Q9450 upgrade questions

[smoothvirus]

So in July of 2008 I built myself a new rig:

Q9450
Asus P5Q-E
4GB RAM (Gskill)
ATI 4870 512MB
Vista Ultimate 64

Been pretty much rock-solid stable since I built it, really nice PC. But time marches on, and I recently upgraded the 4870 to a 5870. I also went from a 19" Mistubishi CRT to a 24" Dell panel. Now I'm seeing some decent deals on CPU's at Microcenter and I'm pondering upgrading that too: I'm just wondering if it's worth it.

Microcenter has the Q9550 on sale for $180, a damn good price, but it looks to be only 6% faster than what I'm running...

They also have the Core i7 920 on sale for $199, also a nice deal. If I went that direction though I'd need a new MB and RAM. I'd probably also make the jump to Windows 7 at that point. With everything I want that would add up to a $700 upgrade.. pricey. I'm guessing that I'd see a 20%-30% increase from that.

Anyhow I'm not planning on doing anything anytime soon, so I figured I'd see what some other people thought.

 

[Gillbot]

IMHO, Q9450 to Q9550 isn't worth it. Either splurge for the i7 or just wait a bit longer.

 

[smoothvirus]

IMHO, Q9450 to Q9550 isn't worth it. Either splurge for the i7 or just wait a bit longer.

Yeah, seems that way. 6% is not much of a bump. I could drop $90 on another 4 gigs of RAM, that might be worth it.

I'm not sure going Core i7 anytime soon make much sense either. Maybe a year from now, late 2010 or early 2011.

 

[Qbah]

Why won't you OC that CPU? Mine had no problems hitting 3.2GHz with just a bump in FSB. The chip can go much higher than that with a small voltage tweak.

Even 3.2GHz is quite a lot faster than stock settings, especially for a HD5870 which might have problems spreading its wings with a 2.67GHz quad core.

 

[betasub]

Not sure whether OP has tried to OC his Q9450. Even though they only came in the original stepping, they are still a good CPU to have. If OP is thinking of replacing the Q9450, he should have a good plan for it first! (i.e secondary system or auction sale).

 

[smoothvirus]

Why won't you OC that CPU? Mine had no problems hitting 3.2GHz with just a bump in FSB. The chip can go much higher than that with a small voltage tweak.

Even 3.2GHz is quite a lot faster than stock settings, especially for a HD5870 which might have problems spreading its wings with a 2.67GHz quad core.

Not a bad idea. I had actually planned to overclock it from the beginning, I just never got around to it.

 

[Kenmitch]

+1 for the cheap way out....Try to overclock your cpu and see how it works out first

 

[exar333]

You have a quality MB and a good quad, OC all the way. You should, at a minimum, be able to get at least 3.0ghz out of it. Worst case, drop $30 on a better cooler and get 3.2-3.4ghz. That is still a great chip, and combined with your 5870, a great system.

 

[smoothvirus]

Been quite some time since I tried OC'ing my CPU. However I came prepared for it this time around, I've got a Zalman CNPS 9700 on there, so cooling should not be a problem.

Think I could go to 400 FSB without having to tweak the voltage on the CPU? That would get me to 3.2 ghz.

This is the RAM I'm using:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231145

 

[Gillbot]

read this: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=47089

 

[Kenmitch]

Been quite some time since I tried OC'ing my CPU. However I came prepared for it this time around, I've got a Zalman CNPS 9700 on there, so cooling should not be a problem.

Think I could go to 400 FSB without having to tweak the voltage on the CPU? That would get me to 3.2 ghz.

This is the RAM I'm using:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231145

Hmmm....Depends on your chip the only way to know is to try it and see

 

[Markfw]

Hmmm....Depends on your chip the only way to know is to try it and see

I have mine @ 3.5 @ 1.35 vcore in bios. Been that way for 2 years I think.

 

[smoothvirus]

Running at 3.2 Ghz.. that wasn't too tough

 

[Kenmitch]

Running at 3.2 Ghz.. that wasn't too tough

I'd imagine you could get some more out of her....That is unless your satisfied already

My Q9550 jumped up to 4.02ghz with a couple of keystrokes....Waiting for my water cooling stuff to get here....Sometime today luckily I have tomorrow off

 

[smoothvirus]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. When I overclocked I just read a few posts about overclocking the P5Q-E, went home, tweaked a few BIOS settings, and poof! it was done.

