Which i5 or i7 Haswell CPU?

[awediohead]

First off many thanks to everyone for such a fantastic source of information and advice! I have a reasonably reliable dual-booting hackintosh build as per my signature mostly thanks to this site - though I'm now using Clover which feels a bit like going from sunlight into shade in terms of how very little I understand despite a hell of a lot of reading!

My probably too simple understanding is that the closer the hackintosh build is to an existing Mac the easier things are likely to be in the long term. So while its technically possible to use any combination of motherboards and CPU's in the Buyer's Guide and have a working hackintosh, I'm wondering if there is any advantage to selecting my next CPU from:

iMac "Core i5" 2.7 21.5-Inch (Late 2013)2.7 GHz Core i5 (I5-4570R)1
iMac "Core i5" 2.9 21.5-Inch (Late 2013)2.9 GHz Core i5 (I5-4570S)1
iMac "Core i5" 3.2 27-Inch (Late 2013)3.2 GHz Core i5 (I5-4570)1
iMac "Core i5" 3.4 27-Inch (Late 2013)3.4 GHz Core i5 (I5-4670)1
iMac "Core i5" 1.4 21.5-Inch (Mid-2014)1.4 GHz Core i5 (I5-4260U)
iMac "Core i7" 3.1 21.5-Inch (Late 2013)3.1 GHz Core i7 (I7-4770S)1
iMac "Core i7" 3.5 27-Inch (Late 2013)3.5 GHz Core i7 (I7-4771)

where they're available, as opposed to my current build which uses an i5 4460, which isn't listed above.

Again my understanding is fuzzy but as an example, don't Haswell CPUs have a different way of dealing with sleep/wake such that my Energy Saver preferences doesn't even give an option to control machine sleep, just display. I'm wondering if it would be there if on my next build I choose an i5-4670 and set it up with appropriate SMBIOS in Clover?

I never managed to get the integrated graphics to work properly with the 4460 - probably something dumb I missed - and had to buy a gfx card. While I'm going to have another crack at getting it working (it was saying 7MB of vram in the sys profile!) I also want to make life as easy as possible in the next build, especially as it will be living elsewhere and I won't be free to tinker with it!

cheers

 

[trs96]

There's no reason why your 4460's HD4600 graphics can't work as well as any of the
other Haswell CPUs you've listed. Did you flash the bios to the newest working version for
your H87N motherboard ?

I've used the 4690K recently with a GA-Z97X motherboard and didn't need any boot flags. The HD4600 worked with no problems. The I5-4690 is used in the newer iMacs, so I'd add that one to your list.
The best choice of a system def. for a 4690/K would be iMac 14,1 if you're only using integrated gfx.

 

[awediohead]

There's no reason why your 4460's HD4600 graphics can't work as well as any of the
other Haswell CPUs you've listed. Did you flash the bios to the newest working version for
your H87N motherboard ?

I've used the 4690K recently with a GA-Z97X motherboard and didn't need any boot flags. The HD4600 worked with no problems. The I5-4690 is used in the newer iMacs, so I'd add that one to your list.
The best choice of a system def. for a 4690/K would be iMac 14,1 if you're only using integrated gfx.

So if you didn't need any boot flags is that not an argument for choosing a CPU used in newer Macs if available and affordable? I got the list above from Everymac which is missing the 4690 and also i7 4790 from the "by CPU" lists

Yes the BIOS is the latest for my rev 1 version of the board. I tried a lot of things with many hours of reading before finally resorting to buying a GFX card: It did work on a basic level, and was booting fine with both Chimera and Clover - it just wouldn't report more than 7MB of VRAM. As I said I'll have another go soon. In the mean time I'm just thinking on how I can make better buying choices for my next build. Not needing boot flags at all seems like a step forward, and I don't mean the trifling inconvenience on booting up, but the way in which the OS interacts with the hardware day to day.

Of course if I actually understood even a half of what the clover wiki actually meant then I could probably customise to suit, but for now just looking for a slightly less steep learning curve
cheers Jules

 

[trs96]

I'm using Chimera as my boot loader so there's no reason you have to go with Clover
unless iMessage is important for you. Here is the listing at everymac.com for the 27" iMac
that has the 4690 cpu in it.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...-inch-aluminum-retina-5k-late-2014-specs.html

It's the Retina 5K 27" version.

If you can budget in the I5-4690K definitely go for that. Best performance per dollar of all
the Intel CPUs.

 

[awediohead]

trs96 - thanks very much for the advice. Ironically it was reading s/guide here that prompted me to switch to Clover a few months ago.

sorry for the apparent rudeness in not replying sooner - bit of a family crisis!

Thanks for the advice - ironically though I have enough real Macs not to be that bothered with iMessage working on the hackintosh, it was reading through jaymonkey's long 'fix imessage' article here that pushed me towards going with clover a couple of months back.

I'm decided on an i5 4690 - thanks for helping me make my mind up!

many thanks again
J