E8400 (3.6GHz) upgrade to Q9300 worth £85?

d_brennen · 12 Apr 2010 at 21:00

Been offered a Q9300 for £85, not sure of the stepping etc yet. Worth it? Any steppings to avoid and are these decent clockers? I've no intention to upgrade board and RAM yet...

PC is mainly used for gaming. Have got 4GB DDR2 6400 and a HD4890

CAPTAINBUMFLUFF · 12 Apr 2010 at 21:56

Ye its worth £85 but mULTIplier is not that high so you will need decent board to overclock well, imo you should stick with e8400 and put the money towards a bigger upgrade in future

Redmint · 12 Apr 2010 at 23:29

Not too bad for the price but as said low multi, so make sure your board can hit a decent FSB and check what your RAM multiplier options are (unlinked would be best).

Marine-RX179 · 12 Apr 2010 at 23:45

I would spend a bit more and try to get a Q9550 if I were you.

Sidenote: Why is your E8400 only at 3.6GHz? It should be easily overclockable to 4GHz...

d_brennen · 13 Apr 2010 at 00:00

Marine-RX179 said:
I would spend a bit more and try to get a Q9550 if I were you.

Sidenote: Why is your E8400 only at 3.6GHz? It should be easily overclockable to 4GHz...

At 3.6 my cooler (Arctic freezer) can run passively <45c browsing and such

The board, Biostar T something, isn't
an overclocking beast but I have had 4.2 stable but that needed more voltage and made it 60c+

Marine-RX179 · 13 Apr 2010 at 08:44

d_brennen said:
At 3.6 my cooler (Arctic freezer) can run passively <45c browsing and such

The board, Biostar T something, isn't
an overclocking beast but I have had 4.2 stable but that needed more voltage and made it 60c+

Well, if you have managed 4.2GHz stable before, then that is a decent enough overclocking board already.

Sometimes the extra 200MHz on the top end require much more voltage than the frequency before it...may be you can overclock to 3.8-4.0GHz instead of 4.2GHz at a lower voltage?

What vcore you are on? (Now and when you had 4.2GHz stable)

Vir · 13 Apr 2010 at 10:58

60c for 4.2 on a E8400 is fine imo.

Fallen god · 13 Apr 2010 at 11:50

Vir said:
60c for 4.2 on a E8400 is fine imo.

I think he meat 60c at low load so at full it could be a lot more.

krooton · 13 Apr 2010 at 12:47

Are you planning on running the quad passively? They put out more heat at the same clock compared to dual-cores.

Duke · 13 Apr 2010 at 13:00

I don't think you'll see much benefit unless heavily using all cores.

d_brennen · 13 Apr 2010 at 13:18

Never planned to run the 8400 passive, just messing about with temp management and set the fans to start at 55c. As it is the CPU fan only starts when gaming, ripping a DVD or watching HD content.

At >3.8 it seems to require quite a jump in voltage (3.6 is @ stock v) and the temps sit at 60c doing nowt (slow fan speed).

I guess I don't need an upgrade, just got the itch

Lanz · 13 Apr 2010 at 14:05

In virtually all games the 8400 will be quicker, as you'll have trouble getting the Q9300 past 3.6ghz unless you have a good board and it also has lower cache per core.

Only real upgrade worth considering is a Q9550 or Xeon x3360.

555BUK · 13 Apr 2010 at 23:58

To be honnest. I do not notice much difference between my E3300 @ 4GHz (little brother of the E8400) and my i7 920 @ 3.8GHz. Sure, if I run benches the quad will be ~20% faster in CPU intensive games and >2x as fast at encoding, but most people do not encode much and 60fps is enough in games.

I say stick with the E8400 unless you encode HD video a lot.

The biggest upgrade I have ever made to a pc has been installing an SSD. Much better than a CPU step up in terms of overall system speed and Windows zippiness.

Th3D0n · 14 Apr 2010 at 01:01

d_brennen said:
Been offered a Q9300 for £85, not sure of the stepping etc yet. Worth it? Any steppings to avoid and are these decent clockers? I've no intention to upgrade board and RAM yet...

PC is mainly used for gaming. Have got 4GB DDR2 6400 and a HD4890

yeh if you sell your E8400 for 65ish ( not sure what a E8400 is worth now) that means you get a good quad far a £20! :eek:

Vir · 14 Apr 2010 at 08:13

Coming from a Xeon E3110 (E8400) I'd say stick with the E8400 for now and save up for a SSD or a bigger upgrade later. It's not worth it now.

Phil2008 · 14 Apr 2010 at 17:44

I have had my [email protected] for 2yrs now and Im still as happy as when I bought it, as it still not showing any slowdowns with the latest games... Id say the E8400 cpu has been the best cpu Ive bought.

ooEy · 15 Apr 2010 at 10:40

Got my 4Ghz E8400 paired with a 1000/1150 5850. No need to upgrade yet, even for BC2.

Id suggest clocking to 4Ghz and saving for a new SSD and GFX down the line.

Phil2008 · 15 Apr 2010 at 12:07

ooEy said:
Got my 4Ghz E8400 paired with a 1000/1150 5850. No need to upgrade yet, even for BC2.

Id suggest clocking to 4Ghz and saving for a new SSD and GFX down the line.

Yeah even my [email protected] doesnt struggle with BC2 at all.

Simple_Steve · 16 Apr 2010 at 00:19

E8400 is much better than a Q9300. A Q9400 would have been debatable and a Q9550 would have got my vote, but if i were you I'd save your money for a bigger upgrade in the future. The wolfdale range are cracking CPU's even my E8200 keeps up with my GTS250 when oc'd a lil. One of the best CPU's i bought! wait till they sell the i7 960 on ebay for bargain prices mate.

Gribs · 16 Apr 2010 at 00:28

d_brennen said:
Been offered a Q9300 for £85, not sure of the stepping etc yet. Worth it? Any steppings to avoid and are these decent clockers? I've no intention to upgrade board and RAM yet...

PC is mainly used for gaming. Have got 4GB DDR2 6400 and a HD4890

Definately not. My Q9450 @ 3.4ghz doesn't feel much faster than my old E5200 @ 4ghz in most games.