E8400 to Q9550 or wait for i7

[bpgt64]

Microcenter just put their Q9550 on sale for 160 bucks, I figure I could probably sell my E8400 for 80 bucks on the website...think its worth it?

 

[MoonPig]

I went from an E8600 @ 4GHz to a Q9550 @ 3.6GHz and it feels the same.

Everytime i've swapped high end CPUs, i've hardly noticed a difference.

It's up to you matey. I don't regret my upgrade, mainly because it hardly cost me, but i suppose it'll help in the future.

You might see a difference in benchmark results, but i personally think their pointless. I game alot and use Safari alot, plus watch HD movies etc, and i've noticed little to no difference.

 

[Yukikaze]

In general, I recommend against it. There is no real need to go from the E8400 to a Q9550, unless the upgrade is very, very cheap (Cheap is relative, if you don't mind the 80$, then sure, go for it), a lot of multitasking is required (3D rendering, format conversions, encoding/decoding and so on) or benchmarks scores are of interest.

 

[hat]

If you do a lot of heavy (and I mean heavy... heavy enough to warrant upgrading from 2 cores to 4) multitasking, or perhaps you have some apps that can use all 4 cores (encode video much? Perhaps you're a member of the WCG/F@H team and would like more threads to crunch moar?) and you feel it's worth it, go for it. BTW... I'm sure that E8400 would go for more than $80.

 

[Black Panther]

I have an E8400 in desktop and Q9450 in laptop - gamingwise they feel the same.

Personally I'd wait for i7

 

[Mussels]

unless you're doing video rendering, stay dual. they clock higher/easier anyway.

 

[hat]

Meh, if I already had a Core 2 setup, espically something capable of running at 4GHz 24/7 I wouldn't even bother with i7. If I were building a totally new rig I still probably wouldn't bother with i7 too much monies, too much heat, although 3GHz would probably be doable even on the stock cooler (no voltage increace)

 

[Yukikaze]

I have an E8400 in desktop and Q9450 in laptop - gamingwise they feel the same.

That's somewhat of an inverted setup there

I was thinking about buying a Clevo laptop about a year ago, then I decided the price tag was unjustifiable.

 

[alexp999]

It depends what games you play really, I have only one that i can see is using all my cores and thats GTA IV.

It also depends how much money you have and how often you plan to upgrade.

A Q9550 will obviously last longer in the gaming world as more games become properly multi-threaded and benefit from more cores. The PS3 and 360 are already ahead both with 6 logical processors for gaming, so multi-core/threads is definetly the way its going.

Just rem, it will only cost $80 for a Q9550 upgrade against a hell of a lot more to buy new CPU, mobo and RAM.

And IMO, with all our GPU bound games, that money is better spent getting the best DX11 card when games support it.

As i say depends on your own individual circumstances, if you can afford i7 and the best DX11 card and thats what you want, then you may as well wait.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

I've decided to keep my E8600,its a fine fine chip and with my 4870 blasts through all my games.Roll on I5

 

[Asylum]

I say stay with what you have unless you have the money and just want to try something different.
Ive had a E8400...2 different E8600...and a Q9650 and cant tell the difference between them except for bench marks.

 

[bpgt64]

It depends what games you play really, I have only one that i can see is using all my cores and thats GTA IV.

It also depends how much money you have and how often you plan to upgrade.

A Q9550 will obviously last longer in the gaming world as more games become properly multi-threaded and benefit from more cores. The PS3 and 360 are already ahead both with 6 logical processors for gaming, so multi-core/threads is definetly the way its going.

Just rem, it will only cost $80 for a Q9550 upgrade against a hell of a lot more to buy new CPU, mobo and RAM.

And IMO, with all our GPU bound games, that money is better spent getting the best DX11 card when games support it.

As i say depends on your own individual circumstances, if you can afford i7 and the best DX11 card and thats what you want, then you may as well wait.

been a while since I have seen the Q9550 series that cheap, but I guess the i7 920 at microcenter for 200 bucks is why.. More than likely I'll build a new machine at the end of the year, my wifes is getting kind of scketchy and I am not sure how much long it will last(going on 4 years AMD64 3700 1mb so bad ass at the time). So I am probobly going to rip apart my current rig and give here a 500g Seagate/4 gigs DDR2 1066/GTX260 216/E8400, take the good parts, my 4870 x2, SSD drives and move em into a new i7 based rig.

I just get itchy when I play GTA IV or some other game that is finally capable of using the extra CPU power...but outside of games I don't really do to much in the way of encoding or number crunching. I run my ps3 F@h most of the time however.

The cost of switching to an i7 based rig is really starting to come down to under 500 dollars...at least from the other components I have.

 

[hat]

What is your wife going to do with a gtx260?

 

[Binge]

Microcenter just put their Q9550 on sale for 160 bucks, I figure I could probably sell my E8400 for 80 bucks on the website...think its worth it?

at microcenter you can get an i7 for $199.99 it would be silly to get anything else

 

[bpgt64]

What is your wife going to do with a gtx260?

play WoW. She currently is rockin' a 8600GT so I am thinking something with a bit more kick would suit her just fine.

at microcenter you can get an i7 for $199.99 it would be silly to get anything else

Thats what I am thinking, however if I am going to go all the way, I am going to need either her computer to completely crash to justify it, or I need to wait till December.

 

[subhendu]

overclock e8400 to 4ghz and use it ....more than enough for any applications and games ......your system specs are superb

 

[douglatins]

Get a used i7 from the forums