Intel i7 4790K Devils Canyon CPU Review

Introduction

Such has been Intel's dominance of the CPU market in recent years, they've usually held off releasing a new CPU until they are on either a full-scale architecture change, or a reduction in the nm process used. 

The release of the Z97 motherboards had us salivating at what the new Haswell CPUs would bring to the table. However, the model number of this particular CPU, a i7-4790K rather than i7-4770K, indicates that this is a tweak as opposed to a huge adjustment. There is no new architecture. No die shrink. Just an improvement in clock speed and a slight fettling of the thermal interface that dogged the early Haswell processors. 

So with so little that is new to talk about, let's crack straight on.

Technical Specifications

The improvement to the base frequency is one of only two main changes that form part of the i7-4790K. Perhaps that's why it's a small increase in model number, rather than the wholesale step change we normally experience with an Intel processor revision. Otherwise it's business as usual.

Of course when you're talking about the top-end Intel CPU's then business as usual is something we're very happy to have.