i5 3750k vs Q9550

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one swell foop

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 16, 2004
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So, I'm still rocking my q9550. I skipped Sandy Bridge, but am planning on upgrading sometime in the future. No rush, a GPU upgrade is coming before a new mobo, processor, and RAM, but my main question is how much of a jump in performance would moving from the mobo, processor, and RAM in my sig to a 3750k with a z77 mobo and 8 gigs of DDR3 give me?

Should I just sit on what I have for another year or so and wait for a great deal to come around, or would it be worth the upgrade to make a move in the next 3 months?
 
Sounds like you have the itch more than anything, and I certainly feel just as guilty with my latest purchase.

What aspect of performance aren't you satisfied with?

If you don't' have an SSD, I would start there....
 
Looks like the next big thing is Haswell near the end of 2013. So I would take the plunge now. I've been enjoying Sandy Bridge for well over a year now.
 
I definitely have the itch. I'd like better encoding performance, but it's not imperative. I'm about to get one of the 27" Korean monitors, and that's a lot of pixels to push. I plan on upgrading to a GTX 680 or GTX 670 as my next purchase, depending on how plentiful funds are. Hopefully the new monitor, than a new video card will scratch my itch to upgrade. I know the q9550 is a beast, but I haven't seen comparisons between that and the IB chips and I don't want to wind up too far behind the times. In the past, I've rarely bought the newest generation of hardware, but these days my upgrade cycles happen further apart, every three years or so. With that in mind I'm moving towards buying the best thing I can within whatever my budget is at that point that I think will last me that long. If I can get another year or more out of my Q9550 and still be able to have a system that plugs along respectably, then I'll sure save the money, or just put it towards a better GPU.
 
In the same boat with my Q6700. Here is what I have used for a justification....though I'm still not sure if I should upgrade.

USB 3.0
Sata 6.0 - my SSD can't even break 200 with sata 3.0
PCIE 3.0
BF3 is limited by the Q6700

this is everything I would use an upgrade for.
 
I primarily play Skyrim and will be playing Diablo 3 when it comes out, and even those are limited because of two jobs and school. While USB 3.0 is definitely something I want, the decision by Intel to make it so that there are only 4 USB 3.0 ports on the z77 boards leave me going "WTF?"

I don't have SSD's because they're still too expensive per GB for me, and I have my OS on a 150gb Raptor and my media on a 1tb WD and 2tb Samsung. I won't be getting more storage until hard drive prices drop again and SSD's get cheaper.

Looks like I'll be waiting, that way I can get the GTX 680 I really know I want.
 
one swell foop said:
So, I'm still rocking my q9550. I skipped Sandy Bridge, but am planning on upgrading sometime in the future. No rush, a GPU upgrade is coming before a new mobo, processor, and RAM, but my main question is how much of a jump in performance would moving from the mobo, processor, and RAM in my sig to a 3750k with a z77 mobo and 8 gigs of DDR3 give me?

Should I just sit on what I have for another year or so and wait for a great deal to come around, or would it be worth the upgrade to make a move in the next 3 months?
Click to expand...

First question, do you want a 3770k or a 3570k? Regardless, it would be a real upgrade as a Q9xx will, somewhat, bottleneck the newest high end GPUs.

Next question will you SLI or crossfire on three monitors or have several SSD raid cards? If not then PCIe 3.0 is pretty much a non-issue versus 2.0

Last question, do you plan on either a) not over-clocking at all b) water cooling and overclocking to 4.9GHz+ or c) a moderate overclock? If the answer is a or b then Ivy is good while if the answer is c you would probably be better off with a 2600k since those tend to hit 5GHz on air and the IPC improvements in Ivy tend to be rendered moot if Sandy is moving 300MHz faster.

Overall, your best upgrades would be a good SSD or two (though if you get two and RAID 0 you will want either Sandy or Ivy to take advantage of the speed) and to upgrade your video card to handle 3.7 mega pixels.
 
one swell foop said:
So, I'm still rocking my q9550. I skipped Sandy Bridge, but am planning on upgrading sometime in the future. No rush, a GPU upgrade is coming before a new mobo, processor, and RAM, but my main question is how much of a jump in performance would moving from the mobo, processor, and RAM in my sig to a 3750k with a z77 mobo and 8 gigs of DDR3 give me?

Should I just sit on what I have for another year or so and wait for a great deal to come around, or would it be worth the upgrade to make a move in the next 3 months?
Click to expand...
Others here have good specific questions for you. I wanted to add that I made this transition just recently. I was a Q9550 user for 2 years, and I recently upgraded to an i7-2600k. I do run a lot of CPU-heavy jobs though (this is a CAD computer). The difference in performance was dramatic with the new CPU. Many jobs ran 2x faster than the old machine would take, which is a huge improvement in my turnaround time. It was well worth my upgrade IMHO.
 
