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Q9550 V 2500k or 2600k for xfire 6970 ?

ashmanuk67

ashmanuk67

ashmanuk67

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I would like to know if it's worth me upgrading from my Q9550 to one of the sandybridge chips, it's for gaming only with my 6970 xfire.
2500k or 2600k which one to go for ?

Is there a real world advantage ? I am looking at a MSI m/b with two PCie x16 lanes.
Thanks for any advice
 
Depends if your overclocking or not, I guess from your sig you do... so... pulling figures from several different reviews/benchmarks - if you ignore the very few games where threading is used effectively enough that the 2600K is substantially faster the Q9550 is actually 2% faster clock for clock in general for gaming.

How long that will last given that newer games will increasingly become more multi-threaded remains to be seen but at the moment I certainly wouldn't be hurrying to upgrade, especially with the various niggles with the sandybridge platform - I definitely don't feel that my GTX470 SLI setup is being held back at all by mine.
 
Rroff said:
Depends if your overclocking or not, I guess from your sig you do... so... pulling figures from several different reviews/benchmarks - if you ignore the very few games where threading is used effectively enough that the 2600K is substantially faster the Q9550 is actually 2% faster clock for clock in general for gaming.

How long that will last given that newer games will increasingly become more multi-threaded remains to be seen but at the moment I certainly wouldn't be hurrying to upgrade, especially with the various niggles with the sandybridge platform - I definitely don't feel that my GTX470 SLI setup is being held back at all by mine.
Click to expand...

Hi Rroff,

thank you for that reply, Yes I would be overclocking and 2% faster for games :eek:well what can I say ? how reliable is that figure ?

If you see my other post in the Graphics department you will see I am having some issues with my Xfire set up "well I think I am" 20% load on each card ? unless in CCC I fully load all the settings 16X anni and so on then I get 70-80% load so was kind of thinking is this the CPU i,am running ?
 
Take this as an example:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/48?vs=288 gives a reasonable approximation of a clock for clock comparision.

Scroll down near the bottom for a couple of game benchmarks - generally not much in it - from going by a range of benchmarks aside from the odd game where one or the other takes the lead they are generally close for now.

While the 2500K does seem to win a lot of the desktop benchmarks there - bare in mind that most of those benchmarks do the same kinda stuff and it lacks balance from a more general purpose perspective - tho if your time is spent mostly compressing files or media work then its a no brainer, as far as gaming goes so far not enough games push multi-threading enough for it to be worth the move.
 
Whilst if you were building a new system a 2500k or similar specced CPU is best to go for (for future proofing), but there is really no need to upgrade a Q9*** quad, they are still perfect for games and wont be a bottleneck at all. Modern hardware is so overpowered for current games imo.
 
the q9550 and q9650 seem so high in value

i think if you can sell it at a really good price then upgrading is justify

if you cant sell it then hell no its not worth the upgrade

i been looking for a q9650 to upgrade from dual core and its going price is £260!!!
crazy, i'm not paying that

yea its cheaper upgrade to sandy bridge, just too lazy to stripe the machine out new mb and new install etc etc
 
I've been looking at a change too.

Running a Q9550 all be it at stock at the moment as I haven't bothered to re-setup the overclock. Graphics card is a Ati 5870 if I remember correct.

Would look to change, motherboard, case, CPU, HSF, RAM
 
Depends on the game, Starcraft II, GTAIV and bc2 run a lot better for me moving from a q9550 at 3.4ghz. I can't think of any other games I own that have made a massive or any difference though.
 
Rroff said:
Take this as an example:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/48?vs=288 gives a reasonable approximation of a clock for clock comparision.

Scroll down near the bottom for a couple of game benchmarks - generally not much in it - from going by a range of benchmarks aside from the odd game where one or the other takes the lead they are generally close for now.

While the 2500K does seem to win a lot of the desktop benchmarks there - bare in mind that most of those benchmarks do the same kinda stuff and it lacks balance from a more general purpose perspective - tho if your time is spent mostly compressing files or media work then its a no brainer, as far as gaming goes so far not enough games push multi-threading enough for it to be worth the move.
Click to expand...

Hey, perhaps I misunderstood your statement, but why are you mentioning hyper-threading when comparing the 2500k? That processor AFAIK has no hyperthreading
 
I don't see there I mentioned hyper-threading, however the Sandy Bridge CPUs have some imrovements to multi threading performance over older intel multi core CPUs and I'm trying to balance comparing the 2500K and 2600K (which does have HT) in comparision to the Q9550.
 
Having owned a q6600 and a q9550, both at 3.8ghz. I didnt find any major gains in games when i upgraded to an i7 920 @4ghz, yes the i7 platform offered me dual x 16 pcie slots for multi gpu use, (a thing i do like). But with a single gpu i didnt notice any difference.
 
Got my Q9550 clocked at 4GHz, with a 570 (@850 core, 1000 memory) I get around 60 fps average in bfbc2, with minimums hitting no lower than 50. All max, 8xAA, 1920x1200.

Dirt 2 I average around 80fps again all max, 8xaa, 1920x1200.

These games max out my 570 97-99% usage, Q9550 cores usage hovering around 70-95% core 1 being the most used.

Not scientific but observations when gaming with the 570 since December. I was so tempted to upgrade when SB came out to go with the 570 but just couldn't justify the expense when the Q9550 is running so well.

I'd say stick with it. Q9550 clocked to 3.8-4.0GHz is fine for now.

Me personally, I'm waiting to see how it copes with BF3 then I'll make the decision. Also Ivy bridge + Bulldozer around the corner.
 
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Definitely fine, i see 40-50% cpu use in bc2, 1920x1200 game on max settings, gpu's max at 98%, 720mb of gpu ram usage, 1920x1200, 8 x aa, 16 x af, dx 11. My gpu's are clocked at 750mhz, even at stock . (630mhz) they breeze through bfbc2.
 
Good discussion - a Q9650 user here, closely watching the SB. At 3.7GHz due to the dated 965p-DS3 platform, which I have certainly got mileage out of.

The only thing (mentioned in another thread) which tempts me are the high used prices of DDR2 RAM and Q9xxx quads, which means a switch is almost free with some other sales I've made. That and my primary weapon of choice is Arma2, which differs a bit from the other shooters in testing any CPU to limits.

just another consideration.

cj
 
setter said:
Having owned a q6600 and a q9550, both at 3.8ghz. I didnt find any major gains in games when i upgraded to an i7 920 @4ghz, yes the i7 platform offered me dual x 16 pcie slots for multi gpu use, (a thing i do like). But with a single gpu i didnt notice any difference.
Click to expand...

I saw quite a difference going from a 3.6gig Q6600 to a 3.825gig Q9550 with an SLI setup - tho might be somewhat due to the crappy FSB holes on this motherboard, as I mentioned previously most of my gaming benchmark results are close to similiar GPU specced i7/SB results so I don't feel its holding me back in 99% of cases.
 
Rroff said:
I don't see there I mentioned hyper-threading, however the Sandy Bridge CPUs have some imrovements to multi threading performance over older intel multi core CPUs and I'm trying to balance comparing the 2500K and 2600K (which does have HT) in comparision to the Q9550.
Click to expand...

Got you. I did, indeed misunderstand you. Took multi-threading for hyperthreading. (Sorry was a bit lagered last night :p)
 
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