Deciding between Q9550 or Q6600

[Boo025]

Currently thinking about upgrading to replace my 3 year old X2 4200+ with 1GB of ram; which is pretty adequate for what I do at the moment, but I feel it's time for a change.

I plan to do some light overclocking with a decent HSF, but not anything hardcore. I've narrowed down my choice to getting a P5Q and DDR2-800 (or DDR2-1066 if someone talks me into it), but not sure about which CPU to get.

The Q6600 is about $150 cheaper (Canada) than the Q9550 so price wise it seem more favorable; however, the Q9550 has more cache, and I guess better "future-proof" as I don't upgrade frequently and I don't really care about i7 (unless it will push down the price soon).

So I guess my question is, what's better in a long term? Personally, I'm leaning toward the Q9550 from all the thread I read, but the price of Q6600 is too damn hard to resist.

ps. Anyone tried buying from Newegg Canada? (ie. not get raped by the custom fee, tax, etc.)

pss. I have Radeon 1950xt, yup, replacing it maybe in December when I get more money but I don't really play game much anyway. (Usually browsing, coding, matlab, some encoding, etc.)

 

[zerogear]

Unless you encode/edit videos or photo edit large files or do folding, you probably will not see any real life difference when using it. I am planning on upgrading to a Q9550 soon, simply because of SSE4 instructions. But for all intents and purpose, you probably couldn't tell the difference.

 

[hclarkjr]

well if it were me and i had the money i would get the more expensive one but if you are pinching pennies get the Q6600. that is the choice i made

 

[BoboKatt]

As a fellow Canadian NCIX is the best... period, when they have their sales -- low shipping, no hassle return, etc. etc). I have both the Q9550 and the Q6600 G0. Love both... loved my Q6600 from the day I got it. I find it hard to convince anyone to buy a different chip, for what you get, how well it runs, how well it oc's, how cool it runs and now its price. The list goes on and on.

I got the Q9550 since I was building a new comp, and wanted to see what these newer chips can do and got it at a breakout price. Is it faster? yes. Is it noticeably faster? no.

However, if you are interested in oc'ing... I can run my 9550 at its stock voltage (from Coretemp VID) of 1.175 all the way to just over 3.5 Ghz. I have never had such luck with my Q6600. Getting my Q6600 to that speed stable required much more work and volts and higher temps. I can't get this Q9550 to crash.

I do a lot of encoding. It's a bit faster than my Q6600 was but again it won?t set your world on fire. For gaming, the simple fact that it runs natively at 2.83 Ghz over the Q6600 2.4 is in itself an increase but AGAIN nothing to warrant what.. a $150 premium?

Honestly you cant go wrong with either.

 

[dguy6789]

Q9550 is faster, cooler, uses less power, and overclocks better.

 

[JaBro999]

Maybe you go with Q9400 as a compromise?

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: JaBro999
Maybe you go with Q9400 as a compromise?

Yup, not a bad idea at all.

If price is a concern, then the Q6600 is a great bang for buck option.

But the Q9400 & Q9550 will be faster at stock, & with a decent mobo, both will OC higher than the Q6600 as well.

 

[Denithor]

I'd suggest either an e8400 (if you're mostly gaming) or a Q9400 (if you do a lot of encoding).

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

Originally posted by: zerogear
Unless you encode/edit videos or photo edit large files or do folding, you probably will not see any real life difference when using it. I am planning on upgrading to a Q9550 soon, simply because of SSE4 instructions. But for all intents and purpose, you probably couldn't tell the difference.

What encoding advantages does the Q9550 have over the Q6600? I'm looking to pick up a quad for encoding purposes only is why I ask.

 

[JaBro999]

The Q9550 (and Q9400) are from Intels "Penryn" 45nm refresh of the Core 2 product line, which brought a number of enhancements including new SSE instructions that can be used by applications to accelerate certain tasks like media encoding.

Here is a nice summation of some of the Penryn Core 2's benefits:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ar...-performance-sse4.html

 

[Boo025]

Money isn't really the problem, so I guess I'll go with the Q9550. (Just that Q6600 is really cheap, lol)

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl

Originally posted by: zerogear
Unless you encode/edit videos or photo edit large files or do folding, you probably will not see any real life difference when using it. I am planning on upgrading to a Q9550 soon, simply because of SSE4 instructions. But for all intents and purpose, you probably couldn't tell the difference.

What encoding advantages does the Q9550 have over the Q6600? I'm looking to pick up a quad for encoding purposes only is why I ask.

SSE4 multimedia extensions as answered by zerogear. When enabled by the software you are using it can result in a 30-40% performance increase. Just depends on what package you are using for encoding.

 

[Griswold]

Whether or not SSE4/SSE4.1 is good for you when encoding depends solely on the codec. Advanced codecs such as x264/h.264 do not benefit from it because brains beats muscle. DivX is another story. Its just not as clever as these guys.

Taken from those who would know:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=133567