i7-4790K v.s. i7-5820K

[Shmee]

At this point I would say it depends, though later on, with more cores/threads used in games, and better DDR4 pricing and performance, the 5820k makes more sense.

If you need it now, the X99 platform makes sense if you need more premium features or PCIE lanes.

Honestly, I am likely waiting till broadwell E, Skylake E, or whatever comes next as far as desktop upgrades. I am happy with the IVB-E for now, should hold out for a while, at least until fast M.2 with NVMe and PCI-E 4

 

[CHADBOGA]

4790K

My biggest concern with a CPU is when it can no longer power the latest & greatest games, without suffering unacceptable slowdowns.

The extra clock speed available with a 4790K over a 5820K, makes it a very clear cut choice for me.

 

[guskline]

Just built a X99 5960x rig so the X99 gets my vote.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

5820k. You probably wouldn't have to upgrade it for 6 years.

In my opinion I think all future upgrades will be process and somewhat extension related. At 4Ghz, power consumption and/or heat begins to be significant.

 

[bigboxes]

For me I was on the line on which platform to get. I plan on keeping this build for the long run. I have a Microcenter within a 30 minute drive and I got the 4790K for $250 during the month of December. I did buy everything new, but the cost of a comparable motherboard was at least a $100 more and we all know about DDR4 pricing. I spent close to $2,000 on my build and figured it would have been another $300 to do what I wanted to do with the 2011/X99 platform. In three years I may be looking at the latest and greatest in hex/octa-core processors. Hopefully, by then we will have a drop in DDR4 pricing and software will be coded to use multiple cores more efficiently. I do a moderate amount of photoshop and video editing so I just got a crapload of memory. I game occasionally and it can handle all that and more for my resolution. When I eventually upgrade my monitor I can upgrade my video card to handle that. As it is my new build is uber quiet and lightning fast. I am very happy with the 4790K.

 

[Ramses]

4790K here, and it was still way overkill both performance and cost wise for me.

I looked hard at the x99 stuff but I would have had to buy a lesser board, and that ram, or spend quite a bit more. I wanted the Asus WS board, got the z97 for $200 new on ebay vs $500 for the x99. I could have low balled it and made x99 work but meh, it's all fast. The cutting of pci lanes on the 5820k annoyed me in principle if not practice too.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Interesting how close it is between the 4790K and the 5820K. Cool stuff. Keep the responses coming!

 

[Gikaseixas]

4790k
Strong core performnce
Enough threads to power demanding games
Lower price overall
Better gamer all around @ stock speeds
DDR3 > DDR4 right now
nuff said

 

[biostud]

Are you sure? Simply replacing your ASRock X99X Killer with a Z97X Killer on Newegg returns around 36% price difference for MB+CPU+RAM, which coincidentally is around the same 36% throughput gain when comparing 50% more cores to 10% increasd frequency.

For the pricing in Denmark, I compared with the z97x Killer.

 

[Ajay]

Now that I've seen costs for CPU+mobo+RAM (16GB) at $800 or less, then I'd say i7 5820K. Now, if by chance, Skylake winds up giving us a serious bump in throughput - then I'd think twice. But compared to Devil's Canyon, no contest for me.

 

[ehume]

I'm holding off. I won't be needing the PCIE lanes, so the 5820K would have been OK. But the mb and RAM cost -- the extra two cores were not enough to make a difference. So I will wait and seen what BW-E and SL-E bring. By then the cost of DDR4 memory will be reasonable, so the extra cores will be worth it. And by then, maybe we'll have 8 cores. Until then, I'll limp along with DC -- the MC prices were very nice.

 

[escrow4]

4790k
Strong core performnce
Enough threads to power demanding games
Lower price overall
Better gamer all around @ stock speeds
DDR3 > DDR4 right now
nuff said

Singleplayer @ 1080p or above for most games stock Haswell @ ~3.5GHz or so is more than enough. Only the minimum's will really vary, and then both will dip so its a wash. Multiplayer I'd agree.

 

[CP5670]

I got a 4790K a few months ago (Microcenter deal with $250 CPU and a pretty good motherboard for $50 open box). That was a no brainer choice for me. The 5820K price is good, but the X99 motherboards still cost twice as much as the Z97 ones. Like most people upgrading, I had existing DDR3 I could keep using. For X99, I would need DDR4 as well as a new sound card due to the lack of PCI. The total cost of the 5820K upgrade was almost $700, and there are very few programs that show truly substantial differences between 4 and 6 cores despite people saying that more cores is the future. I also like the fact that the 4790K is close to its max clocks out of the box. I don't have the same time and patience to overclock and test a lot of different settings like I used to.

I was coming off an X58 setup so another, more compelling option for me was a 6-core Xeon. However, I decided it was better to sell my X58 stuff while the demand is high and enjoy the benefits of a modern platform like USB 3, PCIE 3 and SATA 3, which most X58 boards lack.

At this point, I would just wait for Skylake. It's likely to bring its own round of motherboards with it as well.

 

[crashtech]

It's certain to bring new motherboards with a new socket, LGA 1151.

 

[Makaveli]

Higher IPC,There's good DDR3..Better compatibility.
ddr4 sucks, CAS 15 @ 2800? You call that good?

They are both haswell cores the IPC is the same so that is incorrect.

 

[CP5670]

It's certain to bring new motherboards with a new socket, LGA 1151.

That makes X99 even less attractive then. The prices of those boards make no sense IMO. Even the low end ones are $200, and motherboards in general don't really affect performance these days and have no more lasting value than CPUs (the X58 upgrade path was a rare exception). I would rather put that money towards a video card or something else instead.

