happy easter everybody! 

now i know this has been discussed over and over and i don't want to start a new debate here. but i hope that by throughing in my question, some people who have actually done the same could help me take the right decision. so, i can basically narrow it down to this:

what performance gain in FSX/P3D can be expected by replacing an i5 4690k @ 4.2GHz with an i7 4790k max overclocked (board: ASRock Z97 Pro4)?

Thanks, everybody.

cheers, HiLok

I haven't done it, but I doubt if you'll see more than a 5% increase in framerates and nothing as far as graphics go. The only thing that counts between those CPU's is the clock speed and it's not much of a difference. Part of the problem is that the 4790K is a poor overclocker...4.8Ghz is about the max and most folks (me included) can't get past 4.7Ghz (and it runs 4.4Ghz turbo with no OC). Since the 4690K will OC to 4.5-6Ghz it doesn't seem to me the swap would be worth it. All mileage is, of course variable. You may want to look at  http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4690K - particularly the single-thread performance and OC numbers.

Doug

If the 4790k can do 4.9ghz approx 16% if you overclock the to 4.6 the difference is 6%.

Ipc is the equal at same  clock. The only difference is the cpu lotteriea 

With HT on it don't clock as high as with HT off,  generate more heat. 

If you run with HT 4.7 and the 4.6 on the 4690k 2% difference 

Doug beat me to the link to the CPUBoss. I think it would be very difficult to find members here who had the i5 4690K and then moved up to the i7 4790K after purchasing the ASROCK Z97 Pro4 MB so the link to the CPU Boss will give you a better idea.  I doubt you will see any visible difference in FSX or P3D.  I just upgraded from an i7 4770K to an i7 7770K overclocked to 4.5GHz and once when I overclocked it to 5.0GHz and did not see any noticeable improvements (same slider positions).  I have a friend who moderates here and he upgraded like I did but the Salt Lake City addon was not fps friendly and he had to remove some of the eye-candy.  I'm hoping to see some improvements in P3D if and when they ever upgrade the app to 64 bit but I really do not expect anything great to happen.  I think an application has to be programmed to use the CPU better.  Modern games are done in this way but FSX is an old application that will never be upgraded and P3D is based off of the old FSX engine. 

Best regards,

Jim

3 hours ago, Jim Young said:

Doug beat me to the link to the CPUBoss. I think it would be very difficult to find members here who had the i5 4690K and then moved up to the i7 4790K after purchasing the ASROCK Z97 Pro4 MB so the link to the CPU Boss will give you a better idea.  I doubt you will see any visible difference in FSX or P3D.  I just upgraded from an i7 4770K to an i7 7770K overclocked to 4.5GHz and once when I overclocked it to 5.0GHz and did not see any noticeable improvements (same slider positions).  I have a friend who moderates here and he upgraded like I did but the Salt Lake City addon was not fps friendly and he had to remove some of the eye-candy.  I'm hoping to see some improvements in P3D if and when they ever upgrade the app to 64 bit but I really do not expect anything great to happen.  I think an application has to be programmed to use the CPU better.  Modern games are done in this way but FSX is an old application that will never be upgraded and P3D is based off of the old FSX engine. 

Best regards,

Jim

You didn't *see* a difference?  Did you run a flight sim benchmark with a frame rate counter to *test* the difference, or are you simply commenting on what your naked eye could see?  Because I'll tell you right now that your naked eye isn't going to see the difference in a 10% performance improvement unless that 10% bridges the gap between "stuttering mess" and "just fast enough to be smooth".  Unless your test scenario can produce these results you're not even giving your system the opportunity to show you the difference, based on what you've stated.  

gents, thank you sincerely for the replies. i had a doubt, if i had missed out on something regarding the i7, because almost everyone uses that within the flight simmer community. 

westman, thanks for pointing out the HT on/off problem.

jim, thank you very much for sharing your experience.

w2dr, i wasn't aware that the 4690k could go as high as 6GHz -assuming proper cooling- interesting...

you guys made the right decision very clear to me! have a nice sunday, everyone

thanks, HiLok

4 hours ago, TechguyMaxC said:

You didn't *see* a difference?  Did you run a flight sim benchmark with a frame rate counter to *test* the difference, or are you simply commenting on what your naked eye could see?  Because I'll tell you right now that your naked eye isn't going to see the difference in a 10% performance improvement unless that 10% bridges the gap between "stuttering mess" and "just fast enough to be smooth".  Unless your test scenario can produce these results you're not even giving your system the opportunity to show you the difference, based on what you've stated.  

I know what you are saying but I still get massive stuttering and long pauses where I sit there in front of my computer and wonder, "Will this thing shutdown and crash?"  But it doesn't and things smooth out again and it is just a small glitch as I fly over FSDT KLAX and Orbx SoCal.  I still have saved flights I did on the old system and now with the new system and see little difference in the fsuipc logs.  Will post them when I find them.

Best regards,

Jim

New build?  Didn't see the difference...but what really matters in the end?  This confirms my current opinion on upgrading from my 4770k build:  unless a compelling (for me) FS comes out that can really exploit 8+ cores, or processors start hitting 6ghz or more (or IPC gets a miraculous boost), for FSX (and seemingly also for P3D) upgrading is not worth the costly buy-in.  Crud, I miss those days when a 3 year upgrade gave you a 2x to 3x performance boost.  But at least upgrading a gtx 780 to a gtx 1070 on my system was a very noticeable performance boost (that 1070 just laughs at cloud cover that would choke a 780).

 

10 hours ago, TheFamilyMan said:

Crud, I miss those days when a 3 year upgrade gave you a 2x to 3x performance boost.

so true : )

thanks for your contribution as well, familiyman! after all advices i got, it seems obvious to me that i need a new gpu : D

again, thanks everybody!

It's certainly not the glory days where a reliable doubling of clock speed/IPC improvements occur every 2 years any more, that's for sure.  That being said, that extra 10% can be the difference.  I'm certainly very happy with my upgrade from a 4790k @ 5GHz to a 7700k @ 5.2GHz.  The extra RAM speed makes a huge difference, and the additional clocks and IPC give another 10-15% on top of that.  Not worth it for everyone, but I enjoy swapping out parts often, PC building is kind of a hobby for me.