Myself along with many others have been waiting months for this sweet 45nm Quad at a great price, but at an 8x multiplier, will the Q9450 deliver?

At best this chip will OC to 3.2GHZ on a Mobo that can handle 1600FSB, but the only ones I can find are 1333FSB which means it will have to stay at stock speeds. (4x333=1333 2.66ghz , 4x400=1600 3.2ghz).

An E8400 or E8500 wolfdale on the other hand have 9 and 9.5x multipliers, respectively, which will allow for an incredibly easy overclock to 3.8ghz or higher on air.

Would it be worth it to just get a wolfdale C2D and hope that intel gives us a better multipler on the Q9450 in the future?

Please correct me if I'm wrong on the Q9450, but I have read several articles regarding it's overclocking limitations, and it seems very disappointing. Hopefully these new X48 boards support 1800FSB so we can overclock some more.

Cheers.

Well, with the P35 and X38/X48 chipsets, higher than 1600 FSB is very possible. I suspect you could get 4GHz out of the 9450 on a quality board. That's what I'm shooting for. That would be an effective 2000 FSB, which might need a little more juice and some extra cooling to the chipset, but doable. I know the duals will be able to hit 4.5 or so, but I think 4 cores at 4.0 will be more than fine.

I plan on putting a small water cooling system on my Maximus SE, simply because it's pre-made to accept it, and should help considerably. I'm not too worried about water cooling the CPU as these new quads don't seem to push thermals very hard even at 4.0. You will hit the FSB wall before you hit the CPU thermal wall.

Ya I'm probably getting an Asus maximus board, but I'm not sure how high of a FSB that board can go, 500 would be rediculous.

Some of the X38 mobos are getting new BIOSs that allow 1600. That, and you can overclock to around 450 (4x450=1800 for 3.6 ghz) or even higher. So don't dispair too much. One bad thing about the X48 mobos that I've read so far is that they are DDR3 ram only, thus far more expensive than the X38 and DDR2 ram. I may be wrong on that, or some mobo company may end up offering a X48 with DDR2. Don't know for sure.

As far as the Q9450 verses E8500 goes, the quads are more for people who do lots of work, rather than those who do mainly gaming, the same as it is now. Also, as games start to be made so they use all four cores, the quad will end up faster even though its mhz may be a bit slower. For an example, try thinking of it this way, a quad core running at 3.6 ghz means the ability to work at 4x3.6 or 14.4 ghz, while a dual core running at 4 ghz (2x4) only does 8 ghz of work. Crude example, I know, but it should give the idea.

I was VERY disappointed when others here at this forum pointed out to me the 8x multiplier limitation of the Q9450. I had been waiting for this CPU for months!

Getting a MOBO that will actually let you take it to 4+ghz is a big gamble IMO. Most people will probably end up at 3.6-3.8 which isn't bad at all, but it is a pain in the butt when it comes to price of course, ESPECIALLY if people need X38 or X48 boards to do so.

$350 for the chip (probably end up being the price), 200+ for a mobo, 200+ if it has to have ddr 3, this could end up being very ugly for those on a budget.... Though I was led to believe that many P35 mobos could be flashed to support yorkies, and have some decent overclocks still?

The Q9450 was just too good to be true I guess =\

my friend was running his q6600 on an intel x38 (asus maximu) at 1833 FSB with an 8x multi.

Ran stable but his NB was too hot for his liking in the end...If you had some kickass active cooling or water I bet you could stay there easy, maybe even go for 2000mhz

----edit----

it might have been 1800 not 1833, which would make more sense

the 8x multi was what swung getting a Q6600 for me at xmas, paid £152, now gone up to £170!

Just get a Q6600, it's more CPU power then you'll probably use, even at stock speed.

On my Maximus SE, I'm hitting 450 FSB (1800 effective) now already on the 6750, and the only thing that stopped me in that instance was CPU temperature. My NB is a little warm, but still safe. I suspect the closer I push it to 500, the faster it will get hot, but that's what the water block is for

All these post are making me nervous,
I havnt checked the NB temps at all,but it has the little stock fan on it and I have very good air flow.
I have an EVGA 680i A-1 revision and have a e6550 7x mult. running at 3500 with fsb at 2000.
The cpu stays in low 30's and 50-ish on load.
I dont understand why you say there isnt any mobos with high limits on the fsb

My concern wasn't with duals, but with quad cores. There's a lot more stress on quads as far as FSB since it is x4 cores.

I'm starting to lean towards the E8500 for the 9.5x multiplier, and at the same price point of the Q9450 I will get more than +1ghz power over it. Only multithreaded programs would suffer, which there are few of atm.

And you think a 3.2GHz chip isn't going to perform good anyway? What is this, the GHz race all over again?

Thats true. I am sad about the 8x multi but still this chip will probably run much cooler and use less power in comparison to its older brother the Q6700 if the QX9650 is a good example. Plus being able to OC it higher and use roughly the same stock voltage as its older sibling is nice too.

I can tell you for sure that any of the P5K series P35 Asus mobos will support Yorkies as they already have support for the QX9650. Well mine does and mine is the not low but not high version. If you truly want to get a good board for less and have guaranteed support for Yorkies its best to go Asus as they always keep their word. I really want a Yorkie but am tempted to wait until Nehalem as they will give a bigger boost especially if quad DDR3 is a true factor. 4 whole channels of memory to feed the new beast. I drool over it.

i posted this months ago

the q6600 is still king

this will drive up intel prices - the 1600fsb will drive up profits - it will kill oc potential of locked high fsb chips

The 9450 will do way better than 3.2 even on shotty boards.....

I'm not gonna freak out if I can't get 4.0, I'll just notch it down to 3.8 and be happy. At 3.8 GHz, a quad core will fly, that's still pretty damn fast.

I expect 3.6 will be the "new" 3.0 for quads, and 4.0+ will be the challenging OCs.