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Q9650 to i7 Setup?

M

mwelling12

n00b
Joined
Dec 25, 2006
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I've been contemplating lately whether it's worth it to finally upgrade to an i7 setup. Newegg has the CPU, motherboard, and memory in a combo deal for $600, but I'm not sure it'd be worth it at this point.

Currently I have a Q9650 overclocked to 3.9GHz, 4GB RAM, GTX 280. I'm running at a native res of 1920x1200.

I feel like the bottleneck of my system in gaming is often the CPU, especially in games like GTA IV and Empire: Total War. If I were to upgrade to an i7, how much of a performance boost could I expect to see in these games, and how much in other games, even those that only utilize one or two cores?

Thanks in advance for the input!
 
a 9650 @ 3.9 has a LOT of time left in it. $600 is so not worth marginally better performance in (no offense) those 2 shitty games.
 
Chops said:
a 9650 @ 3.9 has a LOT of time left in it. $600 is so not worth marginally better performance in (no offense) those 2 shitty games.
Click to expand...

This.

You're not going to see an improvement. Your current CPU is very, very fast.
 
The 600$ deal is now gone, i was hoping it would stick around... :(
 
If you really want to spend money buy an extra 2 or 4GB of RAM or maybe a SSD.
 
Raudulfr said:
If you really want to spend money buy an extra 2 or 4GB of RAM or maybe a SSD.
Click to expand...

this. especially the SSD. you can get a good 128GB one for around 300-400.
You probably have long load time. if you want to shorten them the SSD is the way.
 
nice thing is, if you do decide to make the jump you will get a good chunk of change for your current cpu/mobo/ram. that would make your real investment 250-300 instead of 600. main thing is whether or not your current board supports sli. main reason for me to go i7 was the flexibility in dual vid cards.
 
been debating myself on an off, but as mentioned a 9650 @ 3.9 or 4.0 in my case is still tons fast enough, hardly worth the money for i7, and having games at a few fps more that are already well above 60 is pointless unless you run vantage loops on your system all day.

probably going to wait for the next gen boards/cpus, will be nice to skip a gen for once
 
All great advice...grab an SSD or a couple of Velociraptors and put em in a a raid, get a second video card, and your set for a while still.
 
I would keep the Q9650 and wait for the 6-core chips early next year.
 
SSDx2 for some raid0 action but cost just as much as i7 upgrade your considering.

anyhow keep your q9650 for now.
 
Overclock your current proc more. Get a watercooling setup (and then use it in the future on the I7 with minimal modifications)


oh and GET A SSD :)
 
for gamming, anything beyond Q6600@3.6 is an overkill, just wait for the next gen of video cards and get the fastest single GPU card Nvidia or ATI will release.
 
I spent $650 on a new core i7 upgrade (920 d0, gigabyte UD3R, 6gb DDR3 tri-channel 1600mhz a few weeks ago) and kept the same GPU, etc.

There was absolutely no noticable improvement in games with my single card setup @ 1680x1050 / 1920x1080. I have the results of crysis warhead, left4dead, prototype, etc and my eyes to back up the claim. Games are just GPU bound when using resolutions higher than 1680x1050 and a SINGLE CARD setup. If you were to be using SLI/X-Fire than core i7 does do a better job at allowing the GPUs to fully utilized and I'd say go ahead and upgrade....

Save the money and fight off the upgrade bug.
 
I was in the same demila as you and was REALLY wanting to upgrade but there just really aren't many games out there that don't run awesome on this rig. I'm going to wait for the 32nm parts and build a nice Windows 7 rig when those CPU's come out late this or early next.

Just keep your money and wait for now.
 
Well for the sake of another opinion, I think it may be worth going to i7 at this point in time as I'm sure you could get rid of your current CPU/MB/Ram for a decent amount.

Wait any longer and you'll be losing value on your current setup. Not to mention the X58 chipset has a lot of life in it still with the 6-Core's due out in the next 12 months.

That's the decision I made and I was able to upgrade to i7 from my modest e6400/P965 chipset for about AU$400 (equates to about $250 USD).
 
I grabbed a Q9550 for $169 at Microcenter. It clocked to 3.65GHz on my old Gigabyte P35-DS3R motherboard.

At this point, I didn't see any point paying hundreds more (new motherboard, RAM, etc) for negligible improvement.
 
get 1 or 2 SSD, add 4GB total 8GB, maybe one new video card, I don't know anything about i7 just yet but why waste $$$ since you have great rig for other few years before major upgrade along with Win 7 SP1 in the future.

Long Live socket 775 for me.

dg
 
Honestly, with that setup, the money would be better spent on either a second GTX or a monitor with a more capable LCD panel. What about a really fancy pair of headphones? Going to i7 now just isn't the best way to use those funds unless your system is maxed, which it probably is not. There are other things that would be a much greater enhancement to your setup.
 
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