Intel Devil's Canyon Core i7-4790K Review

👤by David Mitchelson Comments 📅10-06-14
Introduction



Product on Review: Core i7-4790K
Manufacturer Intel
Street Price: £269.99 GBP / $339 USD

A little over 12 months have passed since our reviews of the original unlocked Intel Haswell CPUs, the Core i5-4670K and Core i7-4770K. Rather than release a whole new generation Intel have instead returned to LGA1150 and opted to refresh the Haswell line-up on the now mature 22nm lithography process, in so doing increasing the performance for users whilst holding prices stable.

Alongside last month's Haswell refresh was the introduction of Intel's 9-series motherboards – in the form of the Z97 and H97 chipsets for overclocking and mainstream markets respectively. An incremental evolution of the 8-series, it brings support for new storage interface technologies as standard in addition to the latest Haswell chips straight out of the box. The 9-series will also support desktop variants of Haswell's 14nm successor, Broadwell, when that CPU is released.

Despite their reveal in March, unlocked 'K' CPUs weren't included in the first round of Haswell Refresh CPUs, and so gamers and enthusiasts have had to wait the intervening six weeks for their fix of new overclockable chips. The update has not been quite as cut and dried as one might have expected however; Intel have decided to do something a little special for the unlocked chips in the form of Devil's Canyon.

Devil's Canyon CPUs – sold under the Core i7-4790K and Core i5-4690K – are designed with higher base clocks and higher overclocks in mind. At one stage many were working under the impression that the i7-4790K would be a simple multiplier bump of the i7-4770K, bringing very little added value to the market over its predecessor. As we will see in the review the 4790K is a substantial engineering improvement, creating a major lead in both stock speeds and additional overclocking headroom without a price increase.



Intel on their Core i7-4790K
Looking for the perfect processor to build your gaming rig around? But you also want to edit your action videos and photos? But to do this you know you need serious performance. Not to worry - Intel is happy to announce our first 4GHz base frequency quad core processor. If it is performance you crave, then this is the processor you have been waiting for. But what if you feel the need to overclock your system to squeeze every last bit of performance out of it? Well, then this is still the perfect processor you. The lastest 4th gen Intel Core i5 and Intel Core i7 processors, paired with the latest Intel 9 Series H and Z chipsets, will get you the results you want. Add in features like built in visuals and Intel Quick Sync Video, which allows the conversion of media from one device to another and prepares your media from one device to another and prepares your media to share online at incredible speeds, and these are processors that meet every need you have.



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