What Quad to get Q9400 or Q9650??

Hiya peeps. Hoping you could help me with this poser.

Trying to give my ageing 775 socket PC a final good run, by upgrading it to the best quad cpu I can put in it.
But the price of these things are abit shocking...

Do I get the Q9400 2.66Ghz for a reasonable £150 Or do I give it the best of the best and get the Q9650 3.0Ghz for £250??
While I like the best of the best, the price is really out of my range. But like all things, if you want them enough your find a way.

I just need to know, if its really worth it. What will I get for that extra .34Ghz? How much added FPS will this give me in games?

Oh, GPU Im using is - ATI 4870 (1gig mem)

Thank you for you input of knowledge :)

Well although I couldn't give you numbers right now off the top of my head, my Q9550 running at 2.83GHz and a 4850 have run all the games I've thrown at it pretty smoothly. And given the temps I suspect I have o/c headroom. Why not get the Q9400 and see if you can o/c it to 3Ghz thus saving you £100?

Yup, take the cheaper Q9400 and overclock the darn thing :)

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Originally Posted by Queelis

Yup, take the cheaper Q9400 and overclock the darn thing :)

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+1, simply upping the FSB to 400 (for 3.2GHz) should give a nice balance of overclock, stability and low power.

But aint it true that overclocked cpu running at 3.ghz aint as good as a normal cup runing at 3.ghz?

But other than that, what am I really gonna get for that little bit extra? = just trying to see what if its worth the extra money?

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Originally Posted by colinloves

But aint it true that overclocked cpu running at 3.ghz aint as good as a normal cup runing at 3.ghz?

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No.



Not unless the 'normal' cpu has more cache.

if it was me id ditch the 775 setup, dont get me wrong the chips are good but either spend a hundred quid more for an i7 setup or just get an am2+ board and buy a x6 chip for similar money. Means you can keep your ram and stuff then and sell off your old parts :).

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Originally Posted by nibbler

Not unless the 'normal' cpu has more cache.

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Thats a good point. In the past, I know cache got to sizes that just was never gonna get used. Is this still the case?
Do you get a benefit from the Q9650's 12mb L2, compaired to the 6mb L2 on the Q6400??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by colinloves

Thats a good point. In the past, I know cache got to sizes that just was never gonna get used. Is this still the case?
Do you get a benefit from the Q9650's 12mb L2, compaired to the 6mb L2 on the Q6400??

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I doubt you would get more than 5% more performance with the full cache. It just doesn't have that much of an effect.

I would have a look on Ebay, have watched several Q9550`s and they seem to be going for between £120 and £140, these are used but as long as you buy from someone with good feedback then i consider the risk being fairly low.

Thanksguys- I didnt see the Q9550 - price seems right to me. Im on searching for a good deal now....

Once again, Cheers :)

For an even cheaper upgrade and probably a more suitable one, you could also upgrade to a second hand Q6600, if you don't do any media encoding or converting, then you will see no real world difference between this and the more expensive ones. It's easy to overclock too!