I7 4770K how long do I have left

If it helps, people are still using 2nd gen i7's. I think we are fine for a few more years at least (i have an i7 4790)

I would definitely wait. There will always be something newer and better coming out. Id say you could even get a few more years out of that CPU if you wanted to.

my 955 black (@ stock) is humming along just fine for an 8 year old. I'm a first person shooter player mostly.

I still have my 4770K (stock clocks atm) and while gaming I rarely see 60% usage even on some CPU heavy titles so yea, it should last at least another year or so.

We are talking a handful of FPS max, may not even be noticeable. Definitely not a big enough difference to justify having to buy a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM. The part that makes the biggest difference in gaming is the video card, and at 1080p60fps, the 970 is still a great card.

If your system does everything you want for the next couple of years, there will be newer better generations of intel and AMD cpus next year and the year after, and so on. So it only makes sense to upgrade when you are unhappy with the performance of your system. Maybe three years from now AMD will have a 3rd gen Ryzen cpu that crushes the current ones, and then you can justify upgrading.

I am on the Haswell boat too. It still does everything i need just fine, my next upgrade would probably be like the 2nd Gen Zen or something like that.

for just gaming it will be fine for quite some time i imagine, for gaming and streaming at high quality it chokes a little (i plan on delidding mine and OCing till it dies)

I haven't seen any evidence that an OC'd 4770/4790k would bottleneck a 1080ti. Some benchmarks at stock clocks will show a deficit to 7th gen but that is only due to higher stock clocks with the newer generation.

My buddy has a 4790k @ 4.7ghz and I have a 7700k @ 4.8ghz and we both have the 1070 and still get almost identical benchmarks, much closer than what sites will show when comparing stock clocks. For more reference my old i7 2600 non k was holding back the 1070 quite a bit.

I'll be sure to let the community know when we start seeing a difference as I'm sure other people will also.

Both a Haswell and Sandy Bridge owner here. My six year old Sandy Bridge gaming rig is still running fine as a 1080p backup gamer. I recently upgraded my 4690K's SLI 970s with a 1080Ti and couldn't be happier. Your CPU will last for several more years as many here state. Intel stopped making big improvements after Sandy Bridge, making each new generation not really worth an upgrade.



I have yet to see a gaming bottleneck at 1440p with my 4.7GHz i5 4690K.

i was living with C2d up untill a month back.
answer to that question totally depends on your work.

if you have some extra cash to throw transfer it to my account.

upgrade your gpu if you are getting lower then 40 fps avg. in your games.

At 1080p and comparing the same gens a I5 7600k gets less FPS than an i7 7700k. 1440p is more of a GPU benchmark resolution than CPU so can be misleading if you're comparing 1440p to 1080p which is why most CPU benchmarks are at 1080p to not make it about the GPU benchmark.

If it ain't broke, I don't game, but I do encode/render a lot, and I prefer to smoke the new kids with my 2-day ebay spree on cheap server parts. The result? An 8 year old "obsolete" rig with dual x5680 cpu's, 48gb ram, 240gb Pci-ssd, gtx 760 rig that SMOKES (cinebench 1500+) vs the i7-7700k @ 5ghz (cb 1039) all for less $$ than the 7700k alone..



You can polish the subsystems all day but ddr4 etc..is not going to overcome having an extra +36,000 clock cycles laying around..

i7700k 4core/4hyper @ 5000mhz = 50,000mhz
vs
Xeon x5680 x2 12core/12hyper @ 3600mhz =86,000mhz

Intel Core i7-6700K (Stock) 886 Points
Intel Core i7-7700K (Stock) 913 Points
Intel Core i7-7700K (5.0 GHz) 1089 Points

There's no clear cut answer to give you definitively. First off each game is different. There may be a game released that's a 'cpu killer' and another game released 2mo later may be less cpu bound than a game released a year ago. Does it require a high powered cpu in terms of clock speed? Number of cores? Threads? That's down to each game. Every time you load up a new game to play the whole equation changes again. Some games may be similar in requirements, others may be vastly different.

Part of the grand equation includes what monitor you have, is it capable of 144hz or 165hz? If it's not over 60hz and your current cpu plays games at 60fps or better there's little to no advantage to the additional fps. It also depends on your budget and 'needs'. Some people feel they 'need' the latest and greatest and will sink $800 in upgrades to get 3-5fps extra. Is that worth it to you? Do you have the budget for it? It's not diminishing people who like to live on the bleeding edge, it's posing circumstances to you specifically since you're the one playing the games with the hardware. If 5fps or 10fps makes little difference to you it doesn't matter what 10 or 20 other people say. It can mean all the world to them, doesn't change your experience.

If you're worried about it and have the means to do so, start budgeting a little money and saving it up toward a pc upgrade or overhaul. When games start to suffer across the board and you start feeling heavy fps drops or stuttering and games are no longer playing to what you consider optimal, then it's time to consider an upgrade. Part of the consideration should include looking at the relative performance of new cpu's or hardware you're considering. Do they in fact offer an advantage? Are you getting 45fps and you're seeing the newer hardware capable of 65-70fps? Or are newer cpu's only achieving 48-50fps? Also helps to investigate the game itself. Are you suffering because of your system or are you having a bad experience like 1500 other people because the game ultimately came to market too soon and is a steaming pile of dung that runs horribly on a 20c/40t system with custom cooling, overclocked with two gtx 1080ti's in sli? In those situations no hardware will solve poor game coding and the only hope is they release updates to fix it. Which may or may not happen. Not every game that runs horribly is the fault of hardware.

I certainly would not contemplate upgrading before I was at least starting to be disappointed with gaming performance, and, even then, your GPU will normally limit you at least partially at 1080P. (When you drop your resolution and quality settings, and framerate increases noticeably, then you are GPU limited...)

The overlocked 970s about match GTX1060 (6 gb) models, which are still quite adept/competent at 1080P gaming, IMO....

I am running the i7-4770K, 32 GB of RAM and using the 970 video card. For my photography it is just fine and for games like Mass Effect Andromeda I am getting all the performance I need. I make sure I clean the insides every 30-45 days and have yet to have a hardware problem, so I am staying with what I have.

What's funny is I spend more time on my living room PC(i5-4690k, 16gb ddr3 & rx 580) then I do on the one in my bedroom(ryzen 7 1700, 32gb ddr4, gtx 1070). Although it's because of the nice ocean breeze coming through the living room windows. I'd swap the PC's, but all the PC dabbling I do at work.. I don't feel like it when I get home.