^^ Pretty much what he said, although there is -always- the caveat that so much depends on WHICH game you're looking to play. IMHO, the difference between a few hundred MHZ will always boil down to 'mhz per $'. Is it -worth- it for that extra 200-300mhz? And even more importantly, that extra mhz, is that on -all- cores or just one core? Turbo states are core-dependent. The actual breakdown on the i5's with base speed and max at 1 core active, with the newegg price:
4430. 3.0ghz, 3.2ghz - $180.00
4440. 3.1ghz, 3.3ghz - $189.00
4460. 3.2ghz, 3.4ghz - $189.00
4570. 3.2ghz, 3.6ghz - $199.00
4590. 3.3ghz, 3.7ghz - $199.00 (amazon - not active on newegg?!?)
4670. 3.4ghz, 3.8ghz - $222.00 (amazon)
4690. 3.5ghz, 3.9ghz - $222.00 (amazon)
So - looking at the breakdown with price and base and turbo clocks, you're looking at about a $50.00 price increase for about a 700mhz increase in speeds from the 4430 to the 4690. From a percentage analysis, you increase your price by about 23%, and you get an 18% increase in speed. So - there's definitely a premium in there. So - what you need to do is go by actual benchmarks.
There's a benchmark comparison out there from about a year ago. He took a ton of CPUs, and ran them on 13 different games. Everything. From 4960x to FX4300s and everything in between. His method was simple enough, add up the framerates each CPU scored during the benchmark. The total would give faster CPUs a higher score. Slower CPUs a lower score. So - the difference between an i5-4590 and an i5-4460 across a cumulative 13 game test was... 21 total FPS. Or about 1.5 FPS per game. The difference between the 4460 and the 4690k was cumulative 40 pts (FPS) - or about 3FPS per game.
Link:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/test-of-cpu-for-gaming-30-cpus-compared.200132/
Ultimately only you can place a value on your hard earned money. Personally, the difference between a 4460 and a 4590 is about $10.00. About a 5% increase in price for a 10% increase in performance. That's a good deal. It's when the cost percentage goes up faster than the performance percentage that you're on the wrong end of the curve and you need to rethink what you're doing.
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