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Fellas, is it time to throw it in the garbage? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by spicytuna62@lemmy.world to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
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Can't even achieve stable 60 fps anymore. What a hunk of junk. /s

Since this isn't really Linux-specific....EDIT: [I use] Debian btw?

Look, I'm not about to suggest the 4790K is the best CPU for the money today, but if you bought one way back in '14 and upgraded around it over time, you're still doing alright. This is still at stock clock. Been meaning to OC it. I previously ran an R9 290 until my wife surprised me with the 4070 for my birthday a couple years ago.

Great CPU then. Still pretty good today. Maybe I'll still give it a few years before I upgrade.

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[-] tal@lemmy.today 10 points 4 months ago

If I understand aright, the complaint is that a 4790K doesn't support TPM 2.0, required for Windows 11, and Windows 10 is EOLing.

I mean, sure, you can put Linux on it. I use Debian myself, but I'm sure whatever major distro would be fine. I think that most people are likely to tell you to use whatever distro they use.

Debian tends to be a little more conservative about doing new major stable releases than a number of distros, usually about once every two years. Ubuntu, for example, does a new release every six months (or did last I looked). That could be good or bad, depending upon how frequently you want to deal with upgrades, how much testing you want your application software to get, and how recent you want it to be. I tend to use Debian testing on the desktop, rather than waiting for stable releases, but I'm also comfortable fixing the machine if anything goes wrong.

Is it a reasonable machine to keep using? I mean, I dunno. Depends on what you're doing with it. If you were happy with performance as things have been, sure. Serial compute performance hasn't been increasing very quickly since about the early 2000s. Lots of tasks rely on serial compute. Will it play the latest AAA game as well as the newest hardware? Probably not. Linux will give you more flexibility to maybe use a lighter desktop environment if you want, but a given game or web browser is still gonna have to run the same calculations. Putting Linux on it won't normally make a game run twice as quickly or something like that.

[-] spicytuna62@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

My bad that it didn't get across that I do use Debian lol I have been for a while now. I don't mind dealing with outdated packages because it's stable. Would a more up-to-date distro be more or less stable? I don't know enough to comment on it, but with the stability issues I experienced in Windows (unrelated to the oc), I really wanted something that I could throw on there and leave alone for a few years.

I also drive a car from the 90s and I look at any IoT device with contempt. The refrigerator stays off my network.

But yeah, with the Win 10 EOL coming up, I wasn't gonna upgrade because my machine really still does everything I want it to do. This was a bit more of a shit post. My PC didn't hit 60 FPS in a game that it doesn't even meet minimum spec for. Iirc, Cyberpunk requires at least a 7700K. Wasn't looking for advice. Just messing around. ;)

The most I use my PC for outside of gaming is surfing the web, spreadsheets, and hosting files. Nice to have my own collection of movies to stream when the Internet goes down lol

I'm not implying that my PC running Debian is twice as fast as it was on Windows. I just really appreciate two things about it: 1) This CPU is still fast enough for what I want from it a decade later, and 2) That Linux was so much easier to learn than I ever anticipated. I guess it helps that I ran Ubuntu on various laptops for a decade before moving my gaming PC to a Linux distro.

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

2077 is a rather intense game, but there are mods to ease the CPU burden and get that FPS up, if you are interested.

Most games aren’t so intense.

Also, unfortunately, Nvidia cards tend to prefer Windows. I was just asking about Windows vs Linux performance for 2077 specifically in another thread, and the consensus seems to be you are sacrificing a little bit of FPS over (sufficiently neutered) Windows, especially if certain proton features aren’t working.

And I am not anti Linux at all, I spend like 95% of my PC time in CachyOS on my dual boot desktop. But every time I've measured it in the past… that’s just how it is, even with a riced gamer Linux distro.

[-] spicytuna62@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Tbh, I'm super happy with the performance I'm getting. I did dig through my bios and found an old OC to 4.7 GHz that got me a few extra FPS on the low side.

