Q6600 > q9650

[davidcrofter]

As above, thinking of upgrading my system from a G0 Stepping Q6600 to a Q9650 that I can pick up for just short of £230.

Any opinions on if this sounds a decent upgrade as I have the Q6600 overclocked @3.1ghz - what could I expect to get from the upgraded chip on air??

The reason I really am upgrading is my Gigabyte Motherboard has trouble holding the overlock everytime I restart the computer it is a guess as to whether the overclock has stuck ... seems a problem with this particular board.

thanks
dc.

[merple]

Shouldn't you get a new mobo instead of upgrading the cpu then?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

As above, thinking of upgrading my system from a G0 Stepping Q6600 to a Q9650 that I can pick up for just short of £230.

Any opinions on if this sounds a decent upgrade as I have the Q6600 overclocked @3.1ghz - what could I expect to get from the upgraded chip on air??

The reason I really am upgrading is my Gigabyte Motherboard has trouble holding the overlock everytime I restart the computer it is a guess as to whether the overclock has stuck ... seems a problem with this particular board.

thanks
dc.

Perhaps your overclock is just unstable and needs tweaking?!

I assume that your CPU at stock speeds is fine??

Try upping the volts to the CPU and use 25 iterations of Intel Burn Test and 2 hours of OCCT blend to test for stability at a minimum.

Also upping the volts to the RAM and relaxing the timings may also help too. Don't use the SPD settings but use manual settings instead. Sometimes the motherboard will run the RAM at the wrong voltage settings and timings. Also make sure you have the proper divider setting as you maybe running your RAM at too high a speed.

Heat maybe another issue and I would check the temperatures of the CPU too.

If this all fails have you tried replacing the CMOS battery and updating the BIOS to the latest stable version??

Also what is your PSU model and rating?? A weak PSU may not be able to handle an overclocked Q6600.

I would get a replacement motherboard if this all fails.

[davidcrofter]

Hi Cat-The-Fifth.
Yes done all that mate, the overclock is solid but unfortunately when my machine is switched on and off and sometimes just restarted the overclock doesn't stick. Basically the settings that are set in the bios (memory timings and voltage, cpu volts and multi) are all taken except the CPU clock speed which runs @2.4ghz. PC boots as normal and doesn't reset or anything - only way around it is powering down and taking the battery out for a few minutes and rebooting.

Seems to be a pretty well documented problem with the Gigabyte P35C-DS3R boards as other people have the exact same problem.

Edit: also posted earlier about when I boot up with my 1TB WD My Book External Hard Drive attached the pc resets to default but in this instance the PC detects the hard drive and then restarts @ default setting ... It is just a CRAP board and has put me right off Gigabyte.

[jim]

I've heard about this problem before with Gigabyte boards, as you mentioned.

As Cat said have you flashed the BIOS? I seem to recall that those problems on some Gigabyte boards (not sure if it's yours particularly) were fixed by a BIOS update.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would go for a new motherboard personally.

[davidcrofter]

Yeah the latest official bios (seems to be a beta version but don't fancy trying that). It really is very poor that Gigabyte whilst offering plenty of features and a rock stable product cannot get the basics of remembering the overclocked setting ... I mean that is the sole purpose I bought this board to overclock.

Oh well might have to just make sure I don't restart the PC too often.!! Once I get this overclock to stick.

[dave87]

How much ram have you got? If it were me I'd get a new board and some more/better RAM.


I've got the DFI P35-T2RS based on the i35 chipset from intel. My Q6600 is at 3.1ghz and I have yet to find any need to push it any further

[sjbuck]

How will a new CPU fix this? A new motherboard is the obvious (and much cheaper choice)

Additionally : the Q6600 will perform at similar levels to the Q9650 once properly overclocked, I've had mine at 3.6Ghz for yonks, it'll run anything, to be honest it was fine at 3.2Ghz, but what the heck

[davidcrofter]

Well obviously a new CPU is not going to fix the problems with the dodgy Gigashyte Motherboard ... what I really should have said is I am removing my motherboard and replacing it with something else, I also plan to change my thermtaltake V1 heatsink while I am at it - so is it I good idea maybe at this point to upgrade the Q6600 to (what I thought was a bargain £220) Q9650??

Edit yeah I know the Q6600 will overclock to 3.4-3.6 but in doing so it means that all fans have to be set to full blast - which imho defeats the purpose of chasing that .2-.4 ghz. A9650 would do 3-6 - 3.8 quite easily I believe.

[MrMyst]

try to upgrade the bios, anyway you don't have much to loose.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Why don't you just get a new motherboard?? I would save the £220 towards a better upgrade like a Core i7,Core i5 or whatever AMD has down the line in a year or two. With the price of the processors,motherboards and DDR3 dropping it seems the logical choice.

TBH you can always run your Q6600 at 3.2ghz or so if you want to run it cooler. BTW an application which starts struggling with a Q6600 at these clockspeeds means that even a 3.6ghz Q6600 or Q9650 will not make much of a difference.

[TooNice]

I can't see how the Q9650 can justify a £230 price tag to be honest. What are you expecting out of a new CPU? You'll notice the difference for things like video encoding with applications where SSE4 is supported, but chances are, you won't notice the difference for most games/applications.

[rkingb]

I agree with all the others that you should replace the motherboard. I went through a similar situation recently, and after reading reviews on almost every site I could find on Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Biostar etc found that there is little to choose between any of them in terms of quality v overclocking v price performance.
Ended up buying MSI as I got a good deal!
With i7 or Phenom II now in the mainstream a Q9650 doesn't seem to make any sense as you'll still have the same bios problems.

[Lee H]

I've got the DFI P35-T2RS based on the i35 chipset from intel. My Q6600 is at 3.1ghz and I have yet to find any need to push it any further

I've found that the DFI IP35 and IP45 boards are fantastic and I can even get a good overclock out of the Q6600 on these boards without messing with the voltages

I keep saying I'm going to ramp my overclock down a bit as I hardly use the PC now as I've no web access so I can't play my games as often as I would like.

[Singh400]

As above, thinking of upgrading my system from a G0 Stepping Q6600 to a Q9650 that I can pick up for just short of £230.

Any opinions on if this sounds a decent upgrade as I have the Q6600 overclocked @3.1ghz - what could I expect to get from the upgraded chip on air??

The reason I really am upgrading is my Gigabyte Motherboard has trouble holding the overlock everytime I restart the computer it is a guess as to whether the overclock has stuck ... seems a problem with this particular board.

thanks
dc.

Q9650 will be uselss without a good board. I'd upgrade the board personally.

Also, your thread title reads Q6600 is greater than Q9560. I assume you meant Q9650 is greater than Q6600. I like to nit-pick