• 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.

e6400 to Q9550 worth it?

thecremeegg

thecremeegg

thecremeegg

Soldato
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
8,152
Location
Surrey
Currently I have an e6400 running at 3.4Ghz and was wondering if getting a q9550 would be a worthy upgrade? I would be overclocking the q9550 as well.

I dont really have the funds for an i7 at the moment so will this be a decent stop gap for say 6 months or so?
 
It would depend on your usage, if primarily a gamer i wouldnt bother, if your doing a large amount of encoding/photo work, then if you could pick up a q9550 second hand, by all means go for it. I certainly wouldnt spend the full price on a new one (and i had one) as its still a pretty expensive cpu.
 
Q9550 is a nice chip - but you'd have to get it to aroudn 4gig or more to see a massive improvement in non-threaded applications and in a lot (but not all) games you won't see much difference unless your running a high end multi GPU setup. 3+gig on a core 2 is enough to max out most single GPUs in most cases.

Personally tho I find having gone from a 3.6gig Q6600 to a 3.825gig Q9550 that min framerates in many games are a reasonable bit higher and the average is much more of a stable line.
 
If only for games then no it's not worth it, apart from the very rare situation as snake mentioned. What's the rest of your spec, maybe the GFX would be a better upgrade and help the games.
 
Well the rest of the pc is a 4870 1Gb and 4Gb Ram. It cannot run GTA 4 at all, its a slideshow, and COD:MW 2 has tendencies to drop frames.
If I can pick one up for say £70 or so then it seems the concensus is that it'll be worth it?
 
thecremeegg said:
Well the rest of the pc is a 4870 1Gb and 4Gb Ram. It cannot run GTA 4 at all, its a slideshow, and COD:MW 2 has tendencies to drop frames.
If I can pick one up for say £70 or so then it seems the concensus is that it'll be worth it?
Click to expand...

Same here till i got my Q9400
 
thecremeegg said:
Well the rest of the pc is a 4870 1Gb and 4Gb Ram. It cannot run GTA 4 at all, its a slideshow, and COD:MW 2 has tendencies to drop frames.
If I can pick one up for say £70 or so then it seems the concensus is that it'll be worth it?
Click to expand...


Went from a E6320 to Q9550 last year and paid over £200.

Get one for £70 quid is a bargain.
 
Big.Wayne said:
You wait till 2010 then you will see some new shiny chips, if you buy a q9550 now at full price you will regret it . . . . :p
Click to expand...

Why ? What does your crystal ball say will happen in 2010 ? Please share :D

Are you assuming that Intel's new dual core architecture will push prices down of the soon to be obsolete yorkfields ?
 
Subliminal Aura said:
Why ? What does your crystal ball say will happen in 2010 ? Please share :D

Are you assuming that Intel's new dual core architecture will push prices down of the soon to be obsolete yorkfields ?
Click to expand...

I don't believe that there are any more LGA775 cpu's coming out so if anyone is on that socket getting a quad now seems to be a good buy. I am tempted to go for a Q9550 myself while i can still get a good price for my E8500. Prices on the Yorkfields will go up i reckon as supply start's to dwindle out just like it did with AMD's socket 754 and then 939. I don't believe that the expense of upgrading to a whole new architecture (i5/i7) would be worth it compared to the gain in performance.
 
Just got myself one of the Q9550's on this week only. Most places are selling them for more than £200 so it's a good buy and will be my final 775 upgrade (apart from the second 5770). I was tempted by a Q9550S (65w version) elsewhere but the price was just too much to justify. I should still get a good price on the bay for my E8500 so it won't have cost me too much to do the upgrade. I have a good board and ram with plenty of life left in them yet and with a bit of luck i should get this quad past 4Ghz.
 
Theyre actually not to bad price wise on two, and like you say you should get a decent price for the E8500, clocking wise, theyre fantastic chips, most i ever pushed mine to was 3.8ghz on just over stock volts (1.200 vid) in an asus p5q dlx, probably would have went over 4ghz with a bit more tweaking, kinda regret selling it now tbh.
 
I had a look on the XS forums and there are some fantastic overclocks with very low voltage. One guy got 4.3Ghz with only 1.28v. My E8500 needs 1.4V for 4.5Ghz and 1.36v for 4Ghz.
 
i went from e6700 to a quad, just so i could handle gta4 i guess, and max out my 775 Motherboard b4 i need to upgrade again.

but it brought other advantages, such as being able to do more things at once, ie ccleaner, defrag, and gaming all at the same time. My comp has defragged about 3 times while I was playing resident evil 5, with no performance hit, whereas the dual struggled
 
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom