Core i7-4790K vs Core i3-12100F - what the fastest processor of 8 is capable of in games after 2014 years

The Testing Games channel team suggests exploring the potential of the old flagship

In mid-2014, the author of this article was thinking about buying a new system unit. It was assumed that the heart would be the i7-4770K core, which became cheaper, but after a whole month of torment, it was decided to abandon such an expensive idea. I had to wait more than a year, but in this case it doesn't matter.

The basis is that at the same time an even more productive stone went on sale, which was literally overwhelmed by force. The time when Intel released the Core i7-4790K is today considered one of the best in history, because prices were low and greed had not yet overshadowed all the feelings of the company's management.

Sometimes our readers write that they have just such a stone at home and assure everyone else that the potential of the processor is so huge that today there is no need to update anything at all.

Too much time has passed since then, so we can't even imagine if this processor is still relevant, or if some of our readers are a little cunning. Since it is extremely difficult to understand this issue, we decided to study the tests performed by the Testing Games team.

Bloggers took the old flagship from 2014 and compared it with the most budget representative of the Alder Lake series - Core i3-12100F. The GeForce RTX 3080 was used as a graphics card. Recall that the Core i7-4790K had 4 cores and could be overclocked to 4,4 GHz. At the same time, the Core i3-12100F, released 8 years later, lacks multithreading and speeds up to 4,3 GHz, but has a much more efficient architecture and 10nm process technology. Let's look at the table and draw conclusions.

As you can see, all the words about the relevance of the Core i7-4790K in 2022 are nothing more than an attempt to convince yourself. In fact, the old flagship is no longer relevant and can only be used as a low-end system for Internet or study. We agree that overclocking can increase performance by 15-20%, but that won't solve the critical lag problem beyond the 2022 budget milestone. If you have something like this at hand, then we strongly recommend not investing in an expensive graphics card. In this case, the performance loss will be critical.

As for the Core i3-12100F, it proves one simple fact: despite all the criticism, Intel is not stopping progress. Perhaps we would like to see more serious results and at least 40 instead of the same four cores, but for now we have to admit that engineers are not able to overcome the laws of physics. The transition to more advanced technological processes in 8 years has allowed buyers of a cheap stone to bypass those who spent incredible amounts on a flagship in 2014. Maybe that's why the author of this material decided to stop buying expensive processors and motherboards once and for all. Instead, it's easier to update this kit every 2 years, giving you nice support without having to change the whole system.