I'm playing on my TV right now. My monitors are also over a decade old. I couldn't run faster than 60 FPS right now even if I wanted to lol but I appreciate the thought.

But aside from ray tracing being off, I'm running 1080p at ultra settings perfectly fine. I'm just super stoked my ancient CPU can still run newer/more intense titles. It's like being around in 2010 using a CPU from 1999. If you were using a Celeron that went in a slot, you probably weren't running Windows 7, let alone Crysis lol

[-] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 months ago

4790k was among the fastest per-core performance for many, many generations, even long after CPUs with 4x as many cores that could do 2x as much work total, 4790k could still beat them on single-core performance.

Even today it's still a great CPU and I'm still running one of my gaming machines with it. I use it for my Windows machine, since it doesn't support TPM it will never get upgraded to Windows 11 accidentally and I consider that a feature lol.

It's definitely getting long in the tooth these days, and its memory bandwidth is starting to really let it down, but as a CPU doing CPU things, it was a really nice piece of hardware, and still is.

[-] Obnomus@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 months ago

my wife surprised me with the 4070 for my birthday a couple years ago.

Luckiest mf.

[-] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

If you're going to throw that out, let me know which dumpster. I'd love to drop-in replace my 4690K from one of my old machines and upgrade the RAM. 😉

4790K is still a decent CPU, even if it and the DDR3 memory are starting to show their age. Definitely still suitable for 1080p gaming in most cases. My recommendations are exactly what you've already suggested:

  1. Try Linux. Games objectively perform better on linux than windows now, even with the compatibility layers. Windows is now the biggest bottleneck in peoples' PC builds. Debian works. I recommend choosing the KDE "flavor" of Debian instead of GNOME, it will be a more familiar experience.

  2. Try the OC for the CPU and also for the RAM. My 4690K overclocked really well. Its been a long time since I've messed with that, so I'd say just find some guides online specific to Haswell.

The nice thing is that both of these recommendations are free to try. You can see if they get you back to the peformance you are happy with, and if not, then you'll know you're right to think about replacing the CPU.

[-] spicytuna62@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

I actually dug in my BIOS and found a very old profile that I saved. So now I'm running at 4.7 GHz. I forgot I saved that. It does make her toasty though. But hey, who cares? These aren't rare. Replacement cost is 50-70 bucks. Suppose I can swing that if I roast it to death lol

I mght have to play with RAM speeds. I unlocked the frame rate and was hitting 110 max. My TV only runs at 60 Hz so that's where I'm leaving it. Still, the minimum was up to like 53 from 48. So it was still worth it.

I guess I didn't get it across that I do already run Debian lol I love my Debian. It's outdated, as is my '97 Honda. But like my '97 Honda, it just works every time. And I do use KDE. :) Ran GNOME for a long time and finally made the jump earlier this year. My customizations make it look and feel a lot like GNOME (because I really liked GNOME a lot), but with extra customizations that GNOME just wouldn't let me do ootb. I like it so much. It doesn't feel like Mac. It doesn't feel like Windows. It's totally its own thing. I love that.

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 months ago

1080p

Literally unplayable

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

These are not bad specs. You'll probably get way better performance on Linux. It's also very subjective to what game and settings you're playing on. The 4070 is only a year old...

[-] whosepoopisonmybutt@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 months ago

That seems 100% fine to me. If you're looking for an excuse, by all means upgrade but those numbers seem acceptable.

[-] Electricd@lemmybefree.net 1 points 4 months ago

You’re disrespecting the 4070 with that CPU

I mean I’m not an expert but it seems like a massive CPU bottleneck

[-] Tundra@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

Theres nothing more netrunner than using linux!

Ive actually been going through the same thing recently, and after tweaking the settings Ive got it to run smoothly -

Ill paste the settings that I changed later when Im with my laptop

[-] Auth@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

You could probably buy a better cpu 2nd hand for dirt cheap if needed.

this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
31 points (100.0% liked)

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