Anyone still using the QX9650 with new cards?

[Truebrit]

I have the QX9650 Quad Extreme CPU and was wondering if anyone here is still using theirs with a powerful modern card. Has anyone been running a clocked version then spent out on a new generation CPU to find that it wasn't worth it, or is the opposite true, did you change to an i5 or i7 and it blew you away with how much better it was. I am on a very tight budget and don't want to waste money on a modern card if my CPU is holding it back.





Intel® Core™2 Quad Extreme QX9650 Processor (3.0GHz, 12MB Cache, 1333MHz)

1250W PSU

PCI-Express Mainboard - SLi nForce 780i SLi - Intel Core2Duo/Quad Core - ATX

8GB DDR2 800MHz Memory (4 x 2GB)

Zotac GTX 260

 

[killoc]

Well, I can give you a rough idea here with final fantasy xiv a realm reborn benchmark.

final fantasy xiv a realm reborn benchmark(MAX, 1080p)
[email protected] 8gb ram
zotoc gtx 460 - score 3200
KFA2 gtx 660 -score 4800
KFA2 gtx 670 - score 5800

i7 930@stock 2.8 12gb ram
zotoc gtx 460 - score 3600
KFA2 gtx 670 - score 6800

i7 930@4ghz 12gb ram
zotoc gtx 460 - score 3800
KFA2 gtx 670 - score 7800

i7 4770k@stock 16gb
KFA2 gtx 670 - score 7800

i7 [email protected] 16gb
KFA2 gtx 670 - score 8500

Currently playing on beta with q6600 and gtx 660. cpu 4 cores all 80%+ while gpu 50-70%. [email protected] with gtx670 GPU 80%+ and cpu 1-2 core about 40%+ and rarely all core and threads 60%+. Depends if ur qx9650 running a stock or overclocked. I think a gtx660 or 7850 would make a nice upgrade from gtx 260. Your cpu would be holding it back but I think new GPU would be ur last upgrade for that system.

 

[Truebrit]

Thanks for the good info. I only really have money for the card right now, it's either the card or wait till I can afford a MOBO, Memory and a new CPU. I may try the 660 twin frozr and an O/C to about 3.6 or 4ghz if I can stretch to a new fan. Then by the time my CPU burns out I should have money for a new set up.

Well, I can give you a rough idea here with final fantasy xiv a realm reborn benchmark.

final fantasy xiv a realm reborn benchmark(MAX, 1080p)
[email protected] 8gb ram
zotoc gtx 460 - score 3200
KFA2 gtx 660 -score 4800
KFA2 gtx 670 - score 5800

i7 930@stock 2.8 12gb ram
zotoc gtx 460 - score 3600
KFA2 gtx 670 - score 6800

i7 930@4ghz 12gb ram
zotoc gtx 460 - score 3800
KFA2 gtx 670 - score 7800

i7 4770k@stock 16gb
KFA2 gtx 670 - score 7800

i7 [email protected] 16gb
KFA2 gtx 670 - score 8500

Currently playing on beta with q6600 and gtx 660. cpu 4 cores all 80%+ while gpu 50-70%. [email protected] with gtx670 GPU 80%+ and cpu 1-2 core about 40%+ and rarely all core and threads 60%+. Depends if ur qx9650 running a stock or overclocked. I think a gtx660 or 7850 would make a nice upgrade from gtx 260. Your cpu would be holding it back but I think new GPU would be ur last upgrade for that system.

 

[Marine-RX179]

OP what games you play mostly?

IMO if you grabbing a new graphic card, I would say get either the 7850 2GB which OcUK offer 8 free games for around £150 , or get the EVGA GTX760 for 210 Euro.

 

[mnet674]

I changed my entire system a bit over a year ago from qx9650 to a 3770k, was using a single GTX580 with both before later moving to SLI. To be honest I hardly noticed a massive performance difference but it kind of entirely depends on how much cpu a game is using!

One thing I would say is the performance difference between 3 and 3.6Ghz on my qx was pretty minimal and the thing hated overclocking at all probably my biggest ever waste of money that chip

 

[Marine-RX179]

I changed my entire system a bit over a year ago from qx9650 to a 3770k, was using a single GTX580 with both before later moving to SLI. To be honest I hardly noticed a massive performance difference but it kind of entirely depends on how much cpu a game is using!

