Q9550 upgrade question

[videopho]

Seeing $169 for the Q9550 at a Micro Center store nearby which is enticing.
Would this processor be a huge upgrade over my current e6600?
Primary usages: Mostly gaming plus some video decoding/office works/Visio garphic design work.

 

[Akino]

...

 

[spinejam]

definitely noticeable if you can o/c it to 4.0+.

a "huge upgrade" though = i7 o/c to 4.0+.

 

[California Roll]

If you're doing any type of video work, run, don't walk to Micro Center.

 

[loafbred]

I just upgraded from an E6600 @ 3.4 GHz (7*485) and Commando board, to a Q9550 and P5Q Deluxe board @ 3.2 GHz (8*400, haven't tried higher). I was really surprised by the improvement in gaming, even with older single-core capable games, though some of the improvement can probably be attributed to the new motherboard, which has newer chipset and PCI-E 2.0.

 

[Schmide]

I too have gone MC q6600 -> q9550. Well worth it.

 

[Akino]

...

 

[zagood]

I didn't pay attention to when the 2.0 transition took place. Any idea if my Gigabyte 965p DS3 is PCI-E 2.0? And how much of a difference are we talking here, for cards like the 4890 and above?

Careful - only rev. 3.3 of that board can take the Q9x50 CPUs.

http://www.gigabyte.us/Support/Motherboard/CPUSupport_Model.aspx?ProductID=2456

You can find revision tag on the motherboard itself, on the upper left-hand corner.

 

[Akino]

...

 

[California Roll]

Went from a Q6600 @ 3.0 to a Q9550 @ 3.8 at lower voltage than before. Temps are also 10C cooler.

Even if your game doesn't support quad cores, you will see improvements in gaming. Maybe not in terms of drastic FPS increases but overall experience will be noticeably smoother since some of us have antivirus/tasks/browsers running in the background.

I do a lot of video encoding and there is a noticeable difference between 3.0 and 3.8ghz. Going to wait another year or two before I go i7.

 

[loafbred]

I didn't pay attention to when the 2.0 transition took place. Any idea if my Gigabyte 965p DS3 is PCI-E 2.0? And how much of a difference are we talking here, for cards like the 4890 and above?

I don't think any P965 or 975 boards had PCI-E 2.0, but not sure. It has twice the bandwidth potential, but from what I understand, only cards with 512mb or less VRAM, and multi-GPU setups, will benefit. Not sure if my single 9800 GX2 really benefits at all from v2.0, but from what I can remember reading, it does benefit at least a little.

 

[videopho]

Bad news though...eVGA told me my mobo, an aging 650i does not support quad core 45nm processor.

 

[Zargon]

how bout you buy that CPU and Ill pay you to mail it to me

thats insanely cheap!

 

[Akino]

...

 

[Schmide]

idles at 45-50,

Check your cooling and make sure all your pins are fully engaged. This is a bit hot for idle temps. Load temps are all that matters, are they high?

 

[Akino]

...

 

[Schmide]

With Prime95 it gets to 75C after like 15 minutes, hard to tell if it's a bad chip or if I need to rethink my cooling. It's not a total disaster but it sure is up there, and this isn't even overclocked. My E4300 ran fine at 3.15Ghz.

I believe 75c is where it starts throttling, I think the 65nm chips could go higher but the 45nm is meant to stay below 75c. Max temp is listed at 71c. You need to work out your cooling.

 

[sticks435]

I just ordered one too. I have an Arctic Cooling AC7 Freezer pro, so I'll let ya know what my temps are.

 

[California Roll]

Your temps definitely seem kind of high. What is the vid on your cpu?

My vid is 1.18v. At stock speed, idle was around low 30s. At 3.8ghz I'm idling around 38-42C. Load is mid 50s.

 

[Schmide]

I'm only at 3.4ghz, haven't felt the need to push it past stock voltage. It idles at 32-39c (one core is 39 the rest <34) and loads 44-48c (occt) (ironically the 39 idle core only goes to 44c during load). I am watercooled BTW.

 

[crumbaker]

it's a great cpu for sure. Gave mine a slight bump in voltage and have been very happy at 3.6ghz and a $50 gigabyte g31 mobo

 

[sticks435]

Ok, got everything installed and ran OCCT for an hour. Core 0 is around 55c at load, while the other 3 cores are around 47-50. Note that I am only using Arctic Silver 3. Here are the logs if anyone is interested. I don't have core 4, as I wasn't paying attention and set it to GPU.

http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff9/sticks435/2009-11-14-20h48-CPU1.png

http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff9/sticks435/2009-11-14-20h48-CPU2.png

http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff9/sticks435/2009-11-14-20h48-CPU3.png

 

[videogames101]

Thats about what I get at 3.6 for temps, on my Q9550.

 

[sticks435]

So I'm guessing those are kinda high for stock then? I wonder if its due to my HSF, or the thermal compound? Idle temps are 38/30/30/35 with speedstep on.

 

[arcenite]

Core temps don't tell the whole story.... What's the CPU temp?