Intel i7-4770K vs i7-4820K

[Sheljohn]

Hi all,

The new i7-4820K was just released a few days ago as I understand, and since the 4770K has such great reviews, I wanted to hear from people who know this stuff if the two had anything in common; can we expect the 4820K to be "an improved version" of the 4770K? One fundamental difference is that the 4820K works on an Ivy Bridge E chipset, whereas the 4770K is on Haskell. Although I'm not sure what practical difference this makes, I know it implies that my motherboard will not be able to host the next generation CPUs if I go for the 4820K...

I'm selecting components to build my own desktop, and I need advice regarding which CPU to chose... I'm not a "typical user" I think, since I don't play any games, I program a lot in C and C++, and I'm often running intensive calculations that can last from a few minutes to several days (I'm doing research in genetics and medical image processing, and some operational research [maths] on the side).

I don't know if this is the right place to talk about which CPU to choose, but I hope your comments will help me pick the one that best suits my needs

Many thanks in advance,
Jonathan

[gshv]

If your calculations involve a lot of on-disk or in-memory data processing, then the i7-4820K could be a better fit as it has a quad-channel memory controller, i.e. it provides twice as much memory bandwidth as the i7-4770K. Another thing you can do with the socket 2011 (Ivy Bridge-E) platform that you can't do with the socket 1150 (Haswell) platform: if your application is multi-threaded you can upgrade to i7-49xx six core processors to boost performance. Many consumer socket 2011 boards also support Xeon processors, so if money is not an object then you can upgrade to the latest Xeon E5 processors with 12 cores. No six- or grater core processors are planned for socket 1150 platform.

Gennadiy

[Sheljohn]

Thanks a lot @gshv. I meant "Haswell" of course, not "Haskell"...

I found two main resources regarding this comparison:
- www.youtube. com/watch?v=bINLgcxuUAU: this shows that apparently, Ivy Bridge E (X79) architectures are best suited for heavy calculations
- www.guru3d. com/articles_pages/core_i7_4820k_processor_review,1.html: A complete review of the 4820K, with misleading benchmark tests in my opinion, since the 4770K seems to perform better than the 4820K (except in the memory read/write tests of course), but the author acknowledges his preference for the 4820K in the conclusion...

Anyway, I'm still not really sure which one to chose, and my hesitation comes mainly from the fact that the 4770K is so popular. On the other hand, the 4820K is brand new so it's normal people don't have much to say about it.. Your suggestion about being able to upgrade CPU to boost performances in the future is definitely appreciated; it's a plus for the 4820K, and I like the idea of plugging an hexacore to my motherboard one day .