IntelCore i7 4770K Quad Core Retail CPU (Socket 1150, 3.50GHz, 8MB, Haswell, 84W, Intel Graphics, BX80646I74770K, 4th Generation Intel Core, Turbo Boost Technology 2.0)

Bought this CPU as part of my new Gaming PC i've built (First build ever). At first I was planning on going for an i5 simply because the performance in games compared to this cpu isn't "Drasticly" different but when it comes to multitasking and video rendering/editing you honestly can't go wrong with this.The stock speed is 3.50GHz like its stated, i've got mine running at a stable overclock of 4.5GHz and it's ridiculously quick. This CPU alongside decent ram, you'll have apps running flawlessly quick, open apps & web pages instantly.My PC:CASE: Corsair 750D Full ATX Windowed CaseMOBO: MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming Motherboard (Originally ordered from Amazon but part didn't arrive so I got a refund.)CPU: i7 4770k @4.5GHzGPU: EVGA Nvidia GTX 780 Ti SC 3GBRAM: Kingston XMP Beast Series 16GB 2400MHz DDR3 RAMSSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSDHDD: WD 1TBCPU COOLER: Corsair H100i extreme liquid coolerPSU: Corsair AX1200i Professional Series Digital Fully ModularI've got all this running on my Asus VG248QE 24-inch 3D 144Hz LED Monitor to give the super smooth & sharp graphical image.All in all, this CPU is a godsend. Absolutely perfect, runs cool on the H100i, no problems installing it onto the MOBO, chews through everything you throw at it and will still take more... The intergrated graphics is really good too! Can run new games at the 30-50~ FPS mark depending on your graphical settings. I've tested the graphics on games such as World of Warcraft and it can handle it incredibly well. Got constant 80+ FPS with AA on, Shadows and most of the other settings at Ultra settings.

This is a great successor for Ivy Bridge, mainly with the single-threaded performance improvements, which are definitely noticeable, especially with things like compressing. This chip is overclockable to the 4.4-4.5 levels pretty easily, but I use the H100i to maintain good temps (69-70 degrees at max.), so it is definitely hot, but not as bad as I was expecting and you can get the temps down by 10-15 degrees if you feel that cutting the heat spreader off is worth the risk, (personally, I am not planning on doing it).One criticism that I will have is that this supposedly "flagship" part does not include the new TSX extensions, meaning that you'll loose some of the multi-threaded speed improvements coming down the line, (e.g. GNU C library already has plans to incorporate this). Or, perhaps if you're a developer of some heavy multi-threaded stuff this may not be the part for you. Another thing missing from this -K series part is all the important virtualization extensions, so if you're doing a lot of virtualization you may want to consider the 4770 part instead. To be fair trough, things like KVM and Xen have so little overhead nowdays, that it may not even matter in the end as you can overclock this -K part pretty easily due to its unlocked multiplier and compensate for some of the shortcomings of the -K series with an increased clock frequency.Honestly, I would love to see a -K series part with ALL the new extensions included, but I guess that that could cannibalize Intel's Xeon business and honestly this is a very good investment already as it will likely remain fast enough for the next 2-3 generations of CPUs, so you can justify the cost.

I have just swapped out an i7-920 for one of these, and what a difference that is.I tend to have quite a few programs running at the same time, normally more than 4, sometimes more than a dozen. The processor copes well. The 4 cores, like the previous i7-920, do become 8 virtual cores when required, and because of the multitasking capabilities of each virtual core, many more programs can be run simultaneously. My work load includes video editing, C, C# (Microsoft Visual Studio), and Python programing (using a freebee thing!), Animating using a range of products (Anime 2d, Toonboom 2d and Truespace 3d), photo editing (using Photoshop, PaintShop Pro, and other Astronomy related products), having a continuous security screen displayed from a webcam looking at our front door, running two screens with totally different programs on, using MS Word and Excel for multiple documents, and doing regular anti-virus/malware scans and backups, sometimes daily, sometimes simultaneously. Often these tasks are run simultaneously. The processor copes well. Oh, lets not forget the games and videos I might watch while I am waiting for a task to finish. And loads more. I am at the PC for at least 10 hours a day.I have been holding off getting a new video card for the PC I have just built using this processor, I wanted to see how the new Intel graphics engine built into the processor worked. I am impressed. I have not yet found anything that has stopped the graphics, or that the graphics can't cope with. But I don't play, because of time, the more demanding games, I just play things like Civilisation (the English spelling, no z!), the Empire total war set, Dungeons and Dragons online, plus some of the free stuff given away with my 'Steam' account.The processor, although not the fastest in the Haswell range, can be overclocked being the 4770K where the K denotes the processor has been unclocked. So the 3.5cGHz should ba capable of being improved on. I have seen some reports of these processors being clocked up to 4.5GHz. But I am using the supplied cooling that comes with the processor. I would not want to overclock it with standard cooling, although the supplied cooling might take the processor up to 4GHx OK, I don't want to risk it. I will wait a few months before I try overclocking. That is, I will wait until the processor seems slow, and that might not be that long, I have a history of getting bored with stuff quickly, not matter how good it is.Overall, this is a great processor. If you tend to run up a lot of simultaneous processes, and want them to not hang around, this could be the processor for you.