Conclusion

Last summer we published a similar series of articles, where we were analyzing gaming performance on the basis of two different processors. Back in the days it became very clear that performance differences between two CPU's at high resolutions are close to zero. The reason for this can be found within the fact, that the processor isn't the bottleneck of a system, when you're playing games at high resolutions. In this case it's the graphics card, which has to work overtime. In case of lower resolutions the influence of the processor becomes clearly visible, since the graphics card isn't the limiting factor anymore.

Having a closer look at the results we gathered while testing eight different games and two different benchmarks with two different presets, we see that the Core i7-4770K, with our "low-preset" is on average 4.7 percent faster than the Core i7-3770K. Switching to our "high-preset" makes the Core i7-4770K's become 0.41 percent slower than the Core i7-3770K. We wouldn't emphasize this point too much and start yelling, that an old processor is faster than a new one, since a 0.41 percent advantage is most likely within the measurement error. Overclocking the Core i7-4770K to 4.5 GHz makes the performance with our "low-preset" go up by 11 percent but when it comes to the high-preset the increase in performance is only 1 percent. Regarding the Core i7-3770K the situation is similar: 11.7 percent gain with "low-preset" and 0.8 percent with "high-preset". What's quite interesting to see is how the wattage of our test system increased while maintaining 4.5 GHz stably. The 4770K needed 40 percent more power and in case of the 3770K the increase was 30 percent.

If you bought a Core i7-3770K a while back, then we can tell you without the shadow of a doubt, that there is absolutely no need to get rid of it and replace it with a Core i7-4770K. From a gaming performance point of view it really doesn't matter which of the two CPU's you have in your system. Apart from this, we found that in Switzerland there is almost no price difference between the i7-3770K and the 4770K but when you compare prices of these to CPU's in Europe you see that the Core i7-3770K goes for 50 Euro less. Should be planning to upgrade your rig with a CPU that supports HT and eight virtual threads and should you be situated in a country, where the 3770K goes for less than the 4770K, then recommend to go for the 3770K. In the end it's not only the CPU that is cheaper, you can also get great Z77 board for less than their Z87 counterparts.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 9 - Far Cry 3
Page 2 - Test Setup	Page 10 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 3 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 11 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 4 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 12 - Metro: Last Light
Page 5 - BattleField 3	Page 13 - Power Consumption
Page 6 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 14 - Performance Index
Page 7 - Crysis 3	Page 15 - Conclusion
Page 8 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2