last 775 upgrade - wait or buy what now?

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flenser

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 15, 2004
Messages
324
Hello,

I have a socket 775 E8400 based system that is plenty fast for right now, and I don't plan on doing a major upgrade for another couple of years. Intel just announced that they're not making any more core 2 quad Q9650 cpus any more, so my hopes that those cpus will eventually drop in price have been thoroughly squashed. I had hoped to get a 3ghz quad so my overall performance would remain at least the same even with single threaded apps, but the cpus are still well over $300. So, given the premise that I want to upgrade the cpu eventually, my questions are:

What cpu should I buy as my "last" socket 775 cpu intended to put off a major system refresh as long as possible? Q9650 before they go out of stock and just accept the high price? Or go with Q9550 to save a few bucks and accept the lower clock speed (I know how to overclock but I usually don't do it on my my main rig)

When should I buy? Now, or wait how long?

And before anyone says any socket 775 cpu is a waste of money, my overall system is plenty fast for what I use it for and a "real" upgrade to i7 would require me to buy pretty much everything all over again, so I would consider the "wasted" money on a faster cpu to really be money spent so I can wait until the next generation of cpus is released. THEN I'll go for a major system refresh. I've been doing this successfully for 2 decades now and I've been happy with the results except for when AMD tricked me into a socket 939 purchase right before they discontinued the entire line.

Thanks in advance...
 
I am partial to the q9550, its an overclocking beast. You almost certainly will be able to hit the q9650 speeds without any voltage bumps at all. And yes, I agree. The 775 quads are still plenty fast for most applications, including games. If your willing to overclock a bit more you will be good for a long time.
 
Thanks. I think I'll get the Q9550. If it isn't fast enough, I'll clock it up a bit.

I'm putting it on an older P5Q Pro, so I hope there won't be any issues. My E8400 is rock solid stable on this mobo so hopefully I won't have any problems. I grabbed the latest BIOS just in case, but hopefully it won't be necessary since everything already works just fine as-is.
 
q9650's are expensive, i would just save up and get a sandy bridge in January personally. At least that's what my plan is.
 
I really don't want the hassle or cost of a full system upgrade, that's all. I have other things I want to spend my money on. $275ish for the Q9550 seems reasonable, even if it is overpriced since they were around $220 back in January. It's still less than half what it would cost to get a new mobo/cpu/memory combo and it'll take a tenth of the time to put it in. And I expect the whole rig to last another couple of years too.

Heck, I have a GTX260 installed and it is "fast enough", so I may not even upgrade the vid card until the next total system refresh. My two monitors are only 1280x1024 so any faster vid card would be overkill and I don't play games that often anyhow.
 
You could try to find a used 9550. You could also opt for a new Q8300 for under $100 or a Q9300 for fairly cheap. I'm running a Q9300 on a low-end motherboard at 3.1ghz and I'm quite happy with it for the time being.
 
I get paranoid about used stuff, having been burned before. The last used cpu I bought worked great up until it was stressed beyond just web browsing, and then it started corrupting memory. Probably had bad cache memory or something, never did figure it out and ended up starting from scratch with that system because I couldn't rule out a bad mobo either, and didn't have the time or money to start replacing parts at random trying to troubleshoot the system. What I have now is very stable and I want it to stay that way.

I looked at the performance of those cheaper CPUs and I just don't think I'll get the kind of performance out of them that would make me want to hold off a bigger upgrade. This cpu is probably the last thing I'll buy for this computer, unless something breaks. So it's gotta be near the top end and I don't want to have to overclock it to any degree that requires any sort of skill or recurring maintenance. I don't have the time to fiddle around trying to get my computer stable.
 
/kicks self for missing $150 Q9550 Microcenter closeout deal.
 
I jumped from an E7300 to the mighty Q9550 and do not see myself upgrading anytime soon. The Q9650 is pointless if you are comfortable with overclocking since it's essentially sold as an overclocked Q9550. If you can find a used chip for sub-$180 I'd jump right on it. I probably see myself riding out Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer with this chip since it does anything and everything I throw at it (mostly gaming and general use) and still have quite a bit of overclocking headroom left if I ever feel like it's falling behind. But yeah, whenever you're looking to upgrade the E8400 I'd definitely say the Q9550 is the last stop shop for anyone who's still on 775...3.4GHz @ 1.18v 100% stable keeps me plenty happy! :)
 
Sub $180 prices probably aren't coming back, unless there is a surge when users upgrade to Sandy.
Used on [H] are around $200 now, new for $230+.
 
I'd check the For Sale forum to try to pick up a used Q9550. Back luck you got burned last time, but I've bought lots of stuff from folks here with never any problems, and you can save a pretty penny buying used.
 
