E8400 OC vs Q9550 Stock.. Which do i use?!

Hi all!

So my current Rig (getting old now), is going strong. Ive been playing the latest games on high settings at 1080p on my Tv easily. The issue is it feels like the CPU is the bottle neck of my old rig. Im not looking to upgrade to a new setup just yet as i cant find a game that my current setup can play at 1080p. When the day comes that my pc fails at a game and wont run in full hd at high settings.. ill fork out for a new Pc.

Im currently running an E8400 (owned since new), its been happily over-clocked to 4Ghz and never given me any issues. Recently I've come across a Q9550 for free, rather than on selling the chip or using it in another Pc i was considering using it as a "final run" upgrade for my old 775 Rig.

However i cant seem to find a clear answer anywhere on Google that states the Q9550 will actually be better than an OC'd E8400.. yes more cores and a higher L2 cache are always better, but the higher clocked cores of the E8400 will always make single thread tasks a breeze.

Has anyone done this CPU swap before? is it worth changing out the CPU? is there any hard data that proves the Q9550 will actually give better HD rendering performance, better gaming performance and better over all use than the E8400?

Current Specs (The ones that matter):
CPU: Intel Core 2 E8400 3Ghz, OC'd to 4Ghz
RAM: 6Gb DDRII 1066 OC'd
Mobo: Asus P5Q Pro Turbo
Vid: EVGA GTX 570 HD OC'd

The PSU will handle the extra draw from a Quad, but i still have no evidence to prove that this CPU swap will actually give any more life to my old Pc.

Thanks guys!

Depends on what you are doing with youre pc, some games that use more treads will definetly benefit from the q9550, and alot of software to, as the use more treads, in single treads the difference is not that much.
but you can overclock the q9550 also.

Why don't you just overclock the Q9550 to 3.8GHz then you can have your cake and eat it to.

I did a similar comparison a few years ago. To run my old e8600 or a Q6600. The e8600 at 4.5 or 4.6 was almost as strong as a stock Q6600.

wingman99 said:

Why don't you just overclock the Q9550 to 3.8GHz then you can have your cake and eat it to.

Click to expand...

+1.

Would definitely look at this option. Especially as newer games are favouring more cores/threads for performance increases.

Heck if it's a good chip you could get 4ghz on it probably anyway.