays very smoothly. Do you have the 6GB Ultra textures enabled?

 

[Ryanrenesis]

I'm surprised you get frame dips in Mordor, I have a very similar setup and it plays very smoothly. Do you have the 6GB Ultra textures enabled?

Yes I use the Ultra textures, but I get similar frame dips (down to 30 FPS) with textures set to High. So, I set them back to Ultra.

On Ultra, the game uses all 3078MB of my GPU and about 9GB of my RAM.

It's worth to note that 95% of the time it runs above 70FPS up to 120FPS cap but certain areas will dip below 30 FPS and stay there until I look in a different direction.

EDIT: ooo just looked at your signature, wow your setup is practically identical to mine! If I upgrade my CPU, I will definitely post back my results on any gains, if any lol

 

[altairauditore]

Check out tom's hardware most recent article on Graphics Myths. I think they found negligible improvement from PCIE 2.0x8 to 3.0x16.
I'm pretty sure the PCIE version is not going to bottleneck your GPU.

Yes, the CPU is a bit weak for the GPU, but why don't you wait a bit.. might be for Broadwell to be released and then upgrade?

 

[Ryanrenesis]

Will Broadwell likely be released by this Christmas? If not, I'm going to pull the trigger.

 

[III-V]

Will Broadwell likely be released by this Christmas? If not, I'm going to pull the trigger.

Broadwell-K? Not until summer of 2015.

 

[Ryanrenesis]

Broadwell-K? Not until summer of 2015.

DEVIL'S CANYON HERE I COME!!!!

P.S. Check out our Canadian tax rate. You Americans probably think it's pretty ridiculous huh. The cost of free healthcare...

 

[AtenRa]

Yes, I have a BenQ XL2411 running @ 1920x1080, 120Hz

I do have frame dips in certain games, especially the old CPU-intensive games such as SWTOR and even the latest AAA titles like Shadow of Mordor.

This is why I wanted to upgrade my CPU. But I'm afraid I won't see any difference at all. My thought process was that my GTX 780 should handle any game at max settings, yet that is not the case, even with an old 2011 game like SWTOR.

According to Toms, a 4GHz i5 760 should be more than enough for that game. Perhaps the deeps are from something else and not the CPU performance in that game.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/star-wars-gaming-tests-review,3087-8.html

 

[Ryanrenesis]

According to Toms, a 4GHz i5 760 should be more than enough for that game. Perhaps the deeps are from something else and not the CPU performance in that game.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/star-wars-gaming-tests-review,3087-8.html

That's probably a benchmark in-game questing or something, which I get similar frames, though slightly higher up to 100 FPS. But it is in PvP - Warzones that my frames can drop as low as 15 FPS and becomes unplayable. This happens when there's a lot of players on my screen at one time. Maybe it is a networking thing?

Would a networking card benefit in increased frames?

 

[Flapdrol1337]

I sidegraded from a 4GHz i5-750 to a pentium G3258, the most noticable difference is in the fast boot stuff.

 

[AtenRa]

That's probably a benchmark in-game questing or something, which I get similar frames, though slightly higher up to 100 FPS. But it is in PvP - Warzones that my frames can drop as low as 15 FPS and becomes unplayable. This happens when there's a lot of players on my screen at one time. Maybe it is a networking thing?

Would a networking card benefit in increased frames?

Our testing shows that the lowest frame rates in this game are usually outdoors, especially when foliage is involved. We’ve found the Twi’lek village on Typhon to be a good representation of a demanding area, so we made our benchmarking passes at this location using Fraps.

Yea they didnt bench in PvPs with lots of players. Well i havent played the game so i honestly dont know, perhaps you will see a nice performance boost going to a 4.5GHz Haswell.
Just peak a motherboard that can be upgraded to Broadwell as well.

 

[ZeroRift]

I, too am running a very similar platform: i7-860 @ 3.2, 16GBs of ram and a GTX580. I also get stuttering / fps dips in SWTOR and GW2.

To try to reduce my pain until I can upgrade my platform, I've done quite a bit of performance monitoring to try to work out the bottlenecks. Although I don't have the data with me atm, my findings were pretty conclusive.

GW2 @ Max settings, sitting idle in a city with a lot of players around:
CPU utilization >95%
GPU utilization ~75%

SWTOR @ Max settings, same scenario as GW2:
CPU utilization >95%
GPU utilization ~85%

Some caveats:

• The testing was done at driver/games settings that were near max, but tweaked for my platform to give a more optimal experience.

• When FPS drops were observed, GPU utilization went down, indicating the bottleneck was elsewhere.

• When FPS drops were observed, CPU utilization was approaching (but never reached) 100%.

• System & GPU memory utilization was always below 50%.

• I get severe frame drops (<15 FPS) during large scale encounters (~50+ players) in GW2, but GPUz never logs 100% GPU utilization.

• I can load the GPU to 100% easily in SWTOR and GW2 by forcing AA through nvInspector (though it looks like crap) or by utilizing GW2's built in SS.

