I upgraded from a Phenom II X3 720 (unlocked to X4 3.2GHz) and an ASRock 970 Extreme3 R1.0 board, so in that regard, the 4670K is a really nice and noticeable upgrade. Should also note the 4690K has advertised support for VT-d too, and is rumored to be using a better thermal compound in-between the CPU die and IHS (for better temperatures). Overall Review: Firstly, if you are considering this CPU at the time of writing, and have a Z97 or H87 chipset, I may suggest waiting about a week and getting the 4690K for around the same price.
If you're familiar with Intel, this shouldn't be a surprise though (unlocked CPUs usually lack certain virtualization features). The temperatures spike up pretty quickly too (from 40C to high 60s the second I start the stress test).ĭoesn't support VT-d. Temperatures while running prime95 at 4GHz 1.2V climb upwards to around 80C.
Windows 8.1's performance is noticeably better as well.Ĭons: Runs a bit hot. Had to drop to medium/low and to 1 on the draw distances to get comparable framerate on my old CPU.Įverything else I played (Path of Exile, Dota 2, WarCraft III, Dynasty Warriors 8) did see an improvement as well, but the performance of the old CPU wasn't too bad either to make it really noticable. I get 40+ FPS in most cases with Grand Theft Auto IV with settings on high, 100 vehicle density, 50 everything else. Compared to my old CPU (listed in other thoughts), that's a huge and impressive improvement (20-30). I was able to reach between 50-70 FPS in Guild Wars 2 while standing in Divinity's Reach.