Hi, I am thinking of upgrading my CPU, I currently have a Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 and am thinking of upgrading to a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550. Would this upgrade provide a significant improvement to the speed of the PC? Would the Q9550 run cooler or at a similar temp to the E6600. Thanks for any advice
It would be a significant improvement in CPU heavy tasks, but without knowing what motherboard you have, it's unknown if you can upgrade to a Q9550. Here's a link to intel's page: Q9550 Definately check that your motherboard/chipset supports it before buying it. The maximum TDP is 95W, higher than your E6600 (65W), and the temperatures are higher, but intel's stock coolers are completely adequate at cooling them, providing you don't overclock it.
the question is, what do you use your computer for. That will help us determine whether the upgrade is really worth it.
yes i'd say its worth the upgrade as you're using fairly cpu heavy software, a Q9xxx isnt going to be cooler than the e6600 though it'll probably run at a similar temperature or just above. the thing is although the Q9's are 45nm ( and the e6's are 65nm) chips its still a quad core and is basically using two dual core dies on one piece of silicon, more cores = more heat
I vote go for the quad-core. With desktop apps you should see significant improvement And the heat shouldn't be too much of an issue, the quad will come with a heatsink/fan that will be suitable for it's stock frequencies. And being 45nm, should stay fairly cool anyway.
All I can say my E6600 @ 3.6GHz is pretty much up to anything I can throw at it. But if you don't want to overclock and use PS/CAD, go for the Quad, agreed with the rest here.
You know, not to say that throwing in newer hardware doesn't fix everything, but have you tried some of the performance tweaks to vista, such as disabling a few items on the performance tab, stuff like that? I know it's not going to be a huge improvement, but it'll definitely speed things up a bit. If you'd like, I can get you a list of items you can leave enabled, and items you can disable in the performance tab that will give you a little boost.
nVidia chipset = cant. It's too bad but I don't really care. This thing is still stupidly fast. I tested my cousin's GTX260 last week end and woooowwww can't wait for MY video card to arrive