Not exactly scientific stuff, but I gathered the data without the intent of publishing it, so it's largely tailored to my expectations. I can run some more controlled tests, if people are interested.

My conclusion was that something in my platform was limiting me rather than my GPU. I'm not sure if it's something lurking in the uncore, or if thread migration is preventing CPU utilization from reaching 100%, but it seems clear that my GPU is not at fault.

 

[sm625]

A 4GHz i5-760 is plenty fast enough. It is a perfect match for that video card.

 

[toyota]

A 4GHz i5-760 is plenty fast enough. It is a perfect match for that video card.

what does that even mean? surely you know that a highly oced 780 can most certainly perform faster on a newer cpu.

 

[jacktesterson]

what does that even mean? surely you know that a highly oced 780 can most certainly perform faster on a newer cpu.

I think his i5 should be fast enough for most games with a 780.

 

[toyota]

I think his i5 should be fast enough to push that 780 to 100% in most titles.

you would be wrong then unless all he was doing was trying to max out AA. he has 120 hz so if not trying to max AA, a newer cpu would help quite a bit.

 

[Ryanrenesis]

Well I'm installing my new i5-4690K as we speak. Will let you guys know how FPS has changed, if it increased or stayed the same.

 

[toyota]

Well I'm installing my new i5-4690K as we speak. Will let you guys know how FPS has changed, if it increased or stayed the same.

lol you will still need another cpu upgrade to get the most out the 780 in Crysis 3.

 

[SPBHM]

Yea they didnt bench in PvPs with lots of players. Well i havent played the game so i honestly dont know, perhaps you will see a nice performance boost going to a 4.5GHz Haswell.
Just peak a motherboard that can be upgraded to Broadwell as well.

swtor is extremely CPU limited and does not scale much with more than 2 cores,
nehalem 4ghz to haswell 4.5ghz would probably be a big upgrade for swtor, and you would feel the difference... the tomshardware test is useless, play the game on pvp warzones, 16p operations or fleet with 180 people is what you have to do to properly test the game's CPU usage, not run around the first planet.

 

[Ryanrenesis]

Alright so an update on my i5-4690K. I got it stable at 4.7Ghz @ 1.265V. On 4.8Ghz I can make it POST but fails on stress testing within 15s. It's being cooled by a Noctua NH-U14s.

I mounted it vertically (wind going up) and average core temps were 72.75C on Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and 95.25C on Intel Burn Test.

I then changed the mounting horizontally (wind going to the back) and average core temps were 69C on Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and 87.25C on Intel Burn Test.

This surprised me a lot as I have 2x 120mm fans on the top exhaust, while only having 1x 120mm fan on the back exhaust.

My theory is that the convex shape of the heatsink base really helps align with the die under the IHS of the i5-4690K.

But yes, I'm very happy with my i5-4690K @ 4.7Ghz. One thing I immediately noted was just how fast this PC boots up, it's almost 2x as fast as my previous setup, literally boots to Windows in 6-7s. Whether its the SATA2 -> SATA3 change or the processor or combination of both, I'm not sure. But I'm sure enjoying this!

Alright.. It's been a long day. I haven't even gamed on this beast yet, time to do that! See you guys later! I'll report back any improvements in games.

 

[jihe]

Hi guys,

I was just about to pull the trigger on an upgrade to my CPU/MB but decided to ask here first...

Currently I have:
i5-760 @ 4059Mhz
MSI P55-CD53
16GB Patriot Xtreme & Kingston HyperX @ 1866Mhz 9-11-9-27
EVGA GTX 780 ACX @ 1202Mhz/3251Mhz

Looking towards:
i5-4690K @ around 4.5-4.8Ghz
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI
Same RAM
Same GPU

Is my GTX780 being bottlenecked by my i5-760? A lot of people online say it will, but my own brother who is a computer engineer, says the i5-760 is plenty enough.

Other reasons to upgrade:

• My current motherboard only supports PCI-E 2.0 and not PCI-E 3.0, which is a further bottleneck to my GTX780 (right?)
• My current motherboard only supports SATA2, not SATA3, which is a bottleneck to my 2x SATA3 SSDs (right?)
• New motherboard (GA-Z97X-SLI) can support SataExpress and SataM.2 which will enable me to upgrade my SSDs in the future.
• New motherboard supports SLI for future 2nd GTX 780 or use my old GTX 670 as a dedicated PhysX card.

What I will use this PC for:
90% Gaming, especially AAA titles and MMOs like SWTOR, which is CPU-intensive
10% Other daily tasks

How much I will be paying for said CPU/MB upgrade:
It will be $379 Canadian before taxes & rebate ($249 CPU, $130-$10 rebate MB).
In Canada it seems we pay a lot more for our PC parts than our American counterparts

Would I be receiving a lot of gains? Should I pull the trigger? Or wait for Broadwell or Skylarke? I DO feel like a Grandpa still running 45nm CPU, PCI-E 2.0, and SATA2 though...

You can sell off the 750 to offset some of the cost. Might as well upgrade when 1156 still has some currency.