Quick upgrade question.

[Hogs]

I have a Q9550 @ the moment and a P5Q motherboard - been looking at the new cpu's,moby's and ddr3 and i can't warrant the price to performance ratio for the amount of hard earned pounds per week, Is there much difference in performance?

any advice or opinions appreciated.

Hogs

 

[Fatboyuk2]

dose it have to be intel

 

[Phatzy]

what you got now will last long time yet, i see no reason to upgrade unless you just want new tech

 

[Maniacfest]

Unless what you have now is slow, stick with it until the prices come down or you need more performance.

 

[cmndr_andi]

There is certainly extra performance to be had from an i5/i7 system, but it all depends on what you use you system for whether it is worth your money. What are your primary uses?

Also have you overclocked you Q9550?

 

[Hogs]

sorry for the late reply - been on call and no pc's around - ok, my system is ok for what i use it for - but i am getting a bit worried by the price of ddr2 going up and ddr3 comming down - usually means more people are upgrading to newer technology, my system is not overclocked, i was considering an upgrade, (board, chip and ram) or spending a few quid on a new graphics card - but as direct x11 games are not available yet i am a bit stuck for choice.

Hogs

 

[Hoodlum]

Stick with the Q9550 unless you need hardware virtualisation (Because only AMD chips & i7s emulate memory controller ops in hardware - a huge performance boost for this)
Otherwise I'd wait till at least the 6-cores before you upgrade. The cost just isn't worth the additional performance. If you had a q6600 or older it would be different.

 

[SMAndy]

Even a Q6600 is still reasonable now. they overclock to the 3.4 mark normally with relative ease... that's not a bad speed.

You should think about overclocking the Q9550 to get some extra performance out of it. You may need to get a better cooler, but the cost of this will be nothing compared to a new system.