• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

E2140 to Q9650 or Q8200, buy or save?

kmax86

kmax86

kmax86

Associate
Joined
8 Sep 2011
Posts
1,998
Location
Northern Ireland
hi,
I found a q9650 at £170 and a Q8200 at £80 both unboxed and used at a shop. Is this cpu worth it or should I just save my money for something better?

my current pc is an e2140 @ 3.2ghz, board is a p35neo2 fr, and 3x1GB crucial ballistix 800mhz + 512mb pny ram ocd to 800mhz.

I thought about selling the cpu+board+ram and buy something 2nd hand but it might take a lot of time which im currently short with.

thanks for the input
 
£170! Do NOT buy it!!!

Get a Q6600 G0 2nd hand for around £45-70 and you should be fine if you don't wish to save up.

BUT, honestly.. I would sell your existing equipment and aim to get a sandybridge setup if I were you. £170 is very well on the way to getting yourself a VERY VERY good system. Look at sandybridge i5 2500k's as a chip, look at some of the P8 (I think) B3 revision motherboards or Z68 boards and get some very cheap 1.5volt 1600mhz DDR RAM :-) And you should be good to go.

My vote... SAVE. If you have the money for £170 chip, you definately have the money for a seriously much better upgrade ;-)

EDIT: At a guess, you could sell your stuff for around £30 to 50, which would up your budget to about £200 to £220, and a little more, and you'll be almost there.
 
Last edited:
damn, good thing i asked first lol

if i buy a q6600 g0 as a replacement for e2140 alongside with 4870 512mb (current card) will the increase in performance be noticeable or insignificant that saving is the absolute choice?

going sandy might cause me a spending spree on components when i receive my loan this october which I dont want to :\
 
I dont know what its like over there but here in the states the end of oct and through nov is a great time to buy PC parts because there is a super ramp up for xmas sales so if ya have the cash on hand and really look you can get amazing deals piece by piece and build a much better comp than you normally would if ya make a list and have a little patience.

Lots of combo deals and one days sales to be had. You might not necessarily get a deal on the CPU itself but there are always combo deals with a MB, etc or maybe a case of you pick the CPU and then spend around it as deals pop up.

I does take some work but what I do is take my budget money on hand and move it to paypal on its own and spend nov looking up deals daily for 30 minutes to a hour a night or in the morning and snag stuff part by part as one day deals that are to good to pass up pop up. There are a couple sites that all they do it post deals like this so its really not to hard find them.

Just a thought. I do this for xmas shopping and have done it with great results on several comps I have built for myself and for family and end up with much more for a lot less if your willing to take the time and have the fortitude to stand seeing those parts sitting in a corner staring at you just waiting to be played with.
 
I had originally an E2180 (for about 2months) and went to Q6600 ands it has served me very very well and very noticable and also if you are comfortable ramp it up to 3ghz+. Which probably keep you happy for a while (year or 2) or Upgrade to Sandybridge or wait for bulldozer (new AMD system).
 
yea ive read it somewhere about the massive sales in the us around this month but i dont think uk have something similiar to that

@nshire does your q6600 and 6870 go happily with each other in games?
 
You won't see much of a performance increase upgrading to a Q6600 if you play games, for rendering and video encoding however, the difference will be incredible.

I previously upgraded to a 4870 and Q6600 for mainly rendering, but there was no difference in games, the G0 Q6600 is a good clocker too so you could, depending on your motherboard hit around 3.4GHz on a half decent air cooler.
If you only do gaming, just upgrade your GPU and then upgrade to Sandybridge or similar when Ivy Bridge hits the market.
 
They do go well together just clock it a tad but...

as emphacy has said. He has done the same sort of system as I have
4870 512mb> 5850/5870/6850/6870 (they are all similiar spec+/- 5-10%) will make a much bigger difference for gaming than CPU upgrade and also come new build you can keep the graphics card for that system.
 
A few years ago I went from an E2140 @ 3.2GHz to Q6600 G0 @ 3.2GHz (now down to 3GHz). I found it to be a nice upgrade for gaming. It's the extra cache that does it I think.

Anyway, I have been through a Phenom II 955 and I'm currently on an i7 950. To be honest, there's not a huge amount between them with the Q6600 at 3.2GHz and the other two at stock. Maybe there's a bit between the Q6600 and the other two, but the Phenom and i7 are pretty much inseperable and the Phenom is on an AM2+ motherboard with DDR2 800 RAM.
Actually, I'd not have gone with the i7 if I'd known about the 970 and 990 series motherboards as I was happy with the CPU I was just feeling the need to add another GTX260 to the system to perk things up.

So after all that, Q6600 should be a great upgrade for you, but if you fancy going over to a DDR3 platform then I can highly recommend the Phenom II 955 processors which are going for a steal at about £85. You could easily go with 4GB DDR3 RAM and an AM3+ motherboard for about £170.
 
Last edited:
I guess ill just have to wait since im currently very limited in choices and budget :\

thanks all for the input and helping me avoid a ripoff
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom