Intel unveils Devil’s Canyon, its first 4GHz CPU...

Lava King said:

At Computex 2014 there was a 4790K OC Challenge sponsored by Intel.

Several teams competed live on stage for cash prizes.

Intel provided the CPUs but it's unclear whether these were engineering samples or from a production run.

Stable 4 core 8 thread clocks ranged from 5.2 GHz to 5.5 GHz with closed-loop water cooling (custom loops weren't allowed). The top OC using LN2 was 6.3 GHz.

It remains to be seen if the CPUs that the average consumer gets will be able to OC to these levels. I'm definitely interested and I'll be watching the reviews in the weeks following the general release.

Every site that I've seen so far that mentions the Challenge points to a singe website that is a bit difficult to navigate.

Computex 2014 i7-4790K OC Challenge

Those were cherry picked.

There has been a number of reviews on the engineering sample processors ([H]ard forms, vortez, legit reviews to name a few). The results aren't very impressive.

The 4790 and 4790k are different and not like the 4770 and 4770k. The 4790 is not Devils Canyon.

The 4790k is a 4790 with improved Thermal interface material (thermal paste) between the die and the integrated heat spreader, more capacitors on the power input to help improve the overclockability, components of the on-board voltage regulator more spread out on the die to better dissipate their heat, and the chips binned (selected) to achieve a much higher base and turbo boost frequency - 4GHz and 4.4 GHz turbo, than predecessors.

DC 4790K and 4690K are a special one off K processor run. It is what 4770k and 4670k (and the non-k versions) should have been in the first place.

They are not the same (for one thing one is unlocked ). However the die is basically the same as the 4770. The changes they made and binning will give you a better guaranteed clock and it will run slightly cooler, but it will more than likely not overclock any better than a 4770k.

It is not an upgrade to any Haswell based processor and not a reason to all of a sudden want to upgrade from a SB or IB processor. However if you are going to upgrade to Haswell, it is the processor you would want to upgrade to, even if you don't overclock.

Unfortunately Intel put their hype engine into overdrive towards computex making claims of 5 GHz on air that just cannot be. Before that the expectation was that DC would be a modest improvement in TIM and clock, which is what it is turning out to be to some level.