CPU advice please

J

Juggy

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I purchased the Asus Formula Crosshair II motherboard now I'm looking for a processor in the avergae price range. 9650 maybe, anyone have experience with them?

Also, did I do the right thing by selling my 775 Q9300 and upgrading to this?

Also, what is better?

AM3 tri core with shared 6MB L3 cache
AM2+ 9750 with shared 2MB L3 cache
 
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Thank you for all the responses:p but I think I'll go with the 9950 as it's in my budget and 4 cores must be better than 3 right?
 
JUGGY said:
I purchased the Asus Formula Crosshair II motherboard now I'm looking for a processor in the avergae price range. 9650 maybe, anyone have experience with them?

Also, did I do the right thing by selling my 775 Q9300 and upgrading to this?

Also, what is better?

AM3 tri core with shared 6MB L3 cache
AM2+ 9750 with shared 2MB L3 cache
Click to expand...

um, ahhh... no, the 9300 sits with the AMD 940 dude... but i think it would be best going for the tri core (720) as that this overclocks quite well and it also has 7.5 mb cache. it also uses less power and has better architecture
 
scotty777 said:
um, ahhh... no, the 9300 sits with the AMD 940 dude... but i think it would be best going for the tri core (720) as that this overclocks quite well and it also has 7.5 mb cache. it also uses less power and has better architecture
Click to expand...

Oh well, bad choice but I wanted RAID, SLI and 6 SATA ports.

You make a good point on the 720, thanks. Btw, it has 6mb cache according to Frontosa pricelist.

/Edit

I see, L2 and L3 combined.
 
JUGGY said:
I purchased the Asus Formula Crosshair II motherboard now I'm looking for a processor in the avergae price range. 9650 maybe, anyone have experience with them?

Also, did I do the right thing by selling my 775 Q9300 and upgrading to this?

Also, what is better?

AM3 tri core with shared 6MB L3 cache
AM2+ 9750 with shared 2MB L3 cache
Click to expand...

google tomshardwareguide
 
May i ask why you changed your q9300? Not really wrong but makes no sense to me as to why, i do not think the 9950 is as fast so it is not really an upgrade as such :).

Not a bad buy and will run well but not quite sure why, did you feel like something a little different?
 
killadoob said:
May i ask why you changed your q9300? Not really wrong but makes no sense to me as to why, i do not think the 9950 is as fast so it is not really an upgrade as such :).

Not a bad buy and will run well but not quite sure why, did you feel like something a little different?
Click to expand...

That's exactly it, I had a motherboard with no RAID, only 4 SATA ports and no SLI. To get a board with 2x16x SLI slots would've cost me the earth so I decided on a little change. Besides, have you seen this Asus board yet, holy smokes it's awesome.

The last AMD I had was the Opteron 146 (I think that's what it was).

So, is the best proc for under 2K the 720 tri core?
 
Yup, should be a good chip as well, not sure if you may want to spend the extra cash on the 920 though. Not sure the price difference. Yea you get awesome amd mobo's for cheap cheap :). Games are not cpu dependent now days anyhow so amd will serve you well.
 
Thanks for the advice guys, 720 it is then. I'll get a 920/40 in a few months when I've recovered from my upgrade. Think I'll get a 1066 4GB Dominator set of ram first though.

I think the 940 would be best as it has an unlocked multiplier.
 
Q9300 trades blows with the PhenomII 920,

Q9400 + Q9450 do the same with the PhenomII 940,

The extra cache on the Q9450 gives it only a very marginal lead over the Q9400, to be exact you'd only notice the difference if you read the numbers from benchmarking..
 
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That said the Q9300 is a rubbish OC chip.

Well got the 720 this morning and set the RAID and installed Win7. Very nice although the WEI is exactly the same as the old setup bar the fact that now the proc gets 6.7 instead of 7.3:(

Oh well, anyone know of a good budget cooler for this chip?
 
windows experience index, it gets less because the scoring scheme has changed from vista to win7, to make provision for newer hardware. if they kept it the same then all hardware would get max scores eventually.
 
Q9300 may be a rubbish OC chip, but it's 4 cores vs your upgraded (downgraded) 3 core setup, and I would take a Q9300 OC'd to 3GHz (430x7=3010MHz) anyday over a Tri-core PhenomII..
 
JUGGY said:
That said the Q9300 is a rubbish OC chip.

Well got the 720 this morning and set the RAID and installed Win7. Very nice although the WEI is exactly the same as the old setup bar the fact that now the proc gets 6.7 instead of 7.3:(

Oh well, anyone know of a good budget cooler for this chip?
Click to expand...

the 720 has unlocked multi as well, so all you gotta do is get the chip to about 3ghz/3.2ghz (which is hardly a strain for it) and it should be getting you those 7.3 points :)
 
dudewotevr said:
Q9300 may be a rubbish OC chip, but it's 4 cores vs your upgraded (downgraded) 3 core setup, and I would take a Q9300 OC'd to 3GHz (430x7=3010MHz) anyday over a Tri-core PhenomII..
Click to expand...

Lucky it was my choice then;) I was an AMD fanboi and it's time to go back.

Was getting bored besides a change is as good as a holiday they say. I did have it at 3.1 for a short while.

The multiplier on the Q9300 is 7.5 as far as I remember.
 
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