Need help with CPU upgrade.

I am looking to upgrade my CPU and mobo. I will decide on the mobo later but first I need to make up my mind regarding the CPU. I have narrowed it down to 2 options,

i5 4460 = $200

i5 4690K = $270

Now I am certain there won't be a massive difference in stock performance of these 2 unless I am missing something? So this simply comes down to how much can I overclock the 4690K with a Hyper 212+ heatsink? I am not buying a new heatsink as at that point it's just too much money simply spent on overclocking.

Oh and btw what happens to turbo speed after overclock? We need to beat that significantly in order to achieve a meaningful overclock right?

Why not go for Skylake?

The 4690K goes to 3.9Ghz on turbo so I believe I should be able to overclock it to 4.5Ghz otherwise what's the point? Does a CPU run at turbo speed constantly while you are playing a CPU intensive game? Sorry for so many questions I have been out of the loop for some time. :)

When does it launch and is it supposed to much better than Haswell?? I am kinda getting desperate for a CPU upgrade.

Skylake should have been released already. Of course that will come with 1151 mobo and DDR4 RAM. So more to upgrade if you do this.

I will need a new mobo anyways but DDR4 ram increases the cost considerably. An entirely new platform is also quite pricey at launch so I think I'll just let it go since I really don't want to wait that much.

So back to the topic any advise which Haswell CPU I should go for?

@Gambler_3:

If you dont plan on overclocking than 4460 will do the job, however 4690 boosts itself to 3.9ghz from 3.5ghz vs the 4460 that goes from 3.2 to 3.3ghz.

I have an i5 4690k on a Hyper 212+ EVO and it can handle upto 4.4 ghz

@04dcarraher: I don't mind overclocking, my current CPU and GPU are both overclocked. I was just wondering if the performance boost is actually worth it in this case.

It's 3.4Ghz vs 3.9Ghz and to be fair the non k version of the 4690 is $250 which should be the one compared to the 4460 for price/performance but it still loses. The overclock you are talking about 4.4Ghz is the turbo speed right? That would be a 13% overclock which is nice but not exactly as good as it used to be in previous gen CPUs. Maybe I suppose I should go for the regular 4690 as it provides a nice middle ground here.

You can use Skylake with DDR3 aswell...

But I don't see why DDR4 will increase the cost so much when 8GB cost somewhat the same as DDR3 around $55... Crucial Ballistix Sport

@Coseniath: What I meant is that I'll have to purchase DDR4 ram where as I already have DDR3 ram so going with Skylake increases the cost due to new ram.

That's nice to have DDR3 support I'll keep an eye on the news regarding Skylake.

Difference is not much, as long as you pick i5 you're good to go, difference will be seen in CPU hog games which almost none exist, there you'll see performance gain in OC i5 to 4.5Ghz etc.

Yes but I believe the difference will never be too much to the point that you can delay upgrading the CPU. There simply isn't enough of a % increase for that possibility unlike previous gen CPUs.

I am surprised that no one told me here what the turbo boost actually is good thing I did my research. It's only available for single threaded applications which means that over clocking is still very much worth it. The 4690K will get a 25% boost so its pretty much a no brainer for me to go for that.

I have seen skylake reviews and its pretty underwhelming however can someone tell me what is DDR3L RAM?? If I have to get new RAM I am not getting skylake. I currently have standard 1333mhz DDR3 ram.

Wait, what?

Who told you about 25% boost? It just getting some extra MHz (up to 400) depending on the settings you have in the bios.

And this is not working only for single threaded programs but on 2 and aswell on 4 cores (depending on the settings from your bios).

Some motherboards have max turbo on all cores enabled from the begining.

DDR3L RAM is just DDR3 with lower Voltage.

@Coseniath: 4690k goes from 3.5 to 4.4 that's 25% boost, I wasn't talking about turbo boost being 25%.

Yes you are correct it's for 2 cores still meaning that down the road for multi threaded games it won't do anything. I have not heard of all 4 cores being utilized by it on special motherboards but even if it is the case I am sure those are premium boards which becoems irrelavent for me.

Where did you see this?

Cause me and Intel clearly don't have a clue about it:

Intel® Core™ i5-4690K Processor Max Turbo Frequency: 3.9 GHz

ps: I have an i7 4770K and my motherboard (ASUS Maximus VI Hero) had 3.9GHz enabled at all cores from the begining.

Its the ASUS multicore enhancement option:

@Gambler_3: I didn't see the "n't" part of "wasn't"... :P

I need to stop posting right after I wake up xD.

My apologies.

The "ps" part I posted however is applied to most (I think all of them) Zxx motherboards since Ivybridge (well it started with Ivy, when reviewers noticed that some mobos had strangely more performance than others).

There is an entire post in Anandtech about it:

MultiCore Enhancement: The Debate About Free MHz

@Coseniath: Well that chart shows its really the more expensive ones giving more performance. So I'll stick to a cheaper Z97 board and overclock myself. I already have a cooler as well.

Nah, don't look at that chart, its outdated.

So if you will manually o/c then, there is no need for MCE.

And to be honest, if gaming is what you will mainly do with your PC, then I don't think that there is a game out there that will be bottlenecked by a stock clocked i5 4690K.

So in the end you might not need to o/c at all... (I moved from Q6600 to i7 4770K. The difference is massive...)

@Coseniath: Ya I know it won't make any difference right now but in future 25% OC comes in really handy.

BTW how much longer you think will the i7 last in terms of gaming than the i5?

With DX12 coming (I don't think any DX11 title can bottleneck either of them), since it will take advantage of HT, I suspect it might hold 1y and maybe 2y+ more since it takes more than two generations for i5 to reach i7 multithreaded performance.

@Coseniath: Ya I have actually been thinking of going all in with the 4790k. $100 for something that could last even a year more seems worth it to me. Now it will all depend on whether I'll be able to manage the budget or else i5 will also do the job for a few years I am sure.

Have you considered motherboards that support both ddr3 and ddr4 RAM? Like these?