q9400

[rcallicotte]

Has anyone used or know anything about (bad or good) the Intel q9400?

http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLB6B

[neuspadrin]

Newegg seems to love in:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115131

But its 230 bucks, however an i7 920 is also clocked at 2.66 is $270.  I'd say its worth the 40 buck cost to get the i7, but the i7 ram will cost more, need newer motherboard, etc etc.

i7 920, even more loved.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202

[cyphyr]

The spec looks almost identical to the Q9450, apart from a smaller L2 Cache, the Q9400 is 6MB whereas the Q9450 is 12MB. I would imagin that it will perform pretty much the same as the Q9450 altough the larger cache "may" help a bit in loading larger files, calculating populations etc.

richard

ps yeah the i7's are at least twice as fast as the similarly spec'd q9xxx but as neuspadrin says you got the aditional costs of board and ram

[rcallicotte]

An i7 would be handy, if my motherboard would magically change to fit everything along with the new RAM.  Unfortunately...

Thanks for the input.

[PG]

Neither of which are cheap in their own right. For DDR3 RAM you're looking at $200 at least for enough to run TG2, 1336 motherboards are around $300.

[rcallicotte]

Here's the biggest question I have about this - What difference does the 1333 MHz FSB matter to 800 MHz RAM?  I'm not planning to overclock and already have a q6600.  When I compare these two, I see only two big pros for the q9400 over the q6600 - the FSB speed and the cooler running CPU.

http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL9UM
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLB6B

I have searched through the Internet forums, but do not see any glaring differences between these two CPUs.  I've even heard some say it's better to keep the q6600 and overclock it.  But, I don't want to mess with cooling issues, etc.

[chefc]

Newegg seems to love in:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115131

But its 230 bucks, however an i7 920 is also clocked at 2.66 is $270.  I'd say its worth the 40 buck cost to get the i7, but the i7 ram will cost more, need newer motherboard, etc etc.

i7 920, even more loved.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202

Combos create a better price
http://www.ewiz.com/combo.php

[Oshyan]

Practically speaking the higher FSB isn't going to get you much of a gain in performance. A few percentage points at most, and probably only in certain applications. If you already have a Q6600 then I'd say save your money for a Core i7 upgrade in a few months instead.

- Oshyan

[rcallicotte]

Thanks Oshyan.  I'm thinking you are probably right.  I just don't want to buy a new motherboard and blah-de-de-blah-blah.  You know the fun.  Actually, I have things I'd rather do than get a new MB, install the new processor and the new RAM (unless I get a combo like ChefC mentioned, but I saw nothing for an i7) and then make sure it fits in my box.  Whew.  I'm sweating just thinking about all of that "fun".