One thing I would say is the performance difference between 3 and 3.6Ghz on my qx was pretty minimal and the thing hated overclocking at all probably my biggest ever waste of money that chip

For mmos that use only 2-3 cores (i.e. DC Universe Online, Global Agenda), I went from minimum 22fps to minimum 55fps+ upgrading from my Q6600 oc at 3.60GHz to i5 2500K oc at 4.5GHz, despite using the same 5850

But of course it is usually a matter of how dependent a game is. For single player action and FPS games which hardly has more than a couple of enemies appearing at the same time, they are generally more depending on the graphic side than the CPU side. Take BF3 for exampe...single player campaign even some older quad-core CPUs won't bottleneck the new high-end cards; but if people were to play online with gazillion dynamic actions happening at the same time, those same CPU would bottleneck the high-end cards by quite a big margin, and drop the GPU usage from 99% down to 70-80% etc (unless people artificially increase the GPU load to unrealistic level such as 8xAA or beyond, which could need to the graphic card frame rate to drop to even lower than that of the CPU's).

 

[Truebrit]

I play BF3, FSX, GTA and racing sims mostly. I beleive FSX ans GTA love the CPU. I saw that 8 game offer and it looks tempting but I'm a bit of an nvidia fanboy, the 7 series card is a bit more than I want to spend right now.

OP what games you play mostly?

IMO if you grabbing a new graphic card, I would say get either the 7850 2GB which OcUK offer 8 free games for around £150 , or get the EVGA GTX760 for 210 Euro.

 

[Marine-RX179]

I play BF3, FSX, GTA and racing sims mostly. I beleive FSX ans GTA love the CPU. I saw that 8 game offer and it looks tempting but I'm a bit of an nvidia fanboy, the 7 series card is a bit more than I want to spend right now.

Basing purely on the the games you mentioned, I would go for the 7850 2GB with the 8 frees games for around £150 first...and then save up money toward CPU and platform upgrade by getting a used i5 2500K for around £100, a 2nd hand Z68/Z77 board for £50 or less (or that Gigabyte Z68 board that OcUK is selling at £45 new with full warranty), and then £30 toward 2x4GB memory, and then around £25-£35 for a decent CPU cooler- which comes to a total of around £200.

So all in all in the end it would cost only around £300 in total upgrading both graphic and CPU, which will greatly improve your system all-round without breaking the bank (cost less than getting a new Intel bundle XD).

 

[WingZero30]

I have the QX9650 Quad Extreme CPU and was wondering if anyone here is still using theirs with a powerful modern card. Has anyone been running a clocked version then spent out on a new generation CPU to find that it wasn't worth it, or is the opposite true, did you change to an i5 or i7 and it blew you away with how much better it was. I am on a very tight budget and don't want to waste money on a modern card if my CPU is holding it back.





Intel® Core™2 Quad Extreme QX9650 Processor (3.0GHz, 12MB Cache, 1333MHz)

1250W PSU

PCI-Express Mainboard - SLi nForce 780i SLi - Intel Core2Duo/Quad Core - ATX

8GB DDR2 800MHz Memory (4 x 2GB)

Zotac GTX 260

I run Q9650@4Ghz. Previously I had 5850@stock and in most games GPU usage was 90-99%. However since upgrading to Gigabyte Windforce 7950@1000/1250Mhz my Q9650/775 is heavily bottlenecking my 7950 and on average my gpu usage is only around 45-55%.

It's not just the cpu but rather the whole socket 775 which bottlenecks modern cards and Imo FSB is the main culprit as all the data from and to the cpu has to pass through FSB and the external memory controller also limits memory performance.

In BF3 in Kharg island, the cpu usage can be as much as over 91% whilst 7950 usage drops to 35% during heavy action.

I would say QX9650/Q9650/Q9550 are only balanced with cards such as 5850,5870, 460, 470 and may be even 480. Beyond these cards you would begin to see bottlenecking in modern gpus.

 

[Truebrit]

Thanks for the info, what do you test your GPU usage with?

I run Q9650@4Ghz. Previously I had 5850@stock and in most games GPU usage was 90-99%. However since upgrading to Gigabyte Windforce 7950@1000/1250Mhz my Q9650/775 is heavily bottlenecking my 7950 and on average my gpu usage is only around 45-55%.

It's not just the cpu but rather the whole socket 775 which bottlenecks modern cards and Imo FSB is the main culprit as all the data from and to the cpu has to pass through FSB and the external memory controller also limits memory performance.

In BF3 in Kharg island, the cpu usage can be as much as over 91% whilst 7950 usage drops to 35% during heavy action.

I would say QX9650/Q9650/Q9550 are only balanced with cards such as 5850,5870, 460, 470 and may be even 480. Beyond these cards you would begin to see bottlenecking in modern gpus.