Silverpike - I'd be interested to know if you were overclocking your Q9550 and also if you are overclocking your 2600k. I'd also be interested to know if there were any other relevant upgrades, gpu, ssd, etc. Thanks.
 
Do you need more RAM? DDR2 is expensive and DDR3 pricing alone justifies an upgrade. My Q9550/8GB combo is going on 4 years old now and I'd like at least 16GB now (8GB was far from enough when doing high bitrate MPEG2 and HD video editing last December). 4 years is pushing it for a PC and I've gone from a 4870 to a 5850 in that time. It's time for another graphics card so may as well upgrade and reinstall Windows while I'm at it. The install is also that old.

That's my justification for upgrading. I'd love Ivy Bridge in a laptop more than anything though - my i3/hd5650 laptop is alright but some of the newer Sandy and soon Ivy laptops with IPS are very nice.
 
fullvietFX said:
Looks like the next big thing is Haswell near the end of 2013. So I would take the plunge now. I've been enjoying Sandy Bridge for well over a year now.
Click to expand...

I have been reading that Haswell is expected about 12 months from now, are you saying it is supposedly been pushed back to the end of next year?
 
JRS said:
Silverpike - I'd be interested to know if you were overclocking your Q9550 and also if you are overclocking your 2600k. I'd also be interested to know if there were any other relevant upgrades, gpu, ssd, etc. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Actually, you are right. I went from 4g to 8g RAM, so that had an effect too I'm sure. I can't say how much contribution the CPU made directly, but it was noticeable. Disk was the same, GPU was the same (GPU is not in the picture here anyways).
 
Interesting thread as I'm in the exact same boat. Sitting on a stock Q9550 (with the stock Intel cooler) and a 560ti. I already have 8GB of RAM though.

I'm a 15-year network engineer and the thought of jacking around with a bunch of motherboard settings to pick up a few 100 Mhz isn't my idea of fun anymore. In fact, I won't build systems for anyone anymore, other than my personal gaming PC. Buy a Dell, I tell them. Anyway, if I can throw on a better cooler and change my multiplier, I'll do it but have no interest in messing with voltages. I'm too lazy and burned out for that stuff. :(

I was considering putting an SSD in my current system and maybe upgrading my video card again. But I didn't consider that my SATA ports are limited to 3Gb/s.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread. Please let us know what you decide to do OSF.

E
 
Sure new SSD saturate 3Gb/s SATA, but not by much, I'm going to be getting one also, but I'm not going to bother with 6Gb/s SATA till I have a new build. I'm also going from Q6600 -> Q9550 (used) so as to further delay a new build (SSE 3 -> 4 + more GHz overclocking basically).
 
Eradan said:
Interesting thread as I'm in the exact same boat. Sitting on a stock Q9550 (with the stock Intel cooler) and a 560ti. I already have 8GB of RAM though.

I'm a 15-year network engineer and the thought of jacking around with a bunch of motherboard settings to pick up a few 100 Mhz isn't my idea of fun anymore. In fact, I won't build systems for anyone anymore, other than my personal gaming PC. Buy a Dell, I tell them. Anyway, if I can throw on a better cooler and change my multiplier, I'll do it but have no interest in messing with voltages. I'm too lazy and burned out for that stuff. :(

I was considering putting an SSD in my current system and maybe upgrading my video card again. But I didn't consider that my SATA ports are limited to 3Gb/s.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread. Please let us know what you decide to do OSF.

E
Click to expand...

My previous system to the one in my sig was a Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz it too had SATA2 not 3. I upgraded to SSD on that system and I can say with absolute confidence, DO IT! Even if you decide on a new build, you can move the SSD over to it. The difference is huge, even on SATA2. It was easily the single biggest upgrade I've done.
 
So maybe an easy overclock on my Q9550 with a new cooler. Reload my system on an SSD. And just skip Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge. Worth a thought. And maybe a similar plan would be a good idea for the OP.

E
 
i went from a q6600 at 3.2 to a 2500 at 4.6. the difference is huge! i would upgrade you cpu/mb/ram before replacing your 560ti.
 
My Q9550 system has two Intel G2 160GB SSDs and a 2TB WD Black now days, along with the original 8GB ram. The SSD drives do help a lot but I found that Sandy Bridge at 4.5Ghz with a similar setup (8GB/G2 drive) is much more responsive than my overclocked C2Q. If it wasn't for the RAM upgrade, and still-stable resale value of DDR2 and my Q9550, I'd wait until Haswell. I think peak resale was when Sandy Bridge came out though...

