Should I update a Q9550@ 3.85Ghz > ?

driver182

driver182

driver182

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I recently overclocked my CPU to 3.85Ghz but my Gtx275 is no longer enough so I have upgraded to a Gigabyte Gtx670. I expected to be CPU bound in games but to my suprise running Arma, Civ5 and Skyrim on high (one below ultra etc) @1080p my CPU does not go above 70% so good news :)

Running Fraps I get 60fps in Civ and Skyrim and 40 in Arma. It goes way up if I turn v-sync off.

So with wallet open I was about to go 3770K but now having doubts as to whether its worth it. From experience of the overclockers here should I wait until Haswell and see what the thermal paste\bonding is like or would I notice the difference upgrading now to a 3770K or a 3550K in purely games.

I mainly play games but do a some photo editing in adobe Lightroom hence the 3770K but think is it worth a few minutes extra and save money and get 3550K.

I Will be buying a gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Motherboard with 16GB of 2133Mghz Cas 10. Gut feeling is to wait 6 months:D


Would love your opinions as to whether I will notice a difference upgrading or should wait ?
 
I would say you'd be surprised at the difference.

I stuck with my Q6600 for five years before upgrading to ivybridge, and I love it.

Especially with the 670 as your GPU the processor will be a bottleneck. The older series of CPUs can't use the graphics card fully - the graphics controller isn't powerful enough.

The new type of graphics controller in the i5/i7 series chips is much better. There was a site somewhere that gave the details but I can't find it... But I believe I calculated that prior to the upgrade my card was running at 60% capacity.

On F1 2012 which I play a lot the FPS went from 25~ to 56 average. That's straight from Q6600 to 3770k using the same GPU (GTX460). Now I'm on the GTX670, I get more like 90fps across three screens! :D

Edit: Also, whilst it is true haswell is coming soon... I doubt intel will have fixed the TIM issues. It was definitely done deliberately and I don't see any reason for them to change their practices. It's because people keep their old golden CPUs for as long as they do that they have to "nerf" the new ones to stop it happening again!
 
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Like always. If you have the cash, then do it. You will notice a slight improvement. If you would be tight on cash or have better things to spend it on, do that instead, you can hold out on a CPU for a little bit longer. The Q9550 was a beast, and at 3.85 it's going well.
 
Graphics controller on i5/7 won't affect performance with an add in GPU. (ignoring hybrid modes/lucid as thats another story really).

For gaming going from a stock Q6600 to a stock i7 will be a big difference and even going from a decently overclocked Q6600 to a stock i5/i7 is a fair difference but going from a heavily overclocked Q9550 to an i5/7 even a heavily overclocked one will be a much smaller difference (unless your running a stupidly high end multi GPU setup). There are a few games where the difference will be bigger but for most it won't be that noticeable.

Desktop use is a different story but depends how much it bothers you waiting the odd extra few minutes on a long encoding/compression type job, etc.

I'm currently sitting here with:

Q9550 @ 4GHz w/ GTX470 SLI
i7 3610QM @ stock w/ GTX675m (clocked to the same speed as one of the 470s)
i7 3770K @ 4.2GHz w/ GTX470 SLI (swapped from the Q9550).

A lot of games if I disable the SLI I get exactly the same performance from all 3 setups. With SLI enabled the i7 gets about 10-25% higher framerate depending on the game (IIRC in the heaven benchmark there was absolutely nothing in it between the 2 SLI setups).

I'd post some benchmarks but I just pulled the 3770 system apart to split off as I've decided its not worth the move from the Q9550 especially as I end up using the laptop more these days anyhow.

EDIT: For reference my GTX470s in SLI with the clocks they are running are roughly equivalent to a stock GTX680 in many cases.
 
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Thanks, I have tweaked a bit more and got my q9550 to 4ghz and memory to somewhere around 1150 at 5-5-5-15 and with my coolmaster v8 its running at 50C under load. More importantly i have played some skyrim on ultra and its smooth so actually I have decided to wait. I realise my 670 is bottlenecked but my cpu is giving me 60fps in games and that is all I need.

I feel its best to wait and see prices of haswell and the thermals and maybe if they are not much better will pick up an overclockex bundle. Happy spending £500 but why spend if its working adequately
 
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