Q6600 upgrade to Q9650

I don't think the q9650 is worth it, but if you can find a good price on a q9550, that would be a good upgrade. You can look up the performance side-by-side in the charts section.

no its not worth it. i have mine at 3.4ghz. for me the next upgrade will be in a year. just save up money its not worth spending so much money over 10% increase

Ironically, I was just telling my wife 20 minutes ago how I hated threads like these. Where folks with way to much money to waste come onto Tom's Hardware forums and talk about spewing cash out of their mouths to useless computer parts.

I can't see any reason why one with a Q6600 has any REAL need to spend an additional $549 on a newer processor. Considering video cards are the primary source of PC game performance, and your Q6600 is OC'd to 3.6Ghz, what advantage are you truly getting out of wasting $549 on a little bit of an upgrade?

Take your $549 and donate it to a charity or something...

Now if I buy his old processor from him, that only makes it a 449 upgrade  

Not the wording I'd use for the original poster, since he was nice enough to ask instead of brag... But the cold hard facts are that you are right.

+1^^

While I think the Q9650 is a great chip, in this case, I'd keep the Q6600 GO chip. Then I'd wait and save money until Nehalem was out and build a whole new platform if you are determined to make changes.

That said, it also should be considered what you use the computer for. If its mainly for gaming and web use, your Q6600 should last another year, perhaps longer, with the primary upgrade being the video card. The Q9650 and Nehalem mainly would be good for business use, and not overclocked when doing that, at least until there are major upgrades from games.

I'd like to point out that the exception is Flight Simulator X, which is the "gaming" title that benefits most from the Q9650. FSX is extremely CPU bound, and requires massive amounts of CPU horspower to achieve good frame rates. As an avid Flight Simulator enthusiast, I upgraded from the Q6600 OC'd at 3.6 Ghz to the Q9650 OC'd at 4.2 Ghz for this reason.

Since FSX is less affected by GPU horsepower than any other title, the best alternative to increase frame rate is to select a quad core which has more cache, and can reach the highest possible overclock. I would recommend the Q9650 to serious Flight Simmers, however for other gamers, keep the Q6600, as it's an excellent CPU at a great value.

Comp  

Pointless

I was wondering the same - going from Q6600 to Q9550...
Reading so far, it looks like not good idea... Maybe I should update the OS instead? Currently have Vista 32-bit...

Oh, yes.. it is mainly for gaming... Thus is Vista 64-bit better?

Jeepers Computronix ... you squeeze anything else out of that box and there will be smoke ... and no mirrors.

I am quite happy with a mildly clocked Q6600.

I would spend the money on good graphics first.

$550 US buys some mouthwatering Graphics power ...

or a secnd card if yu have SLI / CF.

+1

Don't bother. Your $549 would be much better spent on a HD 4870X2 for example. Check these charts out:

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=770&p=5

Only if you have >4gb of ram. If you have less, then don't bother.

Thanks all...I was thinking the same thing. I am pretty happy with my Q6600. A new GPU would def. benefit me set up right about know. I've had my eye on the new 4870x2 for a while, but I'll wait just long enough for it to drop a little. I just wanted to hear some opinions on the subject. For the certain guy that was saying I was bragging or something whatever...I was not... just seeking the opinion of my peers. The reason I posted is because I was not sure of the real world benefit of spending that kind of money. Its not like I have stacks of it laying around. And nah, I dont think I'll donate it to anything or any one, you communist  , I'll just squander my hard earned money in which ever way I please...Im sure you do.

I have exactly 4GB (4x1GB)  
do I still upgrade (just to use those 750 MB hidden by Windows)?  

Wait till someone actually gets it to work.

Millenium II ... the name they sould have used for it.