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So far as Google searches have been able to determine, it seems the Ryzen series are the only AMD CPUs able to compete with the i7-4790k. As it's possible I may of missed something, I wanted to doublecheck here to make sure there are no pre-Ryzen models that can equal the i7.

That is correct. The FX series of processors were pretty underwhelming. Any Intel processor for Sandy Bridge on didn't have real competition until RyZen came out.

Today of course it has largely flipped and the RyZen 5000 series are ahead of everything Intel has.

For entertainment purposes only....

if you only care about multithreaded performance and don't care about power draw (or need a heater), you could get a dual Opteron 6380, which gets somewhat better than the 4790k in Geekbench 5 multithread:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/6028134

https://browser.geekbench.com/processor ... e-i7-4790k

Ryzen 5 3600 or Ryzen 5 5600X would be an excellent choice.

I believe the closest equivalent would be the Ryzen 5 2500X. Both are 4C/8T with very similar performance. The 1500X is pretty close too, but clock speeds are pretty low so it gets beaten in lightly threaded stuff like games of their day.