Intel Core i7-4790K Devil's Canyon Increases Clocks By 500 MHz, Lowers Temps

Vigile (99919) writes "Since the introduction of Intel's Ivy Bridge processors there was a subset of users that complained about the company's change of thermal interface material between the die and the heat spreader. With the release of the Core i7-4790K, Intel is moving to a polymer thermal interface material that claims to improve cooling on the Haswell architecture, along with the help of some added capacitors on the back of the CPU. Code named Devil's Canyon, this processor boosts stock clocks by 500 MHz over the i7-4770K all for the same price ($339) and lowers load temperatures as well. Unfortunately, in this first review at PC Perspective, overclocking doesn't appear to be improved much."

Re: Speed is not the only thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a gamer, there are a lot of games that are CPU bound. ArmA 3 and Skyrim are great examples, basically any game with a complicated physics engine or that's dependent on a lot of AI (Gamer AI, means NPCs) calculations. A faster CPU can offer a much better performance than a slower one with the same video hardware

Re:Speed is dead, long live low power

[Bryan Ischo]

Agreed. I've said it before and I'll say it again: significant performance increases in the x86 world are a thing of the past.

There simply isn't enough money in the market chasing higher performance to make the development cost of faster chips worth the investment.

This is actually an opportunity for AMD. I expect it costs AMD less to catch up to Intel than it costs Intel to push to faster speeds, and since Intel isn't being paid anymore to get faster, AMD can, like the slow and steady tortoise, gradually catch up to Intel. I believe it will take a couple more years, but if AMD survives that long, I believe that it will have achieved near performance parity with Intel by then.

And then neither company's offerings will get much faster, forever thereafter, until there is some new kind of 'killer app' that demands increased CPU speeds that people are willing to pay for (could happen anytime; but the way things are going, with everyone moving to mobile phones and pads, I think we're in for a relatively long haul of form factor and power usage dominating the marketable characteristics of CPUs).

I believe Intel will continue to hold a power advantage over AMD for a long time though, but AMD will gradually narrow that gap as well.

The thing is, AMD will be fighting Intel for a stagnating/shrinking CPU market, and more than likely AMD won't increase its margins significantly during this process, it will just reduce Intel's margins. Not really good news for either company, but worse for Intel.

Speed and Temp

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Intel lowers the temp, increase the speed by 50 and there are issues with overclock ability? Man, just go invent and build your own proc. Want you cake and eat it too?

Re:I Miss the Good Old Days

[15Bit]

Yeah, but there comes a point where it is technologically easier to increase the amount done with each clock tick than it is to make logic that can switch faster. We reached that point about 10 years ago....