DakarM

i haven't heard/read of anyone that has been able to get to 4ghz without serious upgrade in heatsink. i was able to nudge 3.6xxghz with my q6600 using cheap ram but that's close to the upper limits of that setup.

dE.fUsEd

On the Q9650? There are people running that with stock fans.
You can google and find people pushing that mark.

The Q9650 stock clock is 3.0Ghz.

Nec

my q6600 is still in good order

DakarM

i've yet to find any one reliable source that is able to push 4.0ghz reliably. as in install an os, run games, apps (not bench marks). the only one that I saw was where they tested 4 different ones (to figure out if the new stepping helped) and even they were running a big ass heatsink/fan combo. but it's your money

dE.fUsEd

The 9650 seems to easily reach 4Ghz. It's when you try to go beyond that that you start needing insane cooling or water.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=17944284

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?...Language=en-us

http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/...-question.html


With water cooling, you can get beyond the 4.0Ghz mark though. This guy hit 4.25 stable:

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...d.php?t=313902




There's people pushing the 9550 to 4Ghz on air even.

Example: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=17926830



I have been looking in to the 9650 for some time now. And seeing as it's now only $50 more than what I paid for my 6600, I don't see it as much risk.

DakarM

I didn't mean to imply that they couldn't but I wouldn't with the stock coolers. Unless you enjoy hearing the stock fan running at it's max rpm all of the time.

It's not a risk for me either as I can get 50% off what ever Newegg sells at but it doesn't mean I'll fry my cpu OCing that much more and only using stock cooler.

dE.fUsEd

yeah, i hear ya.
wish i got that kind of discount. h:
i would be sportin an extreme. lol

Misa

anyone try the i7 yet?

DakarM

maybe in a few months h:

I like the idea of paying $450 vs $1000

sherwood

IIRC the shared cache on the Q9's can improve performance when running parallel programs which would rather load double/triple/duad copies on a Q6... seems you have looked at the OC'ing already so I won't get into that.


also I'd say that the 9's are probably going to be one of the last major updates for the LGA775 anyway, so if you're looking to stay with your board/memory it probably wouldn't hurt to just upgrade it as the i7 route is expensive. More and more programs are also making use of SSE4, so thats a plus if you're into any programs that can/possibly will make use of those extensions in the future