4770K vs 4770S

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zimmer192

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Aug 19, 2012
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Hi,

I'm building a brand new system that will be multi-purpose, i.e. I will be playing games on it (racing simulation and first person shooter for the most part) but I will also use it for work purposes. This system will be running Windows 8 Pro (and possibly Linux Mint in dual boot). As part of my job (I'm a software developer), I will make heavy use of virtualization (using VirtualBox) running at least one VM (often 2, sometimes 3) side by side to my development tools. Aside from the video card, I do not foresee upgrading parts on this system, nor am I planning to overclock. Quietness of the system is important to me. Since noise usually comes from the fans, and since the fans are usually noisy when they have to work hard because there is too much heat, I'm looking at buying quality parts that are reliable and efficient (i.e. efficient in terms of power consumption). Finally, my budget can go up to $1800. So that's for my background.

The system I had in mind right is this one:

Antec Three Hundred Two Mid Tower Gaming Case 302 ATX 3X5.25 6X3.5INT No PS Front USB3.0 & Audio
Intel Core i7 4770K Unlocked Quad Core 3.5GHZ Processor LGA1150 Haswell 8MB Cache Retail
ASUS Z87-PRO ATX LGA1150 Z87 DDR3 3PCI-E16 4PCI-E1 CrossFireX/SLI SATA3 USB3.0 DVI HDMI Motherboard
ASUS GeForce GTX 660 OC DirectCU 1020MHZ 2GB 6.0GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Video Card
2 x G.SKILL F3-1600C9D-16GXM Ripjaws X Series 16GB 2X8GB Kits 240PIN DDR3-1600 PC3 12800 Desktop Memory (so 32GB in total)
Seasonic X Series 750W ATX 12V 24PIN 80PLUS Gold Fully Modular DC to DC Power Supply w/ Hybrid Fan
Western Digital Caviar Black 3TB 64MB Cache 7200RPM 3.5in SATA3 Internal Hard Drive OEM
Samsung 840 Series 250GB 2.5in SATA3 MDX Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD (MZ-7TD250BW)
ASUS BW-12B1ST Blu-Ray Writer 12X BD-R 16X DVD+R SATA Black Retail

Here are my question marks:

- my main question is regarding the CPU : since I am not aggressively looking at overclocking, would it be preferable that I choose the 4770S ? As I said, I'm looking at building a quiet system. As far as I could understand from the articles that I read, 4770S has a lower frequency at idle; I don't know how much less heat this would really save though. AFAIK, 4770S and 4770K have the same onboard video graphics (though it won't matter at the moment since I have a discrete card, but that could be a factor if I ever build a "real server" with this machine in the future and remove the discrete card). Lastly, 4770S sports some extra security protection over the 4770K but I am unsure if that really matters at all. The price difference between the two CPUs is immaterial to me; I'm just wondering if I could save some heat with the 4770S over the 4770K when my machine is idle.

- I read that not all PSU are compatible with Haswell. I did not fully understand it, but it seems like Haswell can enter very low power state that not all PSU can support or something like that. Could someone better describe it as well as tell me if the Seasonic PSU that I've picked would support it just fine? Any better PSU I should be considering?

- I sort of played safe with the motherboard, but I don't know if I'm overdoing it since I am not actively planning on overclocking. Any better choice you would have in mind?

- For roughly $150 more, I could buy a GTX 670 but I don't think it's worth spending more money for the performance difference, especially considering that 1) I currently have a 560ti in my other rig and it's powerful enough 2) if the video card becomes too weak a few years from now, I could easily upgrade it in due time. As such, I'm not too worried about the choice of my video card, but if you have a strong opinion about it, I'm all ears.

- RAM is another area where I don't worry much. It's either this G.Skill or Corsair Vengeance. I might be overdoing it with 32GB but like I said, I don't want to touch the guts of this computer in the future other than possibly the video card and since I will be doing quite a bit of virtualization, I'm playing it safe here. If I want to save $150, I could stick to 16GB. I'm not 100% decided.

- HDD, SSD and BRD are safe bets IMHO.

I can't wait to hear back from you guys. There is no such thing as too much information.

Thanks.
 
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King Hackintosh

King Hackintosh

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Jun 1, 2013
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This is what I would do for a silent build. I gave you a silent case (I own it), quiet fans (I own them), and an air cooling system instead of water cooling for the CPU. In regards to your PSU question, all PSUs are Haswell compatible, and also the 4770s won't make a huge difference. I'd suggest the 4770k because although you might not want to overclock now, later on down the road you might and I consider that a good reason to spend the extra $25 (there is a special on Newegg for a combo with the 4770k and a z87 motherboard.) I also included a GTX 770 but you can change that to a 670 which currently costs $304 on Newegg (another special). I also gave you a better and faster SSD (840 pro)

Here is the build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/19e5l

Here it is with the GTX 670:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/19ecE
 
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Lord_Kitty

Lord_Kitty

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May 31, 2013
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The 4770K doesn't support VT-d while the 4770S does.

