Q9650 worth £160?

[*Rage*]

Is it worth it? Time limited offer!

 

Will no doubt overclock better than my e6850 (P5KC, corsair dominator 1066, titan fenrir, GTX 260) and will help future proof me until the next gen of AMD/Intel chips are out. Not keen on jumping ship to i5/i7.

 

I heard that BOB SOW will support quadcore and hopefully DCS at some point (though 64 bit exe will be first).

 

Thx

[hitman]

oh yeah, if you can get it that cheap, have at it. if thats the cousin to q6600, itll be even more badass. the q6600 is a great chip, the q9xx series are even better.

[Pilotasso]

I have one Q9550, its not the fastest chip out there anymore, so I would analyse very carefully what are the options you have. If you can go i5/i7, you should do it as they are 10-30% faster (depending on application) and overclock better. Having said this the C2Q chip is fast enough for now. Mine is at 3.4Ghz (you should be able to clock a Q9650 to similar speeds on air, not much higher) and is almost as fast as entry level i7's.

 

So those who already have one Q9550 or Q9650 should stay put, but those who are going to buy have a rather tough choice to make. There is not much future proof in a C2Q (its what? 3 years old now?), its good enough now, but I will probably upgrade to a new rig next year.

Edited March 14, 2010 by Pilotasso

[*Rage*]

I see what youre saying but the outlay is too much for only a 20% clock for clock speed bump. I would need new ram/mobo/heatsink etc.

 

besides I would rather spend the money on a new Hotas and other real life priorities.

[hitman]

if he goes i7 hell have to upgrade everything.

[Pilotasso]

well if buying the CPu is the only option then yes, I dont see a reason not to buy the Q9650

[EtherealN]

Agreed with Pilo. There's better options, but if you have a 775 chipset and a good deal, and don't intent a chipset upgrade in the near future it's a good option for a simple drop-in upgrade.

[emenance]

I agree too. 3.0 ghz is really doing ok or yeah you can go up to 3.4. Just make sure you have a good backup of your system if the overclock dumps on ya or something. I am on one of the best builds in my life of 15 years of computer building and not looking forward to tearing down a 2.3 year system for an i5 or i7. I was playing around with mass efect 2 a game that uses all 4 cores and could never get over 56% usage on the cpu. all 4 cores at 56%. We really need better software to take advantage of the new hardware tech for me to justify. The new year will be a tough decision to upgrade or stay put.