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Is it worth upgrading?

Associate
Joined
15 Feb 2006
Posts
572
Location
Chelmsford, Essex
Hey all,

I have an Intel QX6700 CPU at the moment. Would I see a worthwhile increase in performance if I went to a Q9450 or Q9550?

The main issue with the QX6700 is that it runs pretty hot and I want a quieter PC.

Thanks
 
the real gain by changing the chip is that the newer ones can be overclocked to levels that the extreme version wouldnt even dream of. if you are not going to overclock then dont bother.
 
The Q9550 is over £150 more than the Q9450 and if your are just going to run at stock speeds it is only 6% quicker for a 75% price difference so not worth it.

As stated already the Q9450 will be about 10% quicker than your current qx6700 and you ought to be able to get around £200 for it so a Q9450 will be about 15% more money.

As stated already the the q9450 and q9550 are worth it if you are going to overclock them. On the other hand you should have been able to get 3.5ghz from your current chip as normally the only people who buy qx chips, buy them to overclock so the difference still wouldn't be much as the q9450 and q9550 don't clock that much better.

Depending on what you use your computer for, you'd see a bigger gain from buying E8500 which runs at 3.16Ghz in games but you would lose out if you video encode.
 
The Q9550 is over £150 more than the Q9450 and if your are just going to run at stock speeds it is only 6% quicker for a 75% price difference so not worth it.

As stated already the Q9450 will be about 10% quicker than your current qx6700 and you ought to be able to get around £200 for it so a Q9450 will be about 15% more money.

As stated already the the q9450 and q9550 are worth it if you are going to overclock them. On the other hand you should have been able to get 3.5ghz from your current chip as normally the only people who buy qx chips, buy them to overclock so the difference still wouldn't be much as the q9450 and q9550 don't clock that much better.

Depending on what you use your computer for, you'd see a bigger gain from buying E8500 which runs at 3.16Ghz in games but you would lose out if you video encode.

thanks a lot for the info. I'll probably just keep my current CPU for now then. Can't go down to dual core as I need the 4 cores for the stuff I do.

However, If I did go to the Q9450 in the future, would my motherboard support it? I've got an Abit IN9 32XMAX which is an nforce 680i chipset board.

Thanks
 
from googling it yes but best to go to abit's site to check. Chances are you will need to update the bios at least
 
However, If I did go to the Q9450 in the future, would my motherboard support it? I've got an Abit IN9 32XMAX which is an nforce 680i chipset board.

Thanks

IIRC Abits latest bios for the IN9 32X MAX does actually update the board so it can run Penryn based core2's, but they have not openly said the board will definitely support the Yorkfield quads. I’ve seen one person manage to get a q9450 up and running but completely failed to get it to overclock. It was rock solid stable at stock though :)
 
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