Upgrade from Q9650....

[spathotan]

Currently using a q9650, I love it but I'm looking an alternative . Chip eats a ton of power and puts off mad heat since I have it oced. I was looking at the i5 760, but I've been out of the CPU game for so long......

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I don't think you'll cut down too much on the power draw. what are you currently pulling with your overclock and how high is it?

 

[OCGuy]

I think the TDP is 95W for both?

What are you basing your heat/power data on?

Drop your OC back a little if you want to cut down on the heat/power. But that isnt much of an upgrade for everyday computing if you decide to go to i5.

 

[spathotan]

3.6ghz, vcore is around 1.35. Stock vcore is 1.25. No clue what the wattage pull of it is, but I can imagine its close to 200W considering the stock is 95W

 

[bryanW1995]

you're not going to get less heat output for similar power unless you go for a gulftown or, even better, wait for sandy bridge. gulftown you could probably run around 2.8-3.0 and try to undervolt it, but you'd need an entire platform upgrade to save a little bit of heat. do you need that much oc on your cpu or can you slow it down a bit? maybe you could go for running the 9650 at stock speed and seeing how low you can drop the voltages; I'll bet you could get down to 1.0-1.1v. that would probably cut your heat output in half and still give you nice performance.

What video card do you run? my gtx 260 puts off as much heat as my i7 920.

 

[spathotan]

I think the TDP is 95W for both?

What are you basing your heat/power data on?

Drop your OC back a little if you want to cut down on the heat/power. But that isnt much of an upgrade for everyday computing if you decide to go to i5.

So for the most part youre saying going from this to i5 is a waste, linear "upgrade".

I love my Q9650, its been great to me for the past year and 4 months. But I was just looking for something more....efficient without losing performance.

 

[spathotan]

you're not going to get less heat output for similar power unless you go for a gulftown or, even better, wait for sandy bridge. gulftown you could probably run around 2.8-3.0 and try to undervolt it, but you'd need an entire platform upgrade to save a little bit of heat. do you need that much oc on your cpu or can you slow it down a bit? maybe you could go for running the 9650 at stock speed and seeing how low you can drop the voltages; I'll bet you could get down to 1.0-1.1v. that would probably cut your heat output in half and still give you nice performance.

What video card do you run? my gtx 260 puts off as much heat as my i7 920.

Yes, I dont need the 3.6ghz. Infact ive already downclocked it to stock since my last post. My video card is a GTX 285, I could cook pizzas on it if it had enough room.....51c at idle with 70% fanspeed. Basically my PC is a hotbox, warms the entire room. If a CPU change proves to be linear (as its looking), a video card change would be my next option.

Specs are actually in my Sig......although outdated other than the CPU, GPU and PSU. No longer using that ASUS board and this Gigabyte board cant even get it to 3.8ghz.

 

[evolucion8]

You have a nice processor, if you complain about the Q9650 heat dissipation, you gotta see how much heat the QX6850 can dissipate at same overclocked speed, it used to warm my whole room in less than 10 minutes, moving to your same CPU cut the heat dissipation in half running even at higher speeds. (QX6850 ran at 3.60GHz and my Q9650 ran at 3.82GHz)

An i7 920 runs as fast as the Q9650 mildly overclocked to 3.20GHz, so moving to an i5 even when overclocked will be a sidegrade or a minor upgrade with the same heat dissipation. Current Nehalem/Lynnfield architecture uses lots of power when loaded, so unless if you go to a power efficient Intel CPU or an AMD 45W Quad Core, your processor is the best you can get for now until a new architecture arrives (Sandy Bridge or Bulldozer)

 

[OCGuy]

Why do you idle the 285 at 51C/70% fan? I would trade a lower fan speed for higher idle.

It should be downclocking to ~300 core while not in 3D apps...

 

[spathotan]

Why do you idle the 285 at 51C/70% fan? I would trade a lower fan speed for higher idle.

It should be downclocking to ~300 core while not in 3D apps...

The automatic fan control has never worked correctly, so I keep it at 70, and even then it can touch 88c under load.

Thanks for the input everybody, looks like ill just be sticking with this CPU.

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, gpu is definitely the problem here. check for an updated bios.

 

[edplayer]

3.6ghz, vcore is around 1.35. Stock vcore is 1.25. No clue what the wattage pull of it is, but I can imagine its close to 200W considering the stock is 95W

200W sounds very unlikely at 3.6GHz even at 1.35V


Here is the best Yorkfield overclocking article I have seen:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2404


My Q9550 also has a 1.25V VID which from the little I know about them, is close to the high end. I am able to keep mine at 3.2GHz with 1.15V. Haven't really tried to go higher and I did try 1.10V at 3.2GHz but it wasn't stable.

 

[Majic 7]

I just installed a Q9550 this week and did my first real overclock on it, not windows overclock. Bios 1.1875v, windows 1.16v, vdroop 1.13v to 1.14v, at 3.53 MHz. According to Everest the CPU pulls around 16w idling and surfing. It pulls 64w to 72w doing a Prime95 small fft test. Not sure how accurate Everest is.

 

[evolucion8]

Nice, I wonder why I don't see many Q9550 beyond 3.6GHz stable, running at 3.5GHz with such low voltlages is great. I had to ramp up mine up to 1.23V to make it stable.

 

[Majic 7]

The C1 9550s had trouble getting over 3.8, some did, some didn't. After a few bios updates it got a little better but I think a lot of overclockers moved on to 9650's or the i series. I read a lot of forum posts from 2008 that had newer stuff in their sigs. This EO should hit 4 pretty easy but I was so happy to be stable on the first shot that I will leave it for a while. Maybe able to lower voltages some more. Running IntelBurn the cpuv drooped down to 1.1 and it is still stable. Vid stock is 1.1 to 1.875, for EIST.