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Upgrade or leave it alone? (Q9550)

T

Triglet

Senior member
My current rig is in my sig. It's been a beast, but she's getting long in the tooth. I was initially holding out on the socket 2011 platform but now it seems like those aren't going to be worth it. If I upgraded it would be something like the following -- pretty much what everyone else does:

2500k $220
Asrock Z68 pro3 $105 or equivalent
8GB G.Skill $42

I figure after I purchase the above and sell what I have, it's not going to cost me a significant amount at the end of the day. The other thing I'd like to get away from is not being able to do SLI on this board, makes upgrade paths difficult.

I primarily use this for gaming at 1920x1200. Worth the hassle or leave it alone?
 
Your current system isn't slow. I think you'd be able to hold out until Spring or Summer of next year. At the very least that would open up your options and drop prices on the current crop over gear.
 
Nah, leave it as-is. A C2Q Q9550 at 4GHz is about the same speed as a Sandy Bridge i5 at 3GHz. Not much reason to upgrade as long as you're not getting another GTX 480 for SLI.
 
Can't do SLI on this board unfortunately -- Crossfire only (I guess hacked drivers are available but meh). If I want more graphics power I'd most likely trade the 480 for a couple of 6950's. Thoughts on my rig running those in crossfire?

Appreciate everyone's response -- you guy's are saving me money!
 
Triglet said:
Can't do SLI on this board unfortunately -- Crossfire only (I guess hacked drivers are available but meh). If I want more graphics power I'd most likely trade the 480 for a couple of 6950's. Thoughts on my rig running those in crossfire?

Appreciate everyone's response -- you guy's are saving me money!
Click to expand...

I'd be kinda doubtful about being able to trade in a GTX 480 for two HD 6950s, but yes, a Q9550 at 4GHz should push them with only a small amount of bottlenecking. It's still a powerful CPU, equivalent to a Phenom II X4 at 4.3GHz or so.
 
What games do you play that require that much gpu power at 1920x1200? Grab an SSD if you haven't yet. And if I were you, I'd wait 2-3 months to see how the new GPUs do.
 
LOL_Wut_Axel said:
Nah, leave it as-is. A C2Q Q9550 at 4GHz is about the same speed as a Sandy Bridge i5 at 3GHz. Not much reason to upgrade as long as you're not getting another GTX 480 for SLI.
Click to expand...



http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/48?vs=363

You can see with a 3% clock advantage Yorkfield is less than 30% behind a 4-threaded sandy bridge in AVX-supported tests, and closer to 15% behind in generally representative well-threaded tests. In game tests this difference comes closer to even 10%, so if you want to make a sweeping exaggeration about a 4 GHz yorkfield as a gaming machine just saying I would put it closer to a 3.6 GHz i5, not 3.0 GHz. I agree with you we are close enough to the new nodes that the OP should wait for 28nm for his GPU upgrade and 22nm for his CPU upgrade.
 
Last edited:
Thanks all, you "scratched" my itch for the time being. I mainly play the BF games, and want 60 FPS minimum if I can get it, so for the time being I'll just dial the settings back until new parts come out.

Thanks again everyone,
Trig
 
If you want 60 FPS minimum in BF3 with all the effects maxed, you're going to need a lot more GPU horsepower before you need a new CPU.

Battlefield-3-Beta-GPUs-MGPU-OC.png
 
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