Will These Specs Run Well?

intel: i5 4690k 4cores@ 3.5ghz (turbo3.9ghz)+6mb Cache
motherboard: asus z87-k 2.0usb 3.0usb sata6+xfire
cpu overclock: 4.6ghz to 4.8ghz
ram: 16gb ddr3 1600mhz crucial ballistix
graphics card: amd radeon r9 280x pci-e 3.0 ready
performance tunings tuning best performance for windows 7

fine, better than ~90% of the player base

so it should run decently in big battles?

you'll run decently but then again "decently" and "big battles" are all relative^^ i think your fps will drop to 30-ish frames in giant battles with 120+ players and a damn lot of explosions and other effects. this is just worst case scenario and your fps will probably be higher in general (40-90+). so yea these specs will run well just keep your system cool and your ping low.

If your building this computer than I would recommend the i7 variant of devils canyon. Giving you a bigger L3 cache (more important than you think), but the most important think if it's hyper threading technology. Basically making it possible to have 8 virtual cores. Or rather 8 software cores. I'm not gonna go into much technical detail but lets say you have a 1 core processor with hyper threading it splits the core in half in the most non technical possible term. Essentially allowing 2 instructions to be executed simultaneously on that single core that could only execute one instruction at a time. Thereby theoretically giving you a 50% increase in raw performance.

The reason the i5 variant exists is because not every one needs that performance. Gaming? You want to throw all the raw horsepower you can give it. The other reason is that the i7 is going to inherently cause more heat. Because your giving it double the workload (theoretically again). For example my i7 if I'm maxing it out at 100%. And then turn off hyper threading and max it out again I'll see roughly a good 10c degrees of temperatures lower. That value is going to be dependent on several factors though. I mean if your using some super high end water cooling your not gonna notice a temp rise cause no matter what that cooling system is going to never go above a certain temperature.

If your building this computer go with the i7 and it will be well worth the $100 difference. Also I'm not completely familiar with the new motherboards but I'm sure you've done the research but I'll say it anyway the z87 motherboards be careful with these haswell refresh it consumes more power. Will probably need a BIOS update if provided by manufacturer and well just general stability with these new processors. Granted the latter can be said for the new motherboards. But again I don't know much about what boards are best for z87 or z97. That one motherboard may look juicy cause it's $10, $20, or $50+ cheaper but just like with your power supply it's very important. It is the device that is going to be inter-connecting every single component in your computer together. RAM? It use to have a bigger chance of breaking the harmony. Down to the very timings. Now not so much. You just buy some RAM from crucial, G.Skill, Samsung, or any other decent manufacturer. And well a decent motherboard will take care of the rest of tuning it for you. Hell "fine" tuning it is as simple as enabling an XMP profile on the motherboard.

Then of course you leave it overnight or something with something like memtest86+ more than likely all tests will pass. No defects. Stable. Simple. Again unless you bought it from a sub-par manufacture than well. Defects or instability is more likely to occur and good luck RMAing it.

Also a heads up these processors generally only hit about 4.7Ghz. I would aim slightly lower if you plan on overclocking to about 4.6Ghz and that's plenty of horsepower for Planetside 2. If my i7-920 @ 3.8Ghz can eat large battles than the i7-4790k @ 4.6Ghz won't break a sweat. Granted my i7-920 the first gen i7 and the 4h gen i7 haswell is only about a good 10% performance increase at the same clock speed. Why? Well intel has been focusing on power consumption rather than performance for the last four years simply because of trying to enter the mobile market. And they have achieved that. The i7-920 TDP is 130w and the new i7-4790k TDP is 84w. So 45watts in power reduction while still being able to maintain not only the same performance but a notable 10% increase in performance. So a good 55% difference in power / performance ratio which is left for overclocking granted the difference in overclock is about 20% increase in overclocking capability a rough estimate. So it doesn't overclock well which is what people have been saying since well haswell first hit the market. There's just something about the architecture and reducing size of the transistors to 22nm. That you hit a wall. Hell I find it remarkable you can pump 1.4v into a 22nm chip.

Very few games efficiently use hyper threading; planetside 2 isn't one of them. In games, physical cores > virtual cores. Most games only see a 2% increase in performance while other see a decrease of 15% with hyper threading enabled. Open the task manager and watch your cores when playing PS2. Only 1 core will get hit, the rest, not so much.

The reason the i5's are popular with gamers is because gamers understand that hyper threading is useless in games and definitely not worth an extra $100.00. Something not used isn't worth any added cost.

Yes, you want to throw raw "horsepower" at a game, and that means clockspeed.

Having said that, if you like to run outside audio or Dxtory then hyper threading can be beneficial... and of course, there are a lot of apps besides games that use hyper threading. If you do those, then the cost is justified.

^Well said. Hyper threading is really only useful if you are running programs like After Effects, Premiere, Maya, 3DS Max and such. Also it is slightly helpful for recording gameplay. Otherwise, don't waste your money on it

Should be fine even in bigger battles. If there is any problems it is probably caused by other factors usually either network related or program conflicts on your computer.

