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Which Quad?

Capt Caveman

Capt Caveman

Lifer
Finally going to make the move to a Quad. I can get the following at these prices(eBay with Live.com Cashback):

Q6600 - $123
Q8200 - $107
Q9300 - $153
Q9450 - $180
Q9550 - $201

I will mildly overclock to 3-3.2ghz.

How does having lower L2 cache for the Q8200 and Q9300 fare against the Q6600?

Does the larger L2 cache on the Q9450/Q9550 justify their higher price?

Outside of the Q6600, will I have a problem pairing this with an Abit IP35 Pro mobo?

Thanks for any advice/suggestions!
 
I bought a Q9550 for $300 maybe two months ago I think. Is it fast as heck? Yes. Is it worth nearly 2x the price of the Q6600? Probably not. It does run cooler than a Q6600 does though. Before this Q9550, I ran an E6300 overclocked to 2.8Ghz. Pretty noticeable improvement in some games and a very noticeable improvement in UT3.
 
if you're only going to 3-3.2 then you'll be ok with a 7.5 multi like in the 9300. If you already have decent ram then the 8200 will even be ok for you, especially at that price.
 
From those choices and for those prices, I'd go with the Q9550. Long term, it will pay for the difference in saved power and will produce less heat and less stress on your motherboard. Cache shows up in gaming and I saw somewhere, Office applications, especially Word and Excel, if you have anything that takes any time in either of those..
 
This is an easy one: Q9550. Q8200 and Q9300 overclock like crap (although 3.2 ghz is attainable with both ) and they have very low level 2 cache. Q6600 is a great cpu, with good overclocking abilities, but the high power consumption is a downside. Then the Q9450 is a very good choice, but why not spend another 21$ for his bigger brother, with that higher multiplier?
 
I am wondering how I can determine what kind of CPU I want to get for my desktop. I know it has to work with my motherboard but I am wondering how I tell which CPU is better I have checked out this site http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ and don?t get what makes one better than the other.

Should I be looking at the higher MHz to find the better one or should I look at the GHz to know?
Or is that the wrong thing to look at?
My motherboard works with LGA775 and I am running XP right now but I might have to update to Vista because I am going to be adding more ram aswell and I know that XP only supports 3 gigs of ram and I can hold 4.

Thanks
Uncle T

 
Check for cpu support for your board; you might have to do a bios update with the one you have now to support newer cpus. You'll want to do the update with your current cpu of course. What board and cpu do you have now and what do you use your computer for? That will determine which will work best for you. In general for the 775, you want higher GHz. Vista will see the sam RAM amount unless you go with 64 bit.
 
Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
Outside of the Q6600, will I have a problem pairing this with an Abit IP35 Pro mobo?
Click to expand...
I don't know about the IP35 Pro, but the IP35-E boards do not support the E0 stepping 45nm CPUs with BIOS 18 (according to a thread in the mobo forum).

So you want to check and try to get the OLDER stepping (C-something), if you go for the 45nm quads. Otherwise, go with the Q6600, it's a sure bet.

 
Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
Outside of the Q6600, will I have a problem pairing this with an Abit IP35 Pro mobo?
Click to expand...
I don't know about the IP35 Pro, but the IP35-E boards do not support the E0 stepping 45nm CPUs with BIOS 18 (according to a thread in the mobo forum).

So you want to check and try to get the OLDER stepping (C-something), if you go for the 45nm quads. Otherwise, go with the Q6600, it's a sure bet.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. It made me do some research and I did find someone that has a Q9550 E0 working on an IP35 Pro. Link
 
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