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Thinking of upgrading to Sandy Bridge

yannis76

yannis76

yannis76

Associate
Joined
16 Aug 2004
Posts
804
Hi,

I am currently a happy user of Q9550, P5K and 8GB RAM. I have been using this mobo for the last 3 years and after a small unsuccessful search of better mobos (P45) I am thinking of upgrading the whole platform.

If I upgrade I will go for i5-2300, Asus P67 and 8GB DDR3 1333.

What do you think of this performance upgrade? Compared to Core 2 Duo will I see big improvements?

thx
 
yannis76 said:
Hi,

I am currently a happy user of Q9550, P5K and 8GB RAM. I have been using this mobo for the last 3 years and after a small unsuccessful search of better mobos (P45) I am thinking of upgrading the whole platform.

If I upgrade I will go for i5-2300, Asus P67 and 8GB DDR3 1333.

What do you think of this performance upgrade? Compared to Core 2 Duo will I see big improvements?

thx
Click to expand...
As others have stated I would go for a i5 2500k personally as I did from a Q9400 that I clocked at 3.6Ghz.

People say that for gaming that the CPU isn't a major factor, but so far, games like F1 2010, GTA 4 EFLC, Dawn Of War 2, BLUR, and ArmA2 have ALL seen massive FPS increases due to the new CPU, and my old one wasn't exactly slow.

If you have the wonga I'd say go for it. Instead of 8GB of RAM, cut to 4GB and use the change to get the 2500k.
 
What frequency is the q9550 running at?

I went from a 3.8ghz q9550 to a 4ghz i7 920 (a motherboard failure forced the move) and saw very little difference. The 920 is believed to be 10% faster than the c2q, and sandy bridge is meant to be around 10% faster than the 920.

I would recommend staying with the core2quad until it dies, the cost of the upgrade vs the negligible performance increase doesn't make sense.
 
JonJ678 said:
What frequency is the q9550 running at?

I went from a 3.8ghz q9550 to a 4ghz i7 920 (a motherboard failure forced the move) and saw very little difference. The 920 is believed to be 10% faster than the c2q, and sandy bridge is meant to be around 10% faster than the 920.

I would recommend staying with the core2quad until it dies, the cost of the upgrade vs the negligible performance increase doesn't make sense.
Click to expand...

Hi,

Q9550 stock clock. The SB will also run at stock however
 
That changes things slightly in favour of upgrading, as the q9550 is at 2.83ghz and the SB chip will be clocked higher. You might quite like turbo as well.

If you want a new toy then by all means go ahead, but I don't think it's worth the upgrade. A ssd is likely to have a considerably greater impact on how fast the computer is.
 
JonJ678 said:
That changes things slightly in favour of upgrading, as the q9550 is at 2.83ghz and the SB chip will be clocked higher. You might quite like turbo as well.

If you want a new toy then by all means go ahead, but I don't think it's worth the upgrade. A ssd is likely to have a considerably greater impact on how fast the computer is.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply.

What about the new motherboards/chipsets compared to P35 that I have now and is 3 generations back? Are there any new technologies that could lead to better PC using? For example the lower temp system could lead to lower noise. Its true that performance wise the Q9550 is fine.
Another question is which kind of DDR3 memory I should choose. Is 1333MHz enough?
A SSD is always a good choice but its still very expensive compared to the Raptor 300GB I have now.

Thank you
 
Just upgraded from an E7400 to the 2500k and I'm over the moon with it. Overclocked to 4.4Ghz very easily, max temps after running prime for 5 or 6 hours are about 53C (recommend the Akasa Venon cooler!). My system feels far more responsive and stable now , best upgrade I've done in a long time
 
yannis76 said:
Hi,

I am currently a happy user of Q9550, P5K and 8GB RAM. I have been using this mobo for the last 3 years and after a small unsuccessful search of better mobos (P45) I am thinking of upgrading the whole platform.

If I upgrade I will go for i5-2300, Asus P67 and 8GB DDR3 1333.

What do you think of this performance upgrade? Compared to Core 2 Duo will I see big improvements?

thx
Click to expand...

no one else has explicitly mentioned it but the q9550 is not a core2duo, it's a core2quad.

people saying they've seen big improvements going from a c2d to an i5-2500k what were you expecting seeing as you're going from a dual core to a quad core plus it's 2 generations up? from a a few reviews I've seen it beats even the 980x in some cases so you would expect it to beat a c2d.

as has been said, to see real benificial improvements go 2500k tho as you said it'll be stock then you could save the money and go 2500.

I'm also wanting to upgrade(currently have a q6600) but lack of a job plus just spent £540 on car insurance is stopping me for the time being. was really tempted to get the 2500k, p8p87 pro + 4gb xms3 pc3-1600 for ~£350 last week(can't say from where as it's a compatitor, was even a bit cheaper a few days later).
 
Thank you for all the replies!

Another think to add, is that I have an ATI 5850 and my resolution is 1920x1080.
With this card and at that resolution would I see any increase in games?

Thank you
 
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