Ran OCCT for an hour that night, passed.

Ran OCCT for six hours a day later, passed with no errors.

Played a few hours of GTA4 last night, no problems.

I think I'm happy with 3.2ghz for now. It's rock solid stable.

 

[Qbah]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. When I overclocked I just read a few posts about overclocking the P5Q-E, went home, tweaked a few BIOS settings, and poof! it was done.

Ran OCCT for an hour that night, passed.

Ran OCCT for six hours a day later, passed with no errors.

Played a few hours of GTA4 last night, no problems.

I think I'm happy with 3.2ghz for now. It's rock solid stable.

Glad it worked out for you. Now, feel any difference compared to stock?

 

[GundamF91]

You can run linpak if you want a challenge to heat up your set up, just make sure you monitor the temp.

Q9450 is a great chip, dont' sell yours short. I plan to keep mine until there's real tangible difference from next Intel "tick tock", and also when software demands it. Mine runs at stock at 3.4Ghz, and then to 3.6GHZ with just a small increase in voltage. It could go 3.8 but it's too warm for my taste. With good cooling and ram, and also cooling on northbridge, people have hit 4.0Ghz

 

[smoothvirus]

Well, that wasn't good.

I usually put the PC in sleep mode when I go to work, came home tonight and the system was lit up like it was on, but the keyboard and mouse were off, there was no video signal to the display.

After some basic troubleshooting it seemed that the motherboard was "stuck" in sleep mode. Did a cmos reset, she came right back up.

So I am at stock clocks again right now, I'm assuming I got stuck in sleep mode because of the OC, is there some BIOS tweak to prevent that from happening?

 

[smoothvirus]

.. after some research..

Looks like there have been several BIOS updates, I'm on 0803 and Asus is all the way up to 2101 now. So I'll do a BIOS update and see.

When it comes to BIOS I stick to "if it ain't broke don't fix it" but if it appears to be necessary (and it does now) it's time to do an update.

 

[secretanchitman]

i actually have a similar setup, but i instead use a P5Q deluxe, gtx 260, and xp pro sp3. i got mine up from 2.66Ghz to 3.8Ghz (this is with last years bios as well - havent updated since), but i settled for 3.6Ghz because it ran it with minimal voltage increase to memory, cpu, etc.

 

[smoothvirus]

Well, this is just peachy, I downloaded the latest BIOS, put it on a flash drive, reboot, go into the Asus EZ Flash utility and..

nothing....

I can't get it to do anything, keyboard does not work. Tried two different USB keyboards and an old PS2 keyboard. Nothing. Weirdly, if I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL, the system reboots.

Dammit, been futzing with this crap for an hour, it should take 5 minutes!

 

[Markfw]

Well, this is just peachy, I downloaded the latest BIOS, put it on a flash drive, reboot, go into the Asus EZ Flash utility and..

nothing....

I can't get it to do anything, keyboard does not work. Tried two different USB keyboards and an old PS2 keyboard. Nothing. Weirdly, if I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL, the system reboots.

Dammit, been futzing with this crap for an hour, it should take 5 minutes!

Thats why I still have a floppy drive, and use a second computer to download stuff to the floppy, then use my 98 floppy to boot, and flash the old fashioned way.

 

[smoothvirus]

Thats why I still have a floppy drive, and use a second computer to download stuff to the floppy, then use my 98 floppy to boot, and flash the old fashioned way.

No floppy in this system, only way to do that is to either take apart my old P4 system that has one, or go to microcenter (they close in 40 minutes) and buy one.

This doesn't make any sense.. I updated the damn bios from this same flash drive when I built the damn thing.

 

[Xpoc]

Have you tried using "afudos" to flash the bios? Is there an option in your bios to enable usb keyboard?

 

[smoothvirus]

oh for crying out loud! My Fallout 3 DVD was in the DVD drive and EZ Flash was locking up trying to find a .ROM file on it! sheesh