I also got my Q9550 to 3.8ghz with very little need for a voltage bump. I think I got a real gem though. 1.370v for 3.8ghz while staying under 55c on air cooling? hell yea
This thing can do something like 3.4ghz on stock voltage too.
I got mine at microcenter about a year ago for $180. Haven't felt an itch to upgrade that part of my system yet.
 
grabed a q9550 on ebay for 190 a few months ago and Overclocked it to 4ghz :)
any quad at 4ghz is doing pretty well in most cases and should for the next year
 
I bought my 9550 on the FS/FT forum and as you can see its a gem, 4ghz at 1.26v. :)
I probably buy more than half my gear off of the FS/FT forum as you can save a ton of money and typically get stuff that has been well taken care of by other enthusiasts. Its typically pretty obvious if something has been abused, and there is always heat to back you up.
 
I bought a Q9550. Paid full retail because of some time constraints i have. It arrived today,hope the upgrade swapout goes smoothly.
 
Almost forgot to ask... I am using an old thermalright XP-90C cooler on my E8400. It runs cooler and quieter than the stock cooler did, but will it be enough for the Q9550? Will it be better than the stock cooler? I just don't want to throw even more money at this thing so I don't want another cooler if I don't absolutely need one. Thx...
 
I don't know you the xp-90c performs, but I am using a 90mm Arctic Cooling Freezer on mine and my load temps are 66C. It depends entirely on how much voltage you are giving the chip, I've seen guys running 9550's with 1.37v and hitting those temps on a TRUE.

You have a p45 chipset which is ideal for clocking these quads, I would try setting it to 1.3v in bios (at least thats what mine needs with vdroop) and seeing how far you can take it. Remember to reset default settings in your bios prior to the swap and switch your ram to a 2:1 ratio so it won't be a limitation.
 
Thanks. I think I'll run it stock for a while to see what temps settle down to after the thermal paste cooks down (AS5), then just push it incrementally to see what happens. I have reasonably decent memory I think, so I might just give it a mild FSB boost and leave it at that, in part because I'm not running a modern HSF.
 
Just don't sell yourself short, my hsf is in no way modern (originally introduced for A64 X2's) and it takes it to 4ghz. You also have better ram than I do. You should be able to push the 4ghz mark without any problems at all.
 
R-Type said:
Just don't sell yourself short, my hsf is in no way modern (originally introduced for A64 X2's) and it takes it to 4ghz. You also have better ram than I do. You should be able to push the 4ghz mark without any problems at all.
Click to expand...

Not every chip can hit 4GHz. Mine can't. :(
 
fullvietFX said:
Not every chip can hit 4GHz. Mine can't. :(
Click to expand...

You did get close though and 4ghz for a 9550 is like 3.6 for a q6600; not everyone can hit it but the good chips do with regularity.
 
I put in the Q9550 and temps are way too high. I'm not sure if I've simply overloaded the XP90C, if the fan is too slow, or if the HSF went on a bit crooked. Or maybe the thermal paste isn't spread out evenly yet...

In any case, the mobo bios monitoring page shows 47C, speedfan shows around 48C at idle, but under stress testing with all 4 cores fully loaded the temps reported by speedfan rocket up to over 95C. I halted the stress testing when one core hit 99C.

So I'm gonna let the paste settle for a few days and see what happens. If nothing changes, I'll remove and re-apply the heatsink. If it still seems too high, I might try the stock heatsink just to see what happens then. Even with the stock heatsink I don't think I should be seeing temps over 75C under full load...
 
flenser said:
So I'm gonna let the paste settle for a few days and see what happens. If nothing changes, I'll remove and re-apply the heatsink. If it still seems too high, I might try the stock heatsink just to see what happens then. Even with the stock heatsink I don't think I should be seeing temps over 75C under full load...
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The paste isn't going to settle those temps away. Either it is seated wrong, or it just ins't enough heatsink for the job.
 
Forceman said:
The paste isn't going to settle those temps away. Either it is seated wrong, or it just ins't enough heatsink for the job.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I would think that one of the pushpins is not seated correctly. Even the stock heatsink would outperform the temps you are seeing.

How did you apply the paste? Make sure you're doing the uncooked grain of rice method and not the 'spread and allow air to become trapped inside' approach that somehow still gets recommended from time to time.
 
articsilver.com recommends the grain of rice method, but elongated to ensure coverage of all cores. That's what I did.

The heatsink clips onto an adaptor bracket since the heatsink was not made for socket 775. It worked fine for my E8400 but maybe it somehow didn't sit flat this time.

It is also possible that the mobo bios is reporting nonsense temps, since even when the reported core temps spiked to 99C, the computer kept running and didn't fault out of the prime95 torture test. I am not running the latest bios because the one I have is very stable.
 
Hmm, were the temps ever flaky with the E8400? Its dangerous to ignore those temp readings. I would be inclined to want to run the latest BIOS regardless, unless you are positive there were no processor oriented fixes or improvements.

Did you load defaults when you updated? What voltage is the 9550 getting? Those would be the first things I would check, then reseat, then try the bios update.

