Q6600 to Q9450 on Asus P5K-E?

[kansur0]

I am wondering if I should make the jump from the Q6600 to the Q9450 or Q9550. Here is what I currently have:

Q6600 G0 @ 2.4mhz (stock)
Asus P5K-Premium P35
2 - Patriot Viper Extreme 4GB DDR2 2X2GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12

This motherboard supports 45nm CPUs with 1333 FSB. I am guessing the following:

Better performance per watt?
Easier overclock?
Lower overclock temps?

But...because the system is a slower FSB and RAM speed the only thing that might be beneficial is the 12MB cache on the new chip compared to the 8MB cache on the Q6600. From all the articles I have read RAM speeds don't mean much for performance (1-2% at best?) I was also thinking of getting this CPU because I have plans of getting the ASUS 4870X2:

http://www.asus.com.au/news_show.aspx?id=13469

Is my system too slow and not worth the CPU upgrade or would either 45nm CPU be a good investment?
Thanks!

 

[one-shot]

I would overclock your Q6600 before considering upgrading. If you don't overclock at all you're wasting your money and time.

 

[jamesgoddard]

Go into BIOS - change FSB from 1066 to 1333 - hey presto you have your new CPU...

It's that easy!

 

[jamesgoddard]

***Saying that I forgot to check the memory speed devider is sensible - duh - but apart from that - this is all I did with a q6600 on a p5w and have 3.00GHZ

 

[RetiredChief]

Plus 1 for the three privious posts. Goose that puppy andinvest your $250 -> $320 in the stock market. With a good pick like say Cisco (CSCO) you can probable double that in 18 Monthes and buy an i7 proc and New Memory and Motherboard.

Not sure about your MB (I have Gigabyte P965-DQ6 whish it was rev 3 instead of rev 1) but you might even hit a FSB of 1600. Set Bus freq to 400, Proc multiplier to 8 (equals 3.2 GHz) and memory to 1 to 1 ratio. This is what I have my lowly E6400 set to and It has run stable for 2 years without a single problem. Your ram should be good, I have used both corsair DDR2-800 (4 by 1 Gig) an am currently using Muskins 2 by 2 Gig CL4.

 

[cjl]

Don't upgrade - yours is perfectly fine. Overclocking could help you though, if you want more performance.