But the 4770K offers the possibility to overclock when you need it. I'm not sure if you will benefit from it though.

But if you are in heavy multitasking use, (like you said, building a sever) you might benefit from the LGA 2011 platform. If its in your budget, you could go for a 6 core-12 threads, $550 3930K.


If you go for the 4770K/S, then I do recomend the Fractal Design Define R4 for silence.
 
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zimmer192

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Aug 19, 2012
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Thank you very much. Sorry for not getting back to you sooner; it has been (and still is) hectic at work.

While I sincerely appreciate your efforts in building a system for me, I'm probably even more interested in understanding why you chose the parts that you are suggesting as opposed to mine. Is it mostly to get better prices? As an example, you chose a Gigabyte mobo as opposed to the Asus. There is a somewhat significant price difference (~$60) but I'm wondering what kind of features (or quality?) I lose in the process (I mean, it must be more expensive for a reason?).

I was also a little bit surprised that would go for a cheaper mobo but then upgrade the SSD to the Pro version. In my experience, SSDs are so much faster than HDDs that the performance difference between a Pro and non-Pro version is negligible when considering the price difference. Obviously, based on articles I've read on Tom's, the Pro performs better under heavy stress, but I don't think it's the case for the average Joe.

I'm just curious and trying to learn in the process.

Thanks again!



 
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zimmer192

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Aug 19, 2012
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I've read some more about VT-d does and though I think I have a better understanding (i.e. it allows a VM to have direct access to a device like a video capture card, or alternately, better share a device with another VM), I'm still unclear whether this will be useful or not.

What I do know is that it is quite unlikely that I will overclock because I prefer stability over performance, especially that running the CPU at 4.3GHz (as opposed to stock 3.9GHz) is unlikely to make any noticeable difference (maybe you would disagree?), especially that the real workhorse in gaming is the video card.

As for running this computer as a server, what I envision is that this could eventually become a machine that runs 24/7 and which would be providing various "services". For instance, off the top of my head, I could use this machine to run all the following VMs at once:
- a VM that runs IPFire (software-based router hence possibly require direct access to the network cards)
- a VM that runs a MythTV server (hence possibly require direct access to the video capture card)
- a VM that runs FreeNAS (hence possibly require direct access to the hard disk)

Now you could argue that all these could be run in the same Linux instance (hence not require VM software like VirtualBox). However, IPFire and FreeNAS are possibly more easily configurable if deployed in their own VM directly from the ISO. See what I mean?

As such, I'm still undecided which CPU to go with, and I'm still searching the Web to find an exact answer to my VT-d question.

Thanks!



Yeah, King Hackintosh has suggested the Fractal Design as well; I will seriously consider it given he had first hand experience.
 
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zimmer192

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Aug 19, 2012
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Hi everyone,

I followed people's advice and went for the unlocked version of the CPU. If you intend on doing heavy virtualization like I do, it is a huge mistake. Here is why.

I needed to run a VM and allocate it 12GB as well as 2 CPUs. In order to fully address the 12GB, I obviously needed the guest OS to be 64-bits. As it turns out, it seems like VirtualBox is unable to make the host (which is Win7 64-bits) appear as 64-bits hardware as doing so requires VT-d. Furthermore, VirtualBox is unable to allocate more than one core to the guest OS without VT-d. This came as big disappointment and a big problem for me as this was required to accomplish a task for my job.

So in hindsight, I should have gone with the 4770 (not the 4770k). As for choosing between the 4770s and the 4770, the 4770s has lower wattage requirements (65W vs 84W) and runs slower on idle (3.1GHz vs 3.4GHz) but it has the same top speed (3.9GHz). As far as I can tell, these are the only differences between the two CPUs but who knows... As such, if I had to do it all over again, I'd go with the 4770.

Note that my goal with this posting is not about finger pointing at those who tried to help by answering my thread. However, I felt it was important that I share share my experience so that others don't make the same mistake that I did.

============ ADDENDUM ============

For what it's worth...

As it turns out, 4770k does not support VT-d, but it supports VT-x. VT-x actually seems to be enough to do run 64-bits guest OSes, and allocate more than one CPU to the guest OS. VT-d seems to be an optimization that gives direct access to the peripherials; as such, it feels mostly like an optimization right now.

So in my case, there was a setting in the BIOS that was turned off and which was disabling VT-x. As such, I'm good to go for now (unless I hit another roadblock :) as I am now able to run a 64-bit guess OS as well as select how many CPUs that guest OS should see.
 
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myme

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Nov 11, 2013
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Hi Zimmer, I know your post has been resolved, but maybe you can help me. Did you go with the ASUS Z87 PRO mobo as you initially planned ?

Reason I ask - I bought the ASUS Z87 PRO and a 4770K with Win 7 64bitOS dual booted with Fedora 19 64bit - and ran into the same trouble. Cant run a 64 bit guest - either under VMWare Player or VirtualBox - same problem regardless of host OS I use.

Raised a problem with ASUS and they can't help. If you went the the ASUS mobo, can you tell me the BIOS change you made ?
 
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