I also dislike a few things on my P5E-VM motherboard, such as a 30-second delay on boot (not that it reboots much), after POST but before Windows starts loading, that is doing nothing. Nothing in the BIOS or RAID setup areas get rid of this thing, and I've tried them all. It has been a great rock solid system since 2008, other than all three failed 1.5TB 7200.11 drives.
 
I went from a QX9650 to the 3770K and the difference is night and day. Everything is SO Much faster. Now there may be a few other issues I was having but I noticed a really big difference in booting, running apps and a lot less lag.

In gaming my 2 470s in SLI almost never hit 80% on the 3770K I see 95-100% usage in the same game and settings as before. So looks like I had a bottle neck for sure.
 
On my current system I see a 100% utilization on my GPU and a 70% utilization on my CPU playing 64-man BF3 multi-player. Keep the GPU, upgrade the system. It'll be cheaper to upgrade mobo/cpu/ram than buying a GTX680.
 
To the original poster:

I was in the same situation as you a month ago. I owned a Q9550 and had it overclocked to 4Ghz. I didn't want to wait for Ivy or Haswell. I got a 2600k and have it overclocked to 4.6Ghz. Best choice I made. And I can feel the difference. And the bonus was I was able to sell off my Q9550, mobo, and ram to offset the cost of my new parts. Do it now before no one wants your old parts anymore!

I'll be keeping my Sandy for a long time. I'll probably skip Haswell even.
 
went from a q9550 at 3.6ghz to a i5-3570K mainly for sata3 and other stuff with z77 motherboards. I do not notice that huge of a difference as i have a fast SSD in my system. I am rocking an EVGA GTX 480 at 825mhz so I have plenty of GPU power for games, it gave me a huge boost from my GTX 460. went from 8gb ddr2 to 16gb ddr3. overall it is more snappy but the q9550 is a hell of a cpu for being as old as it is, and holds its own against more modern processors
 
I've got my 3570 now and have been messing with overclocks. The system doesn't feel anymore snappy than it did with the Q9550. I'm still on 8GB which I had 8GB before, and same 160GB Intel G2 ssds. I had the upgrade itch, but not seeing much yet in terms of noticeable improvement. All the improvement last was going from Seagate 7200.11 drives to initially a 40GB Intel SSD with apps and games on a Caviar Black 2TB drive. I don't see why people with the slow parts upgraded (hard drive, lack of RAM) can't skip ivy bridge.
 
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one swell foop said:
So, I'm still rocking my q9550. I skipped Sandy Bridge, but am planning on upgrading sometime in the future. No rush, a GPU upgrade is coming before a new mobo, processor, and RAM, but my main question is how much of a jump in performance would moving from the mobo, processor, and RAM in my sig to a 3750k with a z77 mobo and 8 gigs of DDR3 give me?

Should I just sit on what I have for another year or so and wait for a great deal to come around, or would it be worth the upgrade to make a move in the next 3 months?
Click to expand...

Maybe I can help as I have just made the same jump. I previously had a q9550@3.8 with tri-sli GTX280. I upgraded to a 3570k@4.7 with a GTX680. For regular web surfing and normal tasks the difference is slightly noticable but both are pretty instantaneous so 1 second to open a word doc vs. 1.5 seconds who really cares about that.. Just the ivy feels a bit snappier. I haven't installed any games which are taxing the GPU yet but I can tell you that my benchmark scores are much different between the two as ivy is much higher. Its nice to see my SDD's operating at their full potential, boot-up is much faster now. Went from ~45 seconds to ~20 seconds from power-on, and with instant boot enabled its like coming out of sleep mode (1-3 seconds). So in that regard ivy is much better. I really didn't have any games which my GTX 280s were unable to play at highest settings but it does feel a whole lot better to play with a GTX680 and not have to worry about compatibility, restarts before playing or else I could get stuttering, and will get my first taste of DX11. All in all though I am very happy I upgraded and I am not regreting skipping Sandy.

Bottom line is, I am positive you can make it to haswell with an overclocked q9550, but if you feel the need to upgrade then you can expect a 60%ish jump in cpu performance and Sata3 if you do not already have it.
 
Sell your 775 parts, they will still go for some decent money and as the above poster said, you can use that to make a upgrade to ivy. Well worth it, i was in the same position looking to upgrade my Q6600 to q 9550 but I decided to make the jump to a 3770k. i don't regret it at all
 
Not trying to revive an old thread, but I would go with the i5-3570k upgrade. I had an E6300 and sold it for a Q9550. That lasted a few weeks before I bit the bullet and upgraded to a 3570k. There's a HUGE difference between the two, at least for BF3. My computer overall feels much more responsive.
 
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