q9550 or an amd?

Glaucus · 27 Jul 2014 at 16:39

Need to upgrade my CPU for elite dangerous,
Now I can either slot a 9550 in or change to something like the AMD piledriver FX.

What's better? And if AMD is the better route what's the better chip to get?

McstylisT · 27 Jul 2014 at 17:25

Hi ,

The q9550 was a good processor , though its days are now numbered tbh and sourcing one at times can cost so would not be worth it.
The fx 8120 is the cheapest new platform option. Side by side there similar in single core iirc but in all other areas the AMD is superior as it's the latest platform compared to a 7 year old one.

What's your budget ? We can then spec the best for the budget.

Cheers

Rroff · 27 Jul 2014 at 17:26

Q9550 still fairly good but not really cost effective at the prices they demand these days - worth doing IMO if you can source one cheapish though.

Glaucus · 27 Jul 2014 at 17:37

As cheap as possible

McstylisT · 27 Jul 2014 at 18:22

Rroff said:
Q9550 still fairly good but not really cost effective at the prices they demand these days - worth doing IMO if you can source one cheapish though.

Glaucus said:
As cheap as possible

In that case , as Rroff quoted above maybe best to try source a q9550 cheap as possible. If it's not a financially good acquisition then you could then look at a new platform but you would need a decent fund budget.

Jamielicious · 28 Jul 2014 at 22:50

Until recently I had a Q9550, it was a great chip that clocked easily to 3.4GHz and probably beyond in a decent P45 board.

If you want 8 threads then I'd recommend a Haswell build (i7 or Xeon E3) over anything AMD have to offer.

DJ_Switch · 28 Jul 2014 at 23:15

If you do decide to go down the 775 route then I'd definitely recommend the q9650. The little extra outlay can give you a lot more room for overclocking. They will do 4ghz without breaking a sweat and can do a lot more. I'm not comparing them to modern i5 or i7's, before anyone chimes in, but they are not bad at all. It's only because I'm itching for an upgrade that I'm going to replace mine soon. It's been an amazing CPU and lasted longer than anything I've had before. Being honest though if I was looking to buy just now then I'd probably go for a slightly more modern platform.

faceman123 · 29 Jul 2014 at 04:56

buy a 2500k+ cheap mobo can pick them both up for a total 90 quid tops.

ubersonic · 29 Jul 2014 at 08:27

A Q9550 is clock for clock just as fast as a current 4 core AMD from a pure processing POV, however a current 4 core AMD is clocked higher out of the box and will over clock higher, it would also have the advantage of a newer board and DDR3 ofc.

Fire_fly · 29 Jul 2014 at 16:53

A second hand 2500K would be worth considering, they may be a few years old but if you can get a reasonable OC on it they are still very good CPUs.

As you like playing KSP it would be worth looking at performance in that. My understanding is that Intel generally has the upper hand over AMD.

AuriconXS · 30 Jul 2014 at 07:59

Fire_fly said:
A second hand 2500K would be worth considering, they may be a few years old but if you can get a reasonable OC on it they are still very good CPUs.

As you like playing KSP it would be worth looking at performance in that. My understanding is that Intel generally has the upper hand over AMD.

Ditto

CaptainRAVE · 30 Jul 2014 at 10:39

I upgraded from my Q9550 at the end of 2013. An excellent processor that served me well and overclocked fantastically (4Ghz on air), but it was starting to get bottlenecked in modern games and was starting to hurt my fps. For the price (for some reason Q9550s and associated hardware can hold their value well), I would try some of the suggestions mentioned above

AuriconXS · 30 Jul 2014 at 10:41

CaptainRAVE said:
I upgraded from my Q9550 at the end of 2013. An excellent processor that served me well and overclocked fantastically (4Ghz on air), but it was starting to get bottlenecked in modern games and was starting to hurt my fps. For the price (for some reason Q9550s and associated hardware can hold their value well), I would try some of the suggestions mentioned above

What resolutions were you gaming at?

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 30 Jul 2014 at 10:44

How about you wait until the new Elite game is released??

Supposedly it is meant to support Mantle too:

http://videocardz.com/51018/exclusive-upcoming-games-support-mantle

So if you have a GCN based graphics card,an FX CPU might do well.

However,it is still worth waiting so we can see how the engine performs.

AuriconXS · 30 Jul 2014 at 10:46

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
How about you wait until the new Elite game is released??

Supposedly it is meant to support Mantle too:

http://videocardz.com/51018/exclusive-upcoming-games-support-mantle

So if you have a GCN based graphics card,an FX CPU might do well.

However,it is still worth waiting so we can see how the engine performs.

Makes sense.

CaptainRAVE · 30 Jul 2014 at 10:51

AuriconXS said:
What resolutions were you gaming at?

1920.

Assassin's Creed 3 was the first game where I couldn't maximise everything - a very CPU demanding game, as was Black Flag. I noticed an improvement across all modern titles though, in loading times as well as fps. I was hoping to keep my Q9550 a little longer, but given the price I got for the hardward and deal I got on OcUK, I just couldn't resist the upgrade

AuriconXS · 30 Jul 2014 at 10:55

CaptainRAVE said:
1920.

Assassin's Creed 3 was the first game where I couldn't maximise everything - a very CPU demanding game, as was Black Flag. I noticed an improvement across all modern titles though, in loading times as well as fps. I was hoping to keep my Q9550 a little longer, but given the price I got for the hardward and deal I got on OcUK, I just couldn't resist the upgrade

Yeah... at that res probably right, but on a 24" at 1920x1200 I can't really notice any improvement on running AA above x2 really. Especially in FPSs... I tend to max everything else though.

troops · 31 Jul 2014 at 02:57

Personally if you are going to splash out on a AMD system then just pay extra and go Intel, so much less hassle.
If you wanted you could do the Xeon X5450, which is basically a Q9650 which are pretty cheap and do the pin mod.

Rroff · 31 Jul 2014 at 03:36

Jamielicious said:
Until recently I had a Q9550, it was a great chip that clocked easily to 3.4GHz and probably beyond in a decent P45 board.

If you want 8 threads then I'd recommend a Haswell build (i7 or Xeon E3) over anything AMD have to offer.

Mine did (probably still does) 4.5-4.6GHz on a P45 and even managed 4GHz stable* on a horrid nFail 750 chipset board (with hardware voltmod). Ran it for a long time at 3.825GHz though outside of benchmarks as it needed all of the max safe voltage to get there on that failure of a nForce board.

* As far as anything ever got stable on those boards.