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Why are some of the old Q9XXX chips so expensive?

Moothead2

Moothead2

Moothead2

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Joined
23 May 2011
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I was helping my friend overclock his CPU (A Q9650) the other day and noticed that it is still around 200+ pound brand new. I looked on Anandtech and found that the 2500k completely destroyed the Q9650 on most tests. So my question, or questions, are why are these chips still so expensive compared to faster chips such as the 2500k and why are people still paying a good amount for these?
 
Moothead2 said:
I was helping my friend overclock his CPU (A Q9650) the other day and noticed that it is still around 200+ pound brand new. I looked on Anandtech and found that the 2500k completely destroyed the Q9650 on most tests. So my question, or questions, are why are these chips still so expensive compared to faster chips such as the 2500k and why are people still paying a good amount for these?
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because a 2500k wont fit in their socket 775 motherboard i imagine. its not just the outlay on the cpu, but the mobo and ram.
 
Because the decent ones (Q9450/9550/9650) are no longer in production. As 775 is a dead socket now and supplies dry up then the price increases. Same thing happened with AMD's socket 754 and 939. The thing that really get's me about the Intel 45nm quads is that the price spots that used to be occupied by the Q9450/9550/9650 are now occupied by inferior versions with severely cut down cache.
 
Yields will be low on a chip with 12MB Cache RAM on a high FSB. The Q8000s with rubbish FSBs and no cache are cheaper but not a tempting upgrade for me. I'd chuck a Q9000 in if they were cheaper, but I'll end up going 2500K with new RAM.
 
pastymuncher said:
Because the decent ones (Q9450/9550/9650) are no longer in production. As 775 is a dead socket now and supplies dry up then the price increases.
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+1

These are CPUs that are two generations out-of-date and haven't been made in ages. Hence their prices won't be lowered, since the supply of new chips is non-existant and the demand is relatively high (from people with s775 boards and want to do a CPU-only upgrade to the best 775 CPU).

Based on the price of these CPUs, I wouldn't recommend buying one now to do a CPU-only upgrade. Instead you can buy an i5 2500K, MSI P67 board and 4GB DDR3 RAM for ~£285 - which is only a bit more than the cost of a new Q9x50 CPU on its own.

If you currently own a Q9x50 CPU and are looking to upgrade then I think now is the time to sell. You will get a pretty nice price and it will really help towards a SB upgrade.
 
cmndr_andi said:
+1

These are CPUs that are two generations out-of-date and haven't been made in ages. Hence their prices won't be lowered, since the supply of new chips is non-existant and the demand is relatively high (from people with s775 boards and want to do a CPU-only upgrade to the best 775 CPU).

Based on the price of these CPUs, I wouldn't recommend buying one now to do a CPU-only upgrade. Instead you can buy an i5 2500K, MSI P67 board and 4GB DDR3 RAM for ~£285 - which is only a bit more than the cost of a new Q9x50 CPU on its own.

If you currently own a Q9x50 CPU and are looking to upgrade then I think now is the time to sell. You will get a pretty nice price and it will really help towards a SB upgrade.
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I actually tried to convince him to sell it and go Sandybridge :p. He said he'd rather just try and get the most out of his current CPU for now since he's short on cash and I think he'd rather upgrade his GPU (4870x2) before his CPU which is fair enough.
 
Moothead2 said:
. I looked on Anandtech and found that the 2500k completely destroyed the Q9650 on most tests. So my question, or questions, are why are these chips still so expensive compared to faster chips such as the 2500k and why are people still paying a good amount for these?
Click to expand...

It completely destroys it in media encoding and some number crunching applications but clock for clock for general desktop useage, gaming and so on theres not that huge a gap between them (unless your running extremely overclocked with a 3 or 4 way GPU setup).

I'm still running a high clocked Q9550 (currently at 4gig) because it was much cheaper just to chuck one in than go the whole hog to a i7/SB setup and it gives me all the performance I need and going to i7/SB would be well pretty much no noticeable difference unless I decided to encode 2 hours of video - and then I'd just wait the extra few minutes - or the odd 1-2 games that make use of the extra threading units.
 
Yea, that makes sense - for pretty much all games an overclocked Yorkfield will do great and if he postpones his CPU upgrade until next year then he will be able to go for an even faster "Ivy Bridge" chip.

What is he looking for as an upgrade from the 4870X2?
 
I've been watching a lot on EBay and they rarely go cheap so sticking with my Q6600 until I upgrade. My x48 mb is ddr2 and SATA 2 so there are other benefits to upgrading, not just better Cpus but better everything. Plus ddr3 is cheaper than ddr2.
 
Having owned a q6600 @3.8ghz, a q9550 @3.8ghz and my current i7 920 @4.2ghz, gaming wise with a single card, the difference between all 3 chips was pretty low. For someone wishing to stick with s775 for a while longer, a 45nm quad can be a decent upgrade, particularly a second hand EO q9550, decent standard clockspeed and a bit cheaper than the q9650. In the right board theyre great overclocking cpu's, particularly p45 chipsets. The EO i had was a 1.200 vid chip, ran prime stable @3.8 on 1.216 vcore, very cool running as well.
 
the_director said:
I've been watching a lot on EBay and they rarely go cheap so sticking with my Q6600 until I upgrade. My x48 mb is ddr2 and SATA 2 so there are other benefits to upgrading, not just better Cpus but better everything. Plus ddr3 is cheaper than ddr2.
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You really don't want a 45nm quad with your board anyway as they are not good at clocking them. You may see a extra 100mhz or so but no more. I had a LT X48 T2R with a Q9550 and the most i could get out of it was 3.65Ghz but even that took stupid levels of motherboard voltage. The quad was on stock volts. Q6600 in the same board hit 3.8Ghz. Swapped to a Asus P5Q Pro Turbo (P45) and the Q9550 easily hit 4Ghz and eventually maxxed out at 4.13Ghz.
 
pastymuncher said:
Because the decent ones (Q9450/9550/9650) are no longer in production. As 775 is a dead socket now and supplies dry up then the price increases.
Click to expand...

+1 just like ddr2, low production now that ddr3 has come out, but a lot of ddr2 computers so availibility drops and prices increase :)
 
After selling off a Q9650 and X38 mobo i had laying about i managed to setup a 2600K 4GB CL7 and Astock P67 PRO3 for the princely sum of 146 quid. Downgraded my i7 920 @ 4Ghz with 12gb RAM to 6gb and took 4gb to make 8gb for the sandybridge.. have a 'spare' 2gb i guess lol.
 
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