Q6600 vs. Q9550

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Oct 18, 2008
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Hey folks, been reading these forums for years but this is the first time I have posted.

I just got done upgrading my rig and I have a couple of questions, let me start by listing my stats.

750i EVGA mobo

Q6600 cpu (stable at 3.0)

G-skill 4Gb ram (2 x 2gig sticks)

Antec 850 watt psu

EVGA GTX 280 gfx

Zalman 9500a cpu cooler

Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit os


Now so far I am extremely happy with this build, plays any game I throw at it in max res with max settings at respectable fps rates (I won't bore you guys with benchmarks since you probably know them already). But I was reading around and apparently with this setup, and this cpu, if I ever wanted to upgrade to a second vid card I would experience a severe bottleneck with my cpu. My idea is to upgrade my cpu to a Q9550 and sell my Q6600 to a friend of mine for $100 dollars to offset the cost. My question is do you think this is even worth doing? Will this leave me room to add a second GTX 280 for a performance boost in the future? Or would my bottleneck still be at the cpu even with the new chip? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
 
An alternate scenario if you will...

Wait until the end of next year or so, by then:
Intel will have done its die shrink on Core i7
We'll probably be staring into the maw of new GPUs from nVidia and ATI.
AMD will have solidified their PII offerings and will be desperate for money.

Either way, the prices of everything will be much lower. Sell your mainboard/CPU/RAM to some rube and upgrade to some fatty setup.
 
#1 - Never Upgrade Until you need it.
#2 - Your CPU should still have another easy 400 Mhz in it and perhaps 600-800 if you really push it. Also, your Mobo likely will not be able to push the Q9550 very far. You would need a higher-end Mobo to hit the FSB required to a strong OC. (Quads are tougher to hit high FSB speeds with
#3 - A Second 280GPU may actually SLOW DOWN your gaming. The reason is that a second card will change your set your PCIE slots to 8x from 16x to enable both cards. If a game does not have excellent SLI scaling you could actually see a reduction in performnace.

 
If you can afford putting in a Q9550 instead then go for it.
Personally i think the rig is fine as it is, its just about what you would be comfortable spending on it.
 
x16 Dual Channel*

"The nForce 750i SLI is quite literally a tweaked version of the nForce 650i SLI, but with now official support for 1,333MHz FSB Intel CPUs and the nForce 200 chip bolted onto it. This gives two PCI-Express 2.0 lanes that are either one x16 or a pair of x16's for SLI. According to the image above it does say x16/x8, however EVGA confirmed that it was in fact dual x16 instead."

from Bit-Techs review of the board.
 
That is a nice setup. If your happy with it dont worry about it, until you are having trouble playing games you have. IMHO, the q6600 can handle the 2 cards. Your good until the prices drop.

The q9550's extra cache will help. Plus the q9550 will use less power and run cooler. If i had the money i would get the q9550.

squatchman is right about the prices. Wait until the phenom II comes out and check prices.
 
If your playing everything on max, don't upgrade. You'll always hit bottlenecks, just depends at what fps you'll hit them at. Why upgrade to go from say 90fps, to 120fps? If your quad was having trouble and you were running below 30fps, then i'd say upgrade, but i doubt thats the case so there's really no need.

If you have your heart set on getting it though, wait for the phenom 2, with a bit of luck prices will be go down
 
Thank you all for your advice. I am looking for something a little future proof. I was mainly concerned with the thought that if I ever did add a second card I would not experience the full potential with a 6600 vs 9550. If the popular vote is that a 6600 would do just as well in SLi with a GTX 280 as a 9550 would then I will go with that.
 

If you have a Q6600 than keep it until next year when Intel have 32nm CPU's at an affordable price.
 
Sorry to bring this back up...
I have an Gigabyte X38T MOBO with an OC'ed Q6600 running at about 3.2 GHZ.

I've got some great hardware, or it was great for the price 8800GT, some nice DDR3, great coolermaster case etc... Running Crysis, and NFS games, Fallout 3 and Quake Territory games are often decent at 1280X1024 (my max resolution [flat screen limitation] ) However it does suffer at times, dropping the frame rate.

So is it my 8800GT? Or is it my Q6600?

My question is, what is the best CPU I can buy for my LGA775 socketed X38T MOBO?
Help please.
 
I have a Q6600 and a Q9550. Assuming they are both OC'd to the same point, the Q9550 is a little faster processing video, but other than that, the performance is virtually indistinguishable from the Q6600.

If you are primarily gaming, kept the Q6600.

Do not worry about future proofing. I would be surprised if Intel introduces any Core2's in 32 nm.
 
I just replaced my Q6600 with the Q9550 on my Asus P5Q Pro Turbo motherboard running Vista x64 Home Premium with 8 gigs of G-Skill PC8500. I was overclocking the Q6600 as far as the stock heatsink would let me go and not overheat in games @2.84 GHz; with an XFX Radeon 4890 video card I could run all my games at max settings with 4xAA and 16x antistropic filtering at 1920 x1200 (except for Crysis which had stuttering with or without filtering at that resolution).

With the new Q9550 running stock frequency I was getting virtually the same performance (3dMark06 showed about a 400 point gain). I installed the Q9550 with a new Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro heatsink which runs 34C idle and 68C under Prime95 torture test using small FTPs @3.4 GHz. When gaming the cpu temps never reach 50C (the Q6600 would get to about 60C). It is not a fair comparison since the Q6600 was on stock cooling but it is a comparison. With the Q9550 @3.4GHz I have not observed a stutter at max setting 1920 x 1200 resolution in Crysis. I am a racing game fanatic so the games I run most are IRacing, rFactor, GTR2 and Nascar Racing 2003; I get higher frame rates with the Q9550 in all these games but they all ran great using the Q6600.

I spent $193 on the new CPU and heatsink after selling mu Q6600 to a friend for $50. Is it worth $193 to be able to run Crysis without a stutter? No! It was worth the money to me cause I wanted the 9550 and it meets my expectations.

P.S. I could not get my G-Skill ram to run at 1066 with all 8 gigs installed with the Q6600 but it runs without a hitch at 1066 using the Q9550. I have no idea why the processor would have any affect on that.
 
i also have a q6600 g0 at 3.2 (400x8) and was wondering the same thing..

basically, i've invested some money on my rig and now that i7's and i5's are out, lga 775 is on its way out.. which is kind of a bummer for me..

i have a q6600/4850 crossfire set up (on a x38 mobo) .. i play cod world at war at max settings and it's not as smooth as i hoped it would be.. you guys think the 9550 will change that? or is it just the video cards not being able to handle it at 1920x1080 resolutions?

 
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