TR Forums

Hi

Is my i5 4670k holding back the 980 ti that i acquired recently?
The motherboard is ASUS Z87-A and I'm kinda itching to upgrade to i7 4790k. Oh, I'm looking forward to playing Star Wars Battlefront but i don't know if it's worth the upgrade. My monitor is a 1440p 144hz

Short answer: No.

You have almost exactly the same setup I have (reminds me, I need to update my sig...)

Again, short answer is "no." The only real advantage the 4790K has is hyperthreading. It does have a higher stock clock, but that only matters if you are not overclocking -- in which case, why get a K processor and a Z motherboard.

Also, to use a 4790K I believe you would need a z97 chipset, not a z87.

You will be fine with what you are using now. So how do you like the 980 Ti so far? I was thinking of getting one myself, but went with the 970 instead.

I will be the voice of dissent and say "yes", but only because I will then try and get you to sell me your old, gently used 4670k at a reasonable price to upgrade one of my own machines.

In truth, no.

If you are asking the question, though, I'm guessing that you're feeling that your current setup is not performing as well as you'd like. Maybe give us some details, we might be able to figure out something.

K-L-Waster wrote:

Also, to use a 4790K I believe you would need a z97 chipset, not a z87.

Not true. Just need to have the BIOS updated.

No, and I'll read the content of your post after writing this.

Edit: I read the post, and still no. If you're feeling the itch to upgrade, jumping headfirst into a (sky)lake or the 5775C might be a better option. Even then the improvement will be negligible.

whm1974 wrote:

You will be fine with what you are using now. So how do you like the 980 Ti so far? I was thinking of getting one myself, but went with the 970 instead.

I'm liking it though it left a hole in my wallet. Only recent game I'm playing right now is Mad Max and it runs that smoothly at 1440p. I think i'm getting around 100 fps. I was using GTX 770 2gb before and I wasn't satisfied with its performance when i upgraded to 1440p 144hz monitor. So i splurged on a 980 ti

Ok so the consensus is no. You guys convinced me not to upgrade. The question now is should i overclock?! It's been a long time since i overclocked anything. I have a Corsair hydro liquid cooler in Amazon wishlist. It's been there for a while but I didn't feel the need to overclock but Star Wars Battlefront seems like a demanding game.

HappySOB wrote:

Ok so the consensus is no. You guys convinced me not to upgrade. The question now is should i overclock?! It's been a long time since i overclocked anything. I have a Corsair hydro liquid cooler in Amazon wishlist. It's been there for a while but I didn't feel the need to overclock but Star Wars Battlefront seems like a demanding game.

Overclock the CPU? Very little gain, but not much downside either (don't go crazy on the voltages).

Overclocking the GPU is more likely to result in an actual fps increase. This is also something Nvidia's recent GPUs have done very very well at (only one sample of course, so YMMV).

I concur with Atradeimos. Only real concern about overclocking the CPU would be that you have sufficient cooling and a good PSU -- if you have those, you should be good (I have mine running at 4.6 GHz without issue).

If you feel your games are already running fine then you probably don't need to overclock, but overclocking is pretty easy these days and may give you a little bit more performance.

If Battlefront is anything like the past few Battlefield games (and it should be since it's using the same engine) you will probably be GPU limited even with a 980ti believe it or not, but you should easily be able to get good framerates. Probably not 144FPS, but I don't think you will get that kind of framerate without SLI/crossfire.

HappySOB wrote:

Ok so the consensus is no. You guys convinced me not to upgrade. The question now is should i overclock?! It's been a long time since i overclocked anything. I have a Corsair hydro liquid cooler in Amazon wishlist. It's been there for a while but I didn't feel the need to overclock but Star Wars Battlefront seems like a demanding game.

Yes. Go for whatever you can get at reasonable temps / volts in the 4.2-4.4 GHz range.

Edit: But for single GPU that is probably not necessary. I've found that I've become CPU bottlenecked in multi-gpu scenarios where my CPU didn't have sufficient IPC to keep both cards fed (i5 750 / 670 SLI a few years back).