Intel Core i7 4790K Devil’s Canyon Review (inc. Overclocking)

1. Introduction2. Devil's Canyon's Flagship - Core i7 4790K3. Overclocking the 4790K... and its issues4. Testing Methodology5. Tests: Processor-related6. Tests: Processor & Memory-related7. Tests: System-related8. Tests: Gaming-related9. Technical: Temperatures & Power Consumption10. Devil's Canyon - Burning Questions Addressed11. Closing Thoughts12. View All Pages

Cinebench

We used the ‘CPU’ test built into Cinebench R15 .

Super Pi

We used the 32M test in Super Pi to analyse single-threaded performance.

Handbrake Conversion

We measured the average frame rate achieved for a task of converting a 4.36GB 720P MKV movie to 720P MP4 format.

The Devil's Canyon-based 4790K makes a strong start in the CPU-heavy benchmarks. At its stock MCT clock speed of 4.4GHz the chip's performance is within touching distance of a heavily overclocked 4770K.

Also shown in the CPU-heavy benchmarks is the importance of cache frequency for processors based on the Haswell micro-architecture. The 4790K utilises a 4.4GHz cache frequency which managed to close the performance gap from the higher-clocked 4770K at 4.5GHz (and 3.9GHz cache frequency).

Jump up to 4.6GHz on the Devil's Canyon chip and the enhanced CPU and cache operating speeds help give the configuration a noticeable performance boost over an overclocked 4770K.

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