is a q6600 to a qx9650 upgrade ok my 6600 is running at 3 gig a qx9650 are about £160 on ebay comp used for games + internet + videos + photo edit. a upgrade to i7 is to much or i5 is to much?
What stepping is your Q6600? Most will do 3.2-3.6 under a decent hsf. Id save my £160 toward a nextgen build personally.
What are the rest of your PC specs? What games do you play? You'll likely get a bigger performance boost by upgrading your graphics card or something, I can't really tell you anything without knowing more.
stepping is Go. i have ran it @ 3.2 but the temps were in the 50s under full load. is that high. win vista pro 4 gig ram (1066) ati 5770 with 1gig ram bio star t power i45 artic 7pro i did want to upgrade the whole thing just yet. intel keep changing the sockets I mainly use the pc for games (ruse.cod4), films, some photo edits. I was thinking of a ssd drive and putting windows 7 on it thnaks
I went from a q6600 to a qx9650. I notice quite a difference between the 2 at 3ghz. Anyhow, I managed a 4.5ghz OC with my QX9650, which was only stable enough to run 3dmark06 and gave me the results before BSOD. Anyway, my QX9650 ran over 2yrs @4ghz stable 24/7. Now going from a QX9650 to a i7 930 . There was a big differences. 4ghz QX9650 was still beaten by my i7 @ stock speed. The choice is yours. I would save my penny's for the X68 and Sandy bridge, which is due next year. Simon.
If you want to buy something, get an SSD. That's something you can then move to the next build, whereas the QX9650 would count as beating a dead horse.
If you're struggling with games then anoth option would be to add another 5770 in crossfire (pretty sure your board supports it). It's probably be the best upgrade gaming-wise for just over £100.
A 60GB Vertex 2 at £100 would dramatically improve the responsiveness of your system. If it's games your specifically interested in, a Gigabyte 1GB 460 GTX would give you a tidy boost
Agreed - the improvement won't be worth it, especially it it's still close to it's £700+ RRP. Even the locked Q9650 won't be worth it - I'm happy with mine, but I went from a much lower starting point with an E2160. I doubt youu'd notice any significant improvement. Considering the cost of the unlocked QX9650, save the cash for an X58/ i7 930 which will be £200 less and way faster or better yet, wait for Sandy Bridge
Must be better to sell up and put the money towards your i5 or i7 mobo, CPU & Ram bundle. The Q66 has held it's price well and wont go down much more, but a QX9650 will still have value to loose.
thanks all there are qx9650 unlocked on ebay for £170. would you buy at that price. just thinking my pc would last a few more years. got some thinkin to do cheers
Save your money and wait for a new rig. Buy a SSD for now, I'm sur you'll be WTF because its always snapy
I personally disagree with dumping a whole PC off and spending £500 to go to Core i5/i7. However as CPU doesn't make a huge difference to gaming I would agree with everyone telling you to save your money instead of getting the QX9650. You'd be better spending £160 on a graphics card if that's your primary concern, or if you want to see the speed increase for your spend, grab an SSD for your boot drive. I personally a couple of months ago upgraded from an E6850 (dual core) to a QX9550 for £120 and I'm not planning to have a Core i-based system until this one goes bang, which I hope it never does. I've got SATA2 and PCI-e 2.0 support, so I should be good for several generations of SSD and graphics card, which is where I will really see the money I spend, for now.
I'm very much in this boat too and have to agree that slightly upgrading a 775 chip isn't really worth the money. I considered it as have a E6400 but I feel I'd be better off buying a new graphics card (as my 4870 has died on me 2 months after going out of warranty) and an SSD. Going i5 or i7 would be expensive and also see me lose out on the money I spent on a top end motherboard at the time and 8GB of good RAM when I only game on my set-up.
50c with q6600 under load is fine, it can go up to 70c. so overclock that beast to 3.6GHz and save your money. your system is well balanced for gaming, nothing need changing at all.