 

[sm625]

"Slight premium"? You're talking at least $100, and could easily balloon to $200. That's another monitor right there. Or an SSD. Or several other choices that you will actually notice, unlike the difference between these two platforms.

 

[beginner99]

They are both haswell cores the IPC is the same so that is incorrect.

he probably meant the much higher clock. We should not forget this. Single-threaded performance is still king and if you are actually buying for a niche market you probably wouldn't have to ask here.

 

[crashtech]

I think Makaveli is objecting to the improper use of the term IPC. Devil's Canyon gives higher throughput per core than Haswell-E on average because it averages higher clocks, not because it executes more instructions per clock, which is the definition of IPC.

 

[tenks]

Cool thread. I've been planning a 5820k build for a long, long time now. I' love watching my build slowly fall in price week after week, with the fall of ddr4 prices. I'm using PCpartpicker.com and it started off at around $2150 and now its around $1950ish. I will be ready to buy after all the shows and spring product announcements are done. I expect the 2nd wave of more diverse x99 boards, and more m.2 options coming.

I can't wait!

edit: I just wish I lived by a MicroCenter :/

 

[Makaveli]

I think Makaveli is objecting to the improper use of the term IPC. Devil's Canyon gives higher throughput per core than Haswell-E on average because it averages higher clocks, not because it executes more instructions per clock, which is the definition of IPC.

Thanks you wrote what I was thinking.

 

[hunkeelin]

4790K so far has the cores that go the fastest most easily. Unless you know you need the throughput delivered by the two extra cores, 5820K has to prove it can clock reliably at 4.4 or better all day long to be decisively superior. Even then, there's still the price premium imposed by the platform and DDR4.

the 5820 can easily go up to 4.4ghz .............. there's reviews about 5820k everywhere.

 

[hunkeelin]

4790k
Strong core performnce
Enough threads to power demanding games
Lower price overall
Better gamer all around @ stock speeds
DDR3 > DDR4 right now
nuff said

DDR3> DDR4? heh?

I owe a sandy-e and now haswel-e when i touch my ddr3 ram it's always hot. THe ddr4 ram however is always chill. Lower voltage and lower heat in hte box = better OC for cpu and gpu.

 

[cbn]

The pricing on DDR4 has dropped pretty low (when on sale):

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2422765&highlight=ddr4

(Not sure when we will see a deal like that return again though)

And X99 boards currently start at $149.99 After rebate. (The $150 AR Asrock X99 has six phase power and the $160 AR Gigabyte apparently has 8 +2 phases. These boards also have M.2 x 4 slots. In contrast, the cheaper Z97 boards only have 4 phases and usually no M.2 (and when they do have M.2 it will be the PCIe 2.0 x 2 type), so feature-wise for the money I think low end X99 can be pretty good probably somewhere in the neighborhood of mid range Z97 or better depending on the value placed on various features.)

Cooling for overclocking isn't too expensive either. Apparently a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO (a $35 cooler) is good for a 4.4 Ghz on i7-5820K.

 

[Lepton87]

4790K here, and it was still way overkill both performance and cost wise for me.

I looked hard at the x99 stuff but I would have had to buy a lesser board, and that ram, or spend quite a bit more. I wanted the Asus WS board, got the z97 for $200 new on ebay vs $500 for the x99. I could have low balled it and made x99 work but meh, it's all fast. The cutting of pci lanes on the 5820k annoyed me in principle if not practice too.

Practice? Do you want 4 graphics cards? Otherwise it is fine for 3 graphics cards. With the PCI-E 3.0 8X lanes are just fine, there's very little performance difference between 8 and 16 lanes. 8X/8X/8X still leaves 4 lanes for a nice PCI-E SSD. 28 lanes are better than 16 lanes that's for sure yet some people don't acknowledge this as an advantage just because with 2 graphics cards you can't do 16x/16x with the 5820 and somehow 16/8 is no better than 8/8 yet 16/16 is so much better than 8x/8x or 16x/8x to them.

the 5820 can easily go up to 4.4ghz .............. there's reviews about 5820k everywhere.

That's not true, my sample requires a very good custom loop for that. Easily? No, not easily. IMHO for easily you need to drop to 4.2GHz that would be easy even on an air cooling. Not that it changes much.

As for the question in the OP. It depends on whether you want to OC or not. Stock clocks
4790

Overclocked
5820K

Why? 5820K can be overclocked by more than twice as much percentage wise.

At stock 4790K is clocked at 4/4.4 and 5820K is clocked at 3.3/3.6. I'm going to use just the boost clock for simplicity. 4.4 is 22% more that 3.6 and that eats a lot of 5820k advantage in throughput. After overclocking you would be looking at something like
4.6GHz for 4790K vs 4.3GHz for 5820K which shrinks the clock advantage to a mere 7%. Bear in mind that 5820K also have more cache and slightly faster memory due to 4 channels. As for DDR3 vs DDR4 the opinion varies due to the DDR3 memory standard being so mature. So the IPC of 5820k should be ever so slightly higher.

If you already have acceptable DDR3 memory I can see why they would want DDR3 memory but if someone doesn't the choice wouldn't be that easy. DDR3 is cheaper but you wouldn't be able to reuse that memory for a future build. DDR4 is more expensive but possibly reusable for future builds. I bought DDR4 2666 instead of the cheapest 2133 because I want to reuse it in my future builds possibly expand to 32GB but for me to be able to do that I would need to stick to 4 channel platforms which I intend to anyway.