Any real world difference in a qx9650 and i7 920 build - Non Gaming

MIKAY

MIKAY

MIKAY

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Hi. Ok im getting a system ready for my younger brother. He doesnt game so i was wondering if there was any real world performace difference between these 2 setups - the q9650 setup my mates selling for £350 and the i7 920 would be a new build around the £900 - 1000 mark!!

Uses - Internet browsing, dvd burning - uni work MS word - photoshop and possibly running a few apps in background - NO GAMING

Q9650 @ 3ghz - not qx as per title
X38 MOBO
4GB DDR2 800MHZ - can upgrade to some faster stuff like 8gb pc-8500
8800gt or 9600gt

i7 920
p6t
6gb ddr3 1333mhz
9600gt or 8800gt

Obviosly with a huge £700 differnce wiill there and what percentages are we taking in performace for just genaral windows apps - nero etc. thanks
 
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Not even close to a big enough difference to justify the i7 system there.

i7 is faster. It is not all that much faster. Very definitely buy the cheaper one. The 8800gt walks all over the 9600gt as well.
 
JonJ678 said:
Not even close to a big enough difference to justify the i7 system there.

i7 is faster. It is not all that much faster. Very definitely buy the cheaper one. The 8800gt walks all over the 9600gt as well.
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forget i mentioned the GPU's that can be sorted later

siumatfung said:
for what you are doing these are overkill!!!! look to lower spec'd stuff it would save you a nice fat wedge of cash tbh:D
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is being upgraded from a old athlan x2 which was struggling with multiple app at once, for example - when burning a dvd (which is a regular thing pirates) the computer would become so slow you couldnt do owt
 
Do you mean the entire q9650 set up with everything (hdd,dvd drive,psu,gpu,ram) for £350? That is a bargain!
 
fjust for arguments sake lets forget the price - what would the real world performnce differnece be in general desktop stuff? am i right in thinking the i7 will be a lot lot more zippier and wil be able to handle more apps at once

and yes to above question - 1tb hardrive - generic psu etc
 
I'd say the i7 is 10% faster during day to day use, 100% faster when video encoding or CAD work.
 
I meant proper programming. Honestly though q9650 is more than fast enough for what he wants to do, you can even give it a little boost by oc it a bit futher, the q9650s are capable of going upto 4.0ghz with good cooling.
 
Hyper threading doesn't yield anything like that large an improvement. Extra 50% at best. Hyper threading [crudely] is fitting little bits of code into the gaps available, so that the processor works continually. The threads which are stuffed into the spaces the main code leaves vacant is never going to be as quick, so it is very much 4 physical + 4 bonus rather than 8 cores. It's also slightly quicker as a result of better cache management, but it has less cache overall.

Even the 10% faster in day to day use looks like an enormous overestimate

Either of them is far more than you need. My q9550 is ridiculously quick. If you want to spend more, buy the cheaper box and upgrade it. Hard drives are the bottleneck with either i7 or q9550, so stick some ssds in it.

As for 4 or 8, it'll make overclocking more interesting. It will improve performance enormously if you are running applications that need more than 4gb. As far as I know, the only things that can do this are virtualbox and ramdisks. If you use neither of these, 4gb will do you fine.

Following on from wbc1, if you overclock the q9650, you'll have a very, very fast computer.
 
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tbh he could just get a Q6700 which would blow him away compared to the AMD hes using now , or a AMD tricore set up:D but yes i7 is the best of the best atm and i dont htink its £700 difference at all for a the Q9650 setup compared to an i7 setup. anyways regardless of what you buy do not skimp on a PSU always buy a quality one ie CORSAIR TX 650W
 
^wise words from si.
Is the 350 quid for an entire system or just for the
Q9650
X38 MOBO
4GB DDR2 800MHZ?
It makes quite a difference which motherboard it is as well. The q9650 is a newer revision than the qx9650 and interestingly tends to overclock better as a result, despite retailing for rather less.
 
JonJ678 said:
Hyper threading doesn't yield anything like that large an improvement. Extra 50% at best. Hyper threading [crudely] is fitting little bits of code into the gaps available, so that the processor works continually. The threads which are stuffed into the spaces the main code leaves vacant is never going to be as quick, so it is very much 4 physical + 4 bonus rather than 8 cores. It's also slightly quicker as a result of better cache management, but it has less cache overall.

Even the 10% faster in day to day use looks like an enormous overestimate

Either of them is far more than you need. My q9550 is ridiculously quick. If you want to spend more, buy the cheaper box and upgrade it. Hard drives are the bottleneck with either i7 or q9550, so stick some ssds in it.

As for 4 or 8, it'll make overclocking more interesting. It will improve performance enormously if you are running applications that need more than 4gb. As far as I know, the only things that can do this are virtualbox and ramdisks. If you use neither of these, 4gb will do you fine.

Following on from wbc1, if you overclock the q9650, you'll have a very, very fast computer.
Click to expand...



thanks for that, my hearts been telling me to get the cheaper q9650 but the greedy brain and its visions saying get the i7. I just needed that little push and ill hopefully be geeting the q9650 system and leave it exactly as is as like you said i wont be needing anywhere near 8gb ram. right?
 
JonJ678 said:
^wise words from si.
Is the 350 quid for an entire system or just for the
Q9650
X38 MOBO
4GB DDR2 800MHZ?
It makes quite a difference which motherboard it is as well. The q9650 is a newer revision than the qx9650 and interestingly tends to overclock better as a result, despite retailing for rather less.
Click to expand...

im not sure on mobo - most likely a cheaper not very good overclocker type board
 
4gb will be just fine. Which motherboard is it, and will you need a case/psu/hard drives etc? If its 350 for just the board, ram and processor that's not such an amazing deal

New prices,
Q9550 £200
Asus P5Q Pro £100
OCZ 1066mhz 4GB £40

Where that is a very good motherboard.
 
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Man this seems like overkill. It's lovely to have some nice bits on your computer, but if you want to save a bit of money you could easily survive with a nice Dual and a average passive cooled GPU. Keep the RAM though, that always comes in handy.

Chris.
 
lol MIKAY, please tell us is it £350 for the entire set up or just the cpu/mobo/ram? If it's just the cpu/mobo/ram you'd be better off building a new pc.
 
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