E6700 to QX9650 Upgrade Advice

[rickshobbies]

Greetings, all

My system currently runs an Intel E6700 on an Intel Badaxe (first iteration) and 4GB of DDR2 RAM.

I am considering taking the plunge and upgrading to an Intel X38 motherboard, a QX9650 and 4GB of DDR3 RAM.

I've looked around for speed comparisons between these two and I can't find anything that compares the QX9650 to my processor. Can anyone comment on how much of a speed improvement I might get out of this upgrade? I'm not much for overclocking, so I will be running everything at the stock speeds.

I use the system for gaming and for processing large photo and video files. The video card it will be using is a 9800GX2.

Regards,

R

 

[JAG87]

Originally posted by: rickshobbies
Greetings, all

My system currently runs an Intel E6700 on an Intel Badaxe (first iteration) and 4GB of DDR2 RAM.

I am considering taking the plunge and upgrading to an Intel X38 motherboard, a QX9650 and 4GB of DDR3 RAM.

I've looked around for speed comparisons between these two and I can't find anything that compares the QX9650 to my processor. Can anyone comment on how much of a speed improvement I might get out of this upgrade? I'm not much for overclocking, so I will be running everything at the stock speeds.

I use the system for gaming and for processing large photo and video files. The video card it will be using is a 9800GX2.

Regards,

R

If the applications you use for those tasks are multi threaded, the improvement will be huge. However since you are not going to over clock, I cannot sit here and watch you spend a thousand dollars on a processor, when a $316 Q9450 would give you nearly the same performance. Don't bother with the QX9650 unless you are willing to put the unlocked multiplier to good use.


And don't bother with DDR3, the improvement over 4GB of good DDR2 ram is non existent and its 5-6x more expensive.

 

[Foxery]

Agreed 100%. Also, unless you plan to do a lot of heavy gaming, save another dollar on video cards; the 9800 is a gaming product, and will not affect your photo/video editting.

 

[rickshobbies]

I do a fair amount of gaming. Crysis and Bioshock at the moment, along with Lord of the Rings Online. So I want to make sure that I would see some improvement there as well. I use a Dell 24" flat panel so my gaming is at 1920x1200 and I tend to use AA and AF.

I thought about just going to a quad core of the same clock, but it seems like I wouldn't see any real performance increases on the gaming side that way.

 

[JAG87]

going from 2.66 to 3 ghz makes such a puny difference, yet you will pay 3x as much.

the only reason to upgrade the processor here is for your video/picture processing.

 

[secretanchitman]

no way....Q9450 is your best bet. dont waste $1000, cause you WONT see 3x improvement.

 

[rickshobbies]

So, since the Q9450 has the same core clock freq as the E6700, I would imagine that the gaming perfmance would be about the same, right? I wouldn't see any improvements in gaming, but I would in the photo and video processing because of the extra cores I would imagine.

 

[JAG87]

No, the Q9450 is a Penryn, and its roughly 5-6% faster clock/clock

 

[Shortass]

Pretty much correct, there are slight improvements so clock for clock the Q9450 should be faster per core, and THEN you get the extra 2 cores to help with multiple threads, etc. Nothing staggering, but a difference. Of course with the 45nm process, power consumption is improved over the prior quad cores by a substantial amount, creating less heat and increasing overclocking headroom. In the least, you could easily OC it to 3.2ghz and get the extra $1000 in performance for free.