Intel i7 4790K performance test using iRacing & Assetto Corsa

Intel i7 4790K performance test using iRacing & Assetto Corsa

When Betta Lines fitted his new nVidia GTX 980 4Gb graphics card he was using his older Intel i7 870 CPU.  While this processor was still performing well with newer Sim Racing titles such as Assetto Corsa, he noticed that there were hardly any improvements when using the PC system for iRacing.

After some testing, it became apparent the old CPU was holding back the performance in games such as iRacing. Most probably because it still is using the older Direct-X 9 technology.  Later on, Betta Lines swapped the Intel i7 850 for a newer Intel i7 4790K to find out if this would help things along.

As you will see in the video the Intel i7 4790K (at stock settings 4.2GHz) improved the performance massively. Betta Lines also performed a test with Assetto Corsa to point out that with a newer CPU you’re unlikely to see big improvements in games running DX11.

Full Specs of the test system:

  • Silverstone SG07 case (includes 600W PSU, but it is a standard size so can be changed)
  • Gigabyte GA-Z97N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX motherboard
  • Intel i7 4790K at stock settings (4.2GHz is the typical turbo value when running something like iRacing)
  • Scythe Big Shuriken heatsink (replaced slimline Scythe fan with Corsair SP120 high-performance edition fan)
  • 180mm system fan (Silverstone ‘Air Penetrator’ design, included with SG07/SG08)
  • Crucial 8GB DDR3-1600 RAM
  • Crucial M4 256GB SSD
  • Seagate 1TB HDD
  • Samsung SN-T083C slim optical drive
  • MSI 4GB GTX 980 (reference design, stock settings)
  • Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit
Video by Betta Lines