EDIT: I just pulled reviews for your cooler, you have definitely gotten your money's worth out of the one! Most reviews are from 2005 so its hard to find something comparable. I do however see reviews of it performing well with overclocked P4 dual cores and Opteron 175 chips and those are 125watt cpu's. It may be worthwhile to take the motherboard all the way out in order to ensure it is installed level.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835109122
 
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The bios recognized it and is giving it 1.256v according to bios and cpuz.

I had trouble getting one of the clips attached so yes, I will at least pull the mobo try out this time. That sort of sucks because it means re-doing a lot of cable routing since this is an older case with not much room and everything aligned for older layouts, but getting the HSF on right is mandatory.

I really don't want to have to use the stock hsf because I'll have to remove everything to get the hsf mounting adaptor off of the mobo, and that will take half the day.
 
The heatsink was not on correctly. The fit of the HSF is very close to some capacitors and I might have had it hitting one of them. In any case, the thermal paste was not spread evenly so it was not installed right.

I reinstalled the HSF correctly this time, so we'll see. Temps are down near 35C at idle now, more what I expected. Temps at full load are around 65C. I can drop those another few degrees if I take the side of the case off, so I might eventually get around to cutting a hole in the side of my case near the HSF intake to get some cooler air in there. But for now I'm going to let the paste settle and see if it will be worth the effort. It looks like I'm getting temps similar to what I'd get with the stock HSF but with a lot less noise, so I'm happy with it for now.

I also updated the bios to the latest, and now my cpu fan speed isn't reporting anymore. I have the mobo automatically adjusting the cpu fan speed and it seems to work just fine, but speedfan no longer shows the fan speed even on high speed when everything is cooking.
 
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Just my two cents, but unless you can find a 775 quad on the cheap it's not worth the upgrade.

The cost of the C2Quads is expensive enough that it almost doesn't make sense to upgrade unless you can get one really cheap. For $300 bucks you can get an AMD 955, 4 gigs of DDR, and the motherboard.
They might be awesome, but you might be better off just staying with what you have when it comes to the value equation.
 
I have gone with AMD 3 times in the last 15 years and none of those systems were ever as stable as my intel systems. If I needed a system CHEAP and had time to fiddle with it, yea maybe I'd go AMD again. But I want fast speed and no hassle, which means I'll pay a little bit more and get an intel system I don't have to mess with.

I was an AMD fanboy for quite a while, but that was back when I had time to tinker with my computer all the time. I simply don't have time now, so my last AMD system was a very nice socket 939 system that AMD conveniently made obsolete just 6 months after I bought it. It required weekly tweaking and I threw hundreds of dollars at that system replacing component after component trying to get it stable, including 3 separate cpus. When I got sick of it, I bought a socket 775 mobo/cpu/ram and kept everything else, and guess what - almost 100% reliability even runnning winXP, and rock solid stability running win7.

Some people have lots of luck running AMD systems, but if you really dig into it I've found that a lot of those people are constantly tinkering with their systems. I don't have that kind of time to spend.
 
flenser said:
Some people have lots of luck running AMD systems, but if you really dig into it I've found that a lot of those people are constantly tinkering with their systems. I don't have that kind of time to spend.
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Count me as one who has had good experiences with AMD and it wasn't luck. While my main machine now is a Q9550 I'm still running 3 Socket 939's and all have run flawlessly overclocked to 2.7+ ghz speeds virtually 24/7 with no tinkering. My Phenom II 940BE has been chugging along at 3.5 ghz for the past year.
 
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I didn't want to turn this into an intel vs. AMD thread... No insult intended regarding "luck" required to get AMD systems running stable, but that has been my experience. I mixed/matched 3 premium motherboards, 3 premium sets of officially supported memory, and 3 socket 939 cpus, and none of the combos were stable in the long term. Something always happened and I'd get random crashes, hangs, etc. I ran the exact same software with my next system refresh to an intel system, and it simply never crashes even though I now generally only reboot my computer after the monthly microsoft patch day.

That's where my "luck" statement came... I tried really hard to get things right and I've been a computer geek since the early 1980s (anyone else here remember making a ramdisk with 256k ram on their 8086 computer so the original microsoft flight simulator would load faster?) so back when I spent a lot of time doing this, I had a reasonable expectation to get the most out of my hardware.
 
The black friday ddr3 and i5 760 prices nearly put the nail in this coffin.
 
Too true ruiner. There were some great combos that would have gotten me very nearly what I want for right around $350-$400... I'm happy with what I got though, mostly because it took less time to install than a full mobo swap, plus I didn't have to re-install windows.
 
flenser said:
Too true ruiner. There were some great combos that would have gotten me very nearly what I want for right around $350-$400... I'm happy with what I got though, mostly because it took less time to install than a full mobo swap, plus I didn't have to re-install windows.
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Agreed. The time on the phone with MS to reactivate after a full system upgrade takes longer than swapping the cpu.
 
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