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Q9550 or i7?

Swi1ch

Swi1ch

Swi1ch

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Joined
19 Nov 2008
Posts
1,584
I am currently spec'd at getting a Q9550, but wondering if it's worth getting the cheapest i7? I will be buying early/mid Jan and having a full system. The only thing putting me off atm is the mobo will be double the price of my current spec'd and the Ram like nearly six times as much.

Just wondering whether I should just stick with the Q9550. It'll be for gaming, sound/music production and graphics work.
 
It's the difference between £1.5k and £1.2k so I'm leaning on the i7 (Plus release of GTX295 will push either the GTX280s or ATi card's down which will knock money off of the total).

Edit. Seeing as it's new tech, am I likely to experience more problems with it? I can't afford to drop £1.5 on a potentially unstable machine.
 
Heard quite good reviews on both. I think I recall the Q9550 performing as well as the i7 965 in encoding/ decoding media but everything else all i7's were ahead (but not much). Currently have a i7 940. Upgraded from a E2180 and i will never look back. I'll try and find the link to the benchmarks for ya.
 
Swi1ch said:
It's the difference between £1.5k and £1.2k so I'm leaning on the i7 (Plus release of GTX295 will push either the GTX280s or ATi card's down which will knock money off of the total).

Edit. Seeing as it's new tech, am I likely to experience more problems with it? I can't afford to drop £1.5 on a potentially unstable machine.
Click to expand...

they seem very stable..... a lot of people are using them for decoding and CPU heavy operations and all seems well. :D
 
Something to bear in mind for the i7, is that (at least some of) the motherboards come with SAS ports. If you do anything that's hard drive intensive then sticking a couple of SAS drives in becomes much cheaper. Even if it's just a normal PC then a couple of small ones in RAID0 for the OS will have a big impact.

It is a little ironic though that it's only as solid state drives arrive that mainstream performance motherboards get SAS ports fitted :P
 
What's Solid State and SAS? If this means more overly expensive stuff, I might go back to the Q9550 spec; That way I can get my new monitor aswell.
 
fuzecx said:
I think I recall the Q9550 performing as well as the i7 965 in encoding/ decoding media but everything else all i7's were ahead (but not much).
Click to expand...

from what I have learned in another thread this is verrrryy far from the truth for encoding. Theres a "Maxishine" video on youtube comparing encoding speeds on adobe premiere (I think) where the difference in ridiculous :p
 
I'm really considering this, but have a few concerns:

I will not be able to afford anything above the 920. Will this be alright? Also, there's a lot of talk about 920's easily clocking to 4ghz...when people stay a 'stable' overclock, does that mean they can then use that chip all the time at that speed, like for gaming and such? And there's also mentioning of turning off hyperthreading to get the clock up, what is Hyperthreading and why does it effect the clock?
 
920 is perfect as it will easily overclock too 940 speed and beyond.

It appears most people get well over 3ghz but to get to 4ghz you will have to watercool it as they get very hot.
 
QX6700 not a Q9550

sambo_joseph said:
from what I have learned in another thread this is verrrryy far from the truth for encoding. Theres a "Maxishine" video on youtube comparing encoding speeds on adobe premiere (I think) where the difference in ridiculous :p
Click to expand...

In the video he is comparing the i7 to a QX6700 not a Q9550. I might still be wrong though. Benchmark review I thought I seen.

Some benchmarks
 
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