 

[Rroff]

At stock its going to be quite a bottleneck however I used to run a Q9550 @ 4GHz w/ GTX470 SLI clocked to approx GTX680 performance it was only really any significant bottleneck in CPU heavy games for most benchmarks i.e. heaven, even game benchmarks it would clock in alongside heavily OC'd i7 CPUs when they were using similiar performance GPUs.

I wouldn't take the Q6600 results as too much of a guide tho I upgraded from a 3.6GHz Q6600 to a Q9550 and even clock for clock the Q9550 produced a fair bit better results.

I'm not going to say its not a bottleneck but in many games it won't be a huge bottleneck if your running a good clock.

EDIT: I will say there may be something to what WingZero30 said tho - I was running a massive FSB clock and using OCZ Blade ULV memory that had really high bus speeds and really low latency (I got mine stable at 1333MHz 5-5-18 in testing which is a pretty decent feat for DDR2 memory clocking) - other people running more normal FSB/memory didn't seem to get quite as good results.

EDIT2: The more I think about it the more I think my results weren't really representative of normal results - I had a hardware modded nForce 750 (cut down 790 not 780) board and exotic RAM.

 

[=XDC=FluphyBunny]

...

I would say QX9650/Q9650/Q9550 are only balanced with cards such as 5850,5870, 460, 470 and may be even 480. Beyond these cards you would begin to see bottlenecking in modern gpus.

My q9550 plus 6950 are well matched. I added another for CF once but there wasn't much more performance to be had from the cpu (bf3). If I upgrade it will be the whole system.

 

[BigBANGtheory]

I still use a Core2Quad Extreme with an AMD 6950 2GB GPU.

Most game titles are fine and I even use multi-screen res for DCS World, but what is killing my performance are titles like Arma3 and HQ graphics settings on the flashy FPS titles.

If like me you intend to play Arma3, DayZ or X Rebirth you will need to upgrade by Q4 2013 IMHO, wait to see more on Ivy-E then decide.

 

[Truebrit]

Thanks for the heads up on the new cpu, hopefully they'll drop in price when that comes out. I can run DCS on my cpu stock with a gxt260 on max settings, great sim too. BF3 runs ok on medium>high, but with BF4 and Assetto Corsa coming out I want to enjoy good frames and DX11. I may get a gtx660 for now (I think my 260 is on the way out) and save for the MOBO, RAM and CPU for later in the year.

I still use a Core2Quad Extreme with an AMD 6950 2GB GPU.

Most game titles are fine and I even use multi-screen res for DCS World, but what is killing my performance are titles like Arma3 and HQ graphics settings on the flashy FPS titles.

If like me you intend to play Arma3, DayZ or X Rebirth you will need to upgrade by Q4 2013 IMHO, wait to see more on Ivy-E then decide.

 

[Alkalinepro5]

I still use a Core2Quad Extreme with an AMD 6950 2GB GPU.

Most game titles are fine and I even use multi-screen res for DCS World, but what is killing my performance are titles like Arma3 and HQ graphics settings on the flashy FPS titles.

If like me you intend to play Arma3, DayZ or X Rebirth you will need to upgrade by Q4 2013 IMHO, wait to see more on Ivy-E then decide.

I downloaded the original Arma 3 alpha and it runs like crap. Around 18-30fps at 1080p - hoping there will be SOME performance improvement for the final relese!

I wanted to hold out until Haswell-E. So I may just have to play Arma 3 without the goodies until next year If I can hold out that long (probably not)

 

[SlugForAButt]

I've got a 4Ghz Q9650 & 6950 and all seems good in the hood. The only thing at all that's got me thinking about an upgrade is sata 3 for my SSDs.

 

[darkwildchild79]

I have a QX9650 & 460 SOC, and i am playing Mortal Kombat Komplete on max setting on my system, and i dont see any lagging...as someone said earlier if you can give us more information on what type of game you looking to play we can help you further.

 

[Truebrit]

gtx660 non ti

I have a QX9650 & 460 SOC, and i am playing Mortal Kombat Komplete on max setting on my system, and i dont see any lagging...as someone said earlier if you can give us more information on what type of game you looking to play we can help you further.

 

[AlbertBarkley]

I have QX9650 oc'ed at 3.6ghz with 4GB DDR 2 Ram and my system is working very well and i played almost all games and i enjoy very much.

 

[Makhaira]

Q9550 clocked to 3.4, with Crossfire 5850's. Starting to show its age a bit, but overall still in medium/high territory for most games. Really suffers on encoding compared to some of the newer chips mind you.