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Q9450 or Q9550

breadturbo

breadturbo

breadturbo

Soldato
Joined
27 Oct 2005
Posts
2,603
Any difference (beside stock clockspeed)

if im clocking it up will one have a higher limit than the other?

ive got someone to buy my Q6600 and old 4gb ram for 175 lol (gotta love non-puter-people)
 
Tbh, neither are going to give you any real noticeable improvement over your Q6600. You may have got a good price for it but its pretty pointless putting that money into another Core 2 Quad CPU.

The Q9450 will be hard pushed reaching 3.6GHz, the Q9550s on average do 3.6-3.8GHz on air. Like I said, apart from a little less heat and voltage, you're not going to notice anything..
 
Do any of you actually have any knowledge in the Q9 series?

From FIRST hand experience I can say that the move from a Q6600 to a Q9450/Q9550 is a great one if its done within reason.

It runs substantially cooler, runs at least 13% better clock for clock, clocks up substantially higher from what I have seen at cooler temps, and has more instruction sets (SS4.1?), not to mention the extra cache.


Definitely worth going.


I7 is very decent, and if it costs only a bit more, you might as well go 1366, but for games and what not, the Q9450 is more than sufficient.
 
I've had both.

Q9450 was happy at 3.6GHz on stock cooler before going underwater at 3.8GHz. Couldn't get over 470FSB without silly volts.

Q9550 runs cooler on much less volts as you'd expect. Rock solid on 4.0GHz underwater, haven't tried on air. Haven't bothered to push it further for the reason above.

No noticeable difference in games, but resale value on Q9550 should be better.

I can't see the point going i7 if you've already got the rest of your rig, unless you are going to use (the limited amount of) software that will really make the most of the extra computing power.

P
 
Q9550 is the better chip alround and the latest E0 revision. The Q9540's are the original revisions and not as good. For the sake of £20 get the Q9550 or wait a little longer for the i5 setups.
 
For what it's worth i have a Q9450 that i bought earlier this week, and so far I am very impressed with it. Got it straight to 3GHz, and dropped the voltage to 1v, may experiment and drop it lower. Applications are snappier, and my PC feels much more responsive.

My quad idles at 45 and full load at 50, but then again, my room is quite warm.
 
ac1d1ty said:
Do any of you actually have any knowledge in the Q9 series?

From FIRST hand experience I can say that the move from a Q6600 to a Q9450/Q9550 is a great one if its done within reason.

It runs substantially cooler, runs at least 13% better clock for clock, clocks up substantially higher from what I have seen at cooler temps, and has more instruction sets (SS4.1?), not to mention the extra cache.


Definitely worth going.


I7 is very decent, and if it costs only a bit more, you might as well go 1366, but for games and what not, the Q9450 is more than sufficient.
Click to expand...

Q6600 @ 3.6GHz vs Q9450 @ 3.6GHz(Providing he can clock it stable that far) is going have little to none noticiable improvement. I'm not talking about synthetic benchmarks here, sure super Pi will be a tad quicker but for gaming like hell is there going to be any difference.

If he's getting a decent price for his quad, may as well jump to the next gen for longevity. Not to mention the i7 920 is now £200~ and you talking about a Q9550 for £170, just look at how much more power you're getting for £30. Granted requires new mobo and RAM but i'd much rather invest in something that's actually going to be step forward and not sideways.


At OP
Something to bare in mind, iirc your mobo has a max supported FSB of 1600. The Q9450's multiplier is 8, therefore giving you a maximum overclock of 3.2GHz in keeping with the supported FSB. Any higher and you will require a lot more voltage tweaking to push the FSB further, in turn generating more heat on the NB and SB.

Q9550 is slightly better with a 8.5 multi. Something to bare in mind atleast ;)
 
elpedro said:
At OP
Something to bare in mind, iirc your mobo has a max supported FSB of 1600. The Q9450's multiplier is 8, therefore giving you a maximum overclock of 3.2GHz in keeping with the supported FSB. Any higher and you will require a lot more voltage tweaking to push the FSB further, in turn generating more heat on the NB and SB.

Q9550 is slightly better with a 8.5 multi. Something to bare in mind atleast ;)
Click to expand...

well im running 500x8 right now so it should be ok, i hate making decisions :/
 
I switched from a 3.8ghz capable q6600 to a q9550 currently also at 3.8ghz, the 9550 runs a lot cooler, performance wise there isnt much difference, i got the 9550 at a pretty decent price after selling the old chip, basically i got the q9550 to try one out and see how far i could clock it on air.
 
yeah its at 4ghz atm(well 3.98ghz but 4 sounds better :P), but the NB is HOT with 1.7v runs 70c on water lol
however the cpu holds 4ghz with 1.48v
VID is 1.2075v
 
elpedro said:
Q6600 @ 3.6GHz vs Q9450 @ 3.6GHz(Providing he can clock it stable that far) is going have little to none noticiable improvement. I'm not talking about synthetic benchmarks here, sure super Pi will be a tad quicker but for gaming like hell is there going to be any difference.

If he's getting a decent price for his quad, may as well jump to the next gen for longevity. Not to mention the i7 920 is now £200~ and you talking about a Q9550 for £170, just look at how much more power you're getting for £30. Granted requires new mobo and RAM but i'd much rather invest in something that's actually going to be step forward and not sideways.


At OP
Something to bare in mind, iirc your mobo has a max supported FSB of 1600. The Q9450's multiplier is 8, therefore giving you a maximum overclock of 3.2GHz in keeping with the supported FSB. Any higher and you will require a lot more voltage tweaking to push the FSB further, in turn generating more heat on the NB and SB.

Q9550 is slightly better with a 8.5 multi. Something to bare in mind atleast ;)
Click to expand...

I would certainly not suggest for a second that the OP should buy a brand new Q9 series chip, that would be foolish.


However second hand, its still worth getting a Q9 setup. I purchased (more than I wanted to pay as well, but I need a pc) a Q9550 retail edition, 4Gb Dominator 1066 and a P45 motherboard for £215.



Personally when I overclocked my CPU I noticed a difference, both in the temps (and subsequent noise levels), and in responsivness due to FPS gains (making the most out of my high end graphics card).


Its subjective ;)
 
breadturbo said:
yeah its at 4ghz atm(well 3.98ghz but 4 sounds better :P), but the NB is HOT with 1.7v runs 70c on water lol
however the cpu holds 4ghz with 1.48v
VID is 1.2075v
Click to expand...

All I'll say is, if you have a stable 4GHz Q6600, don't even bother with i7 mate let alone a Q9550... Gains will be purely synthetic or where more than 4 threads come into play.
 
elpedro said:
All I'll say is, if you have a stable 4GHz Q6600, don't even bother with i7 mate let alone a Q9550... Gains will be purely synthetic or where more than 4 threads come into play.
Click to expand...

I think he means his Q9450 is at 4ghz. That's even better :) Don't bother with an i7 if you're running at that.
 
the only cpu thats going to offer any noticable perf over a q6600 is the q9650

It will clock higher than the q9550 coz it has higher multi. Anything lower is going to be a waste.

I went for a q9550 instead of an i7 upgrade so i could spend extra on a new gfx card, might even get a dx11 card when they come out now!
 
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