That should run well on games.

How are you going to achieve that?

*sigh* I understand that the internet is a great resource it allows people to communicate and share knowledge. However there was this thing that people use to tell me don't believe everything you read on the internet. It infuriated me. But later on I realized that they were right. They probably didn't mean it this way. But you should never "believe" in anything. You should learn something and then put it to the test. Never go blindly believing something because someone told you too. Question it. Test it. Verify it. Get different people's "truths". Their is a difference between the truth and my truth and your truth. The truth never lies but it's possible and very frequent for my truth and your truth to not be the truth. For a simple example Tom states the sun is yellow. Bob states the sun is orange. Mary states the sun is every color in the visible spectrum. An astronomer will tell you that in fact the color of the sun is white. The only persons truth that I see as my truth is the astronomer's truth. Why? Simple I can question that truth and put that truth to the test and it is indeed the truth. Obviously if I couldn't test for a truth then I would respect each person's truth as a valid opinion and if the overwhelming consensus points to a truth then I'm more inclined to highly regard it is an opinion until it can be proven and I can test it.

The point is I'm tired of proving not just my truth but the truth. Maybe one day I''ll make write it all down and put it in a place I can reference whenever I come across an individuals truth and inform them to be at least closer to the truth. Cause it seems like on a daily basis I'm going across people misinforming others.

However I will say task manager isn't going to give you an accurate picture of what resources planetside 2 is using. The resource monitor will give you a slightly better idea. But honestly I would download Process Explorer that can be found on the Windows SysInternals website or just a quick google search. This will give you a better look at what that program's usage of resources are. If you wanna learn more just take a look parallel computing in general. Learn about how OS's work more specifically how the Windows Kernal works. Virtual Core technology has been around long before the first i7 generation was ever on the drawing board. In fact I believe the first consumer Intel chip to have "Hyper Threading Technology" was the Intel Pentium 4 lol. It's not some new niche technology. And that's pure ignorance to state it only benefits video editing software. Yes your probably gonna see a bigger benefit their and it's not limited to hyper threading. Any increase in core count is gonna see a benefit. And it's not even the video editing software. It's the actual rendering of the video. It's also a lot easier to program it. You simply split the video into smaller chunks. You give those small chunks TID's. And the operating system assigns them accordingly. So each thread is working on it's own chunk. It doesn't matter if it goes out of sync and one thread finishes before another. Because simply in the end you're going to take those small chunks and stitch them back together.

A video game it's going to get a lot more complex. If your processing the rendering faster than the physics for example then your going to have to "pause" the rendering process and allow the physics processing to catch up. Or else your going to have some wonky physics. Same thing with audio. You don't want to be firing a weapon and not hear it for another 3 seconds. Or get shot at and not hear it until your dead. You're never going to see a game fully max out your CPU and you wouldn't want it too. Because that means there's no room for catching up. Also it's going to stall more than just the game it's going to stall potentially one of the many other things that your computer is running. I'm talking about operating system critical things. Of course those would get priority so you would have an even bigger stall in your game. Does planetside 2 fully utilize the potential of your CPU, no. It's definitely an area that will need work. Especially if SOE ever hopes for it to be playable on the playstation 4. But is the i7 not going to provide a benefit? No. It does utilize the i7 just not well. It does utilize the i5 just not well. It does utilize 8 core AMD processors just not well. But are you going to spend hundreds of dollars on a CPU but stubburn to spend an extra $100 because you think it only serves the video editing market? No. Just no. Spent way too much time on something I've already said I wasn't going to spend any more time on.

Woah there dude. I never said an i7 won't run better. Of course it will. Here's the difference. If you only game, then the difference between an i5 and an i7 will be marginal and not worth the extra money.
Also, you are bringing up points that are highly irrelevant. Some games have multi core support, and some do not. It is literally that simple. In games which support it, hyperthreading will be awesome. (8 cores instead of 4). In games that do not support multi-core, the number of cores you have is unimportant. Granted, if you have more than one program running, it may be beneficial (situations may vary). If the game doesn't support more than one core, it doesn't matter how many cores you have. The game just won't use them.

Sure, hyperthreading has been around for a while. I don't dispute that. But game developers haven't been supporting it until just recently. Also, I would like to point out. That while I said for "most games" Planetside 2 is a different beast altogether, and by no means falls under the category of "most games"
Planetside 2 is one of the few titles (along with battlefield) that supports multiple cores and hyper threading (albeit not very well), and you will get a pretty decent FPS boost if you have an i7 over an i5 (around 10-15FPS more in my experience) BUT for a general gaming rig, I would never recommend the i7 over the i5 unless you have more money to throw at your rig, or you only play Planetside and battlefield.

100 Dollars more for very little performance gain isn't worth it, the guy above obviously believes everything Intel advertises.



And there are plenty more.