quattro04

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I've been holding on upgrading for months now. I'm thinking of upgrading to i5 as soon as it's released. The problem is how will it compare to a high-end quad like the q9550.

If I chose the q9550 i'll be spending about $270-280.
If I chose i5 maybe about $400-500. (proc, mobo and ddr3 ram)

Since i5 has Hyper-Threading, a dual core i5 can perform on par or even outperform with a q9550 depending on clockspeeds. Also, I read somewhere in the forums that ddr3 shows minimal or no gains over ddr2, and since ddr3 is still overpriced, i'm now having second thoughts on the i5.

What do you guys think?

early i5 benchmarks: http://www.hardware.info/en-US/news/ymiclJqawpiacJY/Intel_Core_i5_mainstream_Nehalem_benchmarks/

q9550 benchmarks: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=163625
 
If you hold off waiting for the next best thing, you will wait forever.

If you need a quad today of the Q9550 class, then the current i7-920 needs to be considered. The price delta for a cpu/ram/mobo is about $150, and it has been dropping.
The i7 is faster, clock for clock, overclocks well, and has hyperthreading.

If your interest is in gaming, get a strong vga card and a E8500.

A highly clocked duo will suit most people very well. If there were a highly clocked duo(like 4.0) coming with hyperthreading, then that is what I would get. But I have not seen that in the leaked roadmaps.

I see value quads,32nm parts with integrated graphics, and 6 core i7. So, I am disappointed.
 

quattro04

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I know where you're getting at but i7 is out of the question. Where I live, i7 still costs about $1000 :ouch: , and I don't see prices going down in the near future. So that just leaves the q95 or the i5.

The reason i'm still thinking of the q95 even though its a dead socket is its comparison against the i5. In the benchmarks i've posted, I can see minimal increase with the i5 compared to the q95. Also, I think intel won't be releasing any i5 chips that will "blow away" the q95 in terms of performance.

By the way, I mostly use my pc on web developing, photo editing, some video editing and light gaming.
 

dragonsprayer

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lol! i5?

you got one? send me one! i give you an i7 for it!

q9550 at 3.8 is a killer set up

the 920 running the same speed is better - the price differnce depends on the the other parts.


if you have 4 x 1TB drive typical in what we build and dual gpu's or 295 or 4870x2 the price differnce is small go i7


if you have a single drive and a mid leve gpu then the 9550 is fine

 

quattro04

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LOL! I already mentioned that i7 is still outside my budget. I live outside the US and hardware prices here are overpriced.

I made a big mistake not reading the whole article about the i5. The engineering sample was clocked at 2.13 and it is near the q95's performance. Think i'll be waiting for the i5 afterall.