Best CPU for Money (Not Overclocking)

Rennof44 · Jan 10, 2016

Hey guys,

Currently I'm building a PC and as a high school student money is quite an issue to me so I'm trying to figure out which CPU gives the best bang for buck from the given list. I do not plan to overclock so I believe none of the given CPU's are designed to be overclocked however correct me if I'm wrong.

I plan to buy from a trusted Australian supplier, PC Case Gear so all prices are taken from them.

Here they are:

Intel Core i5 4460 ($279 AUD)
Intel Core i5 4590 ($305 AUD)
Intel Core i5 4690 ($335 AUD)
Intel Core i7 4790 ($459 AUD)

Looking at the specifications of each I notice that there's no major difference in the GHz they supply. The 4460 gives 3.2GHz and the 4790 gives 3.6GHz which is only a 0.4GHz difference yet the two are $180 AUD apart.

I'd like your help with the following:

1) Should I bother forking out that extra $180 for only 0.4GHz extra or is there something else behind the 4790's value?
2) Would the 4460 allow me to play most top end games on medium-high settings smoothly if paired with a GTX 970 and 8GB of RAM?
3) What do the GHz increments even mean? Please help me understand the substantial price differences for such a small GHz increase.

Hope to hear your answers.

Kind Regards,

Rennof44

Someone Somewhere · Jan 10, 2016

What do you plan to use it for? That's the biggest question.

The i7 has Hyperthreading, which can significantly improve performance in some cases. Most games won't notice.

Yup to #2, though I'd think about maybe 16GiB.

Also, just for general reference, ark.intel.com is really useful: http://ark.intel.com/compare/80817,80815,80810,80806

I wouldn't spend the $30 to go up a frequency step.

lodders · Jan 10, 2016

Use this to compare the processing power of CPUs
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

But in the UK, a 4460 is very good value for money, and the 4690k is slightly better, but only if you overclock it.

Gingerbread · Jan 10, 2016

i5-6500 for $295 beats all of those you've mentioned when it comes to price <-> performance. Not to mention you can use ddr4 with it.

Rennof44 · Jan 10, 2016

Someone Somewhere :

I'd be gaming mostly, a bit of web browsing here and there but no video editing or things like that. And is the i7's Hyper-Threading capability worth it's extra $180? Also, would you consider throwing the 4590 and 4690 away as options and just focusing on the 4460 and 4790 or do you think the 4690's extra 0.2GHz is worthy of its extra monetary cost? And thank you for that link.

Rennof44 · Jan 10, 2016

Gingerbread :

Is it still better than the 4460 despite the 4460 being cheaper and running the same GHz or is there something I'm missing here. Sorry, but I'm quite new to PC's and I don't really know these things.

Gingerbread · Jan 10, 2016

i7's hyper threading is useless for you. So the $180 in your case are pointless. Only thing you can consider over 4460 (and that is if you have skipped skylake) is the 4590 due to the higher tubo boost.

Rennof44 · Jan 10, 2016

lodders :

Yeah, I'm feeling the 4460 is the way to go and definitely have no plans of overclocking. Would you consider the i7 option in this case? Also do you think the other two i5 options I should just disregard?

Gingerbread · Jan 10, 2016

The 6500 is skylake. Intels general idea is new gen comes out and performs 10-20% better at the same clock speed (eg. 3.2ghz 4xxx should perform 10-20% worse than 3.2ghz 6xxx). Not to mention the 6500 consumes significantly less power and works with DDR4. The 4xxx series you will get now (haswell) will work with DDR3 at 1600mhz or 1833mhz at best, while the 6500 will work with 2133 or 2400mhz DDR4 ram.

Rennof44 · Jan 10, 2016

Gingerbread :

Okay, just to clarify Hyper-Threading has to do with overclocking right? Finally, is the Turbo Boost worth that extra $30-$60, does it give games noticeable performance boosts?

unreal9400 · Jan 10, 2016

The 4460 will run cooler due to the low base clock speed of 3.2 GHz.
For Medium to high the i5 4460(turbo 3.4 GHz) is sufficient but since you are not going to do any overclocking go for i5 4690(Turbo 3.9 GHz) instead it will give you better performance for graphics card upgrade in the future.
i7 4790 is only justifiable if you are rendering or doing video editing/encoding/decoding.

Rennof44 · Jan 10, 2016

unreal9400 :

Okay thank you for that, I think leaves me with only the 4460 and 4690 to choose from. To clarify, does 'Turbo Boosting" a CPU require you to do something with a program manually or does the CPU do it automatically for you?

unreal9400 · Jan 10, 2016

Rennof44 :

The CPU will do it automatically for you.
Turbo boost will boost the frequency according to thermal headroom that is available.

Rennof44 · Jan 10, 2016

unreal9400 :

Rennof44 :

The CPU will do it automatically for you.
Turbo boost will boost the frequency according to thermal headroom that is available.

Okay, one last thing, would you consider the 4690 worthy of it's $55 extra value?

madmatt30 · Jan 10, 2016

I'd go haswell 4460 at the lower price point but skylake i5 6600 at the higher one - its $10 than the 4690 at $325 & performs slightly better .

unreal9400 · Jan 10, 2016

Rennof44 :

For me it is not worth it since the turbo boost can only work in a short period of time with i5 4690 due to the higher boost speed while the i5 4460 will be able to maintain the turbo speed longer since it runs much cooler and doesn't get hot compared to i5 4690. Maybe you will get a few extra frames per second going with the i5 4690 which most people won't be able to notice.

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