Q9650 Vs OC Q6600 Vs QX6700

[Ibreakthings]

Since i have the Q6600 on my board OC @3.00 (my fsb is locked at 333) i was wondering if it is worth the upgrade to get the Q9650 and run it at stock speed or get the QX6700 and OC it to 3.6GHz?

 

[Deleted member 217926]

The only way upgrading a Core2 system would be worth the time is if you got the new chip almost free. It's really not worth paying much even to go from a Q6600 to a Q9650. The 9650 will obviously be faster but compared to a new i3 or even low end i5 it's hard to justify spending money on. In other words save your money and buy a new motherboard, CPU and RAM.

 

[photonboy]

Here's how those CPU's stack up compared to modern:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Quad+Q9650+%40+3.00GHz

The charts are a bit misleading since the TURBO clocks aren't shown, but let's compare SINGLE THREAD of an i5-4690K vs Q9650 since both have four cores and no HT:

Q9650: 1266
i5-4690K: 2247

*So you don't actually state whether this is for gaming, however it's very unlikely there's a scenario where this makes much sense. You'd have a severe CPU bottleneck with any half decent GPU.

In fact, you can get an i3-4170 plus H97 board for a reasonable price that get similar performance in most games to an i5/i7 setup (with half decent graphics card).

 

[MU_Engineer]

Since i have the Q6600 on my board OC @3.00 (my fsb is locked at 333) i was wondering if it is worth the upgrade to get the Q9650 and run it at stock speed or get the QX6700 and OC it to 3.6GHz?

Here's what your options are:

1. B3 stepping QX6700- runs about $40 on eBay. You might get a few hundred more MHz than your 3.00 GHz Q6600, maybe not as the B3s were not nearly as good of overclockers as the G0 stepping units- which your Q6600 probably is.

2. B3 or G0 stepping QX6800- about $80 on eBay. The SLACP S-spec G0 stepping QX6800 will be a much better overclocker than the B3-stepping SL9UK unit, and they are about the same price.

3. G0 stepping QX6850- about $80 on eBay. This has a stock 333 MHz FSB clock but it has an unlocked multiplier so you can overclock it beyond its stock 3.00 GHz.

4. Q9650- about $80 on eBay. This will be a few percent faster than a 3.00 GHz Q6600, but personally I wouldn't pay $80 for one.

5. QX9770- about $400 on eBay. Forget about it.

6. You can also pin (err, land) mod a Xeon X5470 to work in an LGA775 board. That is a 333 MHz FSB clock 45 nm quad core unit that runs at 3.33 GHz and you can get them for under $30. There is a little sticker with a conductive trace on it that you stick to a certain set of lands on the LGA771 Xeon and it tells the board that it is an LGA775 CPU instead of an LGA771 unit, so it works in a regular LGA775 board. It's an old trick that I have heard work well and you can buy the premade stickers for $5 on eBay.

Personally I would either leave the system alone or try the last option with the modded Xeon X5470. Worst case, you're out $30. Best case, you have a stock-clocked chip that is about as fast as a 3.6 GHz Kentsfield.