Q6600 vs Q9550...is it worth the upgrade?

I'm having the same dilema, keep going back and forth on it, and I think honestly it would be better to just upgrade to I-7 next year. While the q9550 is awesome, and beats the q6600 in every benchmark, mine honestly runs everything i throw at it quite easily, so my suggestion keep it and wait for a I-7.

you might also consider a mild overclock for your q6600, I normally dont recommend it for business PC's but the q6600 easily goes to 3ghz (stock 2400) I've run mine at 3600 for a week but i turned it down to a more reasonable 3300.

You might need to upgrade to a non piece of crap cooler if you are using the retail cooler than comes with the q6600 though.

the stock timing is (2.4 @ 266mhz*9)

I would recommend something like 300x9=2700, a more agressive number would be 350x8, ive been using 415x8 now for 11 monthes with no problems.

Of course this assumes your motherboard is ok for Overclocking .
If you are interested shoot me a PM and ill go more indepth on voltages and such

the 9550 is much better, but the tasks you mentioned wont see much of an improvement, but it is a 45nm cpu compared to that makeshift glue 2 cpus together 65nm, wait for i5 or i7, 775 needs to go the way of the dodo

Not only runs cooler being 45nm, but uses less glue too

775 Quad is going to be worthless the day the I5 comes out.

Or i7 again, but on a different skt, but still has HT

And has a better IPC

I have 2 friends who both have upgraded from literally the same Q6600 to Q9550's
one got an OC'ing dud, returned it with some random excuse, and the replacement is running 4ghz @ 1.25v w/WC @61c IBT load.
The other got a good one from the start and is running it @ 4ghz(Air Cooled Zalman CNPS9700) as well. Both are very satisfied with the purchase/upgrade.

Both got them for $169 at Microcenter.($50 less than Newegg) They also have i7 920's for $199

Edit: Apparently both are only available in-store.

Not at all. Tho, people will argue to the end Intel isnt overpricing, but lets look at reality here. If you look at steams users, and what cpus theyre using....
They have their cpus strategically priced simply for the lack of competition from AMD in duals.
Im hoping this changes, and AMD starts making better duals, or i3s wont go down either

Better Hold off, both amd and intel are coming out with 6 and or 8 cores on the desktop next year, thats one of the other reasons I held off.

its safe to say that 775 is pretty much over... nothing new will be released

You can do that with all the 775 chips. It's a dead socket. There will be no new chips

Agreed jsc

I'm just giving the opp a hard time. I'm trying to build a budget setup right now till the I3's are released and the 775 offer's amazing flexability. I like amd but for some reason cannot make myself buy it.

You poor poor man

Its probably your memory speed causing the crashing

drop the memory multiplier one notch so you arent overclocking it so much

make sure its stable they try like... 310fsb

for instance my memory multiplier was orginally 1.25:1 when i put fsb to 400+ that made it over 1000... memory couldnt handle it..

my motherboard also supports 1.2:1 and 1:1

1.2:1 doesnt work.. period it freezes at barely over stock settings.

so I set to 1:1 now my memory is at 830~~ stock was 800

its ddr 2 memory so 415mhz fsb *2 * (multiplier 1:1)

as long as you dont go crazy with settings you can move the settings
around till you find your best mild OC settings.

this was orginally the reason i tried going all the way to 400fsb instead of 300 was the memory speed and multiplier i didnt want to underclock my memory

also back on topic I also agree with the general feeling the upgrade isnt worth the $$$ we are on turning point where 775 will be obsolete..

on the other hand the boards are mature. But since its not a major upgrade i would hold off

Thank you all once again for all the feedback. I will be holding off and will try some different settings on my motherboard for overclocking to see if I can push q6600 a little further.

rand_79...I might pm you with a few oc questions in the next week or so.

Thanks again everyone...EWB