Q9400 running worse than my e6750

specs:
cosair TX650w PSU
asus P5N32-e SLI (680i chipset)
q9400 (stock voltage/clock)
2x 8800GTS 320mb
4gb G.Skill DDR2-800 (5-5-5-15)
audigy 4 sound card


so recently i upgraded from an e6750 to a q9400. at the same time i also upgraded from windows xp 32-bit, to windows 7 64-bit. installed the chip, reformatted. everything runs fine. had a problem with the cpu multiplier but fixed it with the EIST/C1 options.

first thing i do when i reformat is run 3dmark05. i understand that software is close to 5 years old, but it always yielded a good benchmark no matter what my hardware components were. immediately i saw problems, because where i would usually be getting close to 120 fps, i was getting around 70. im getting scores of around 12000, where as with my e6750 i was getting 16000/17000. granted my e6750 was oc'd to 3.0 ghz, but a 400mhz increase yields a 5000 point difference? i think not.

after that, i installed some games that were gfx heavy/cpu heavy respectively to see if it was just 3dmark(tf2, css, doom3, crysis), and noticed that i was getting equal if not worse performance than i usually do, which tells me theres a problem with my cpu. i also have random crashes with bioshock and 3dmark05, which i cannot explain; sony vegas wont run anymore; i have numerous performance issues while running windows 7 itself mainly with load times of nvidia control panel and other miscellaneous windows.

ive ran the performance assessment that comes with windows 7 numerous times, all resulting the same. (7.1 across the board, with a 5.8 for disk data transfer rate). all benchmarks i run in Everest Ultimate v5.02.1750 say that my pc is running on par, if not better than a system with a QX9650, other than the PhotoWorxx benchmark, where it falls considerably behind the curve (worse than an Athlon X2 4000+). All temperatures in Everest are below 70 degrees as well, even under load.

ive flashed the bios, checked compatibility issues, rolled back/reinstalled drivers, played with bios settings, tried performance tweaks with windows 7, physically moved things around in my pc, restored defaults...everything that would normally fix problems id be having, but all to no avail. i cannot accept the fact that my DUAL core is a better processor than my QUAD core. i just simply cant.

can anyone here help me?

***. i guess i overlooked that it isnt supported. heh thought i saw it on the list.


luckily, i just built my friend a new pc with an p5n72-t premium, which supports my q9400. brb swapping mobos :}