LGA775 processors are still fantastic as they can keep up with the Core i5 750 relatively well, and the Phenom II relatively well also, but for a number of reasons I would discourage buying one new. They are legacy products, many of which have been discontinued, most motherboards support discontinued (or rare and expensive) DDR2, and LGA775 is also extremely expensive. An AMD Phenom II x4 940 Black Edition 3.0ghz will perform just like a Q9550, but costs half as much as a Q9550, or $128 (newegg), but uses a socket that's still in production, it uses both DDR2 and DDR3, and has unlocked multiplier so it should clock to 3.8ghz very easily by simply changing one number in BIOS and increasing voltage. i5 750 will be faster than Q9550 but costs $200, as will the i7 860 for $280. For $310 you can get an AMD 1090T 6 core 3.2ghz with turbo to 3.6ghz and can usually overclock to 4ghz on air. I can't see why anyone would purchase LGA775 at this moment in time, because the i5 750, i7, & Phenom II murder it in terms of value, with twice the performance per dollar for the Phenom II 940 BE.

The only thing I like about LGA775 in terms of value is the fact that enthusiasts have ditched them and you can buy used Q6600's for cheaper than new a Phenom II. I could buy a Core 2 Quad overclockable to 3.6ghz, 4 gigabytes of RAM, a motherboard, and a nice 8800GT 512, all for $300 if I bought off used components from the net. If you're not doing that, I just don't see the point in going LGA775 instead of Phenom II or i5 750.

The advantage an i5 has over it is that it's almost $100 cheaper, uses a socket that will continue to be supported for years, uses DDR3, runs cooler, and overclocks further. I've seen plenty of people take the i5 750 from 2.66ghz (where it will be as fast as a 3.4ghz Phenom II, or 3.0ghz Core 2 Quad) to 3.8ghz (where it murders everything) on a cheap Coolermaster 212+ cooler, and a cheap Gigabyte P55 board. At them speeds it would be about 20% faster than a Q9550 at 3.6ghz yet 80$ cheaper. Of course, there no reason to upgrade a Q9550 to an i7, in my opinion. But for new processors, the difference is clear.

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Well honestly I don't see the point in getting any LGA775 CPU because AM3 & LGA1156 is a significantly better deal. The only circumstances where it would be worth it in my opinion, is if they components are used. Good luck finding a second hand Q9550, all the power in the world if you can get them second hand. The Q6600 is a processor that can be found extremely cheap yet with a mild overclock it will keep up with the Core i5 (at stock) and the Phenom II (at stock).

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Clock for clock the Q6000 is not significantly far from the Q9000 series, cache inclusive. Q6000 @ 3.0ghz is marginally faster than Q9000 at 2.83ghz. Clock your Q9550 down to 3.4ghz and you essentially will be getting the performance of a Q6600 @ 3.6. Kentsfield has 8mb of cache, compared to 12mb of cache for Yorkfield, 6mb of cache for Yorkfield-6M, and 8mb of Core i5. No the Q6600 isn't as good as the Q9550 obviously, but it's massively cheaper used. Actually I would recommend all used Core 2 Quads', just i've never seen a Q9xxx series for sale used at an acceptable price. That's my opinion, as I'm sure not many people want to buy used processors.

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There's a reason the Core i7 860 is $280. The Q9550 doesn't approach that level of performance, it, at best, is on par with a higher end Phenom II found for half the price. Over a year ago the picture was far different. LGA1156 didn't exist, the Core i7 was expensive, and the original Phenom was terrible, Phenom II was expensive, and DDR3 was more expensive. It's not the LGA775 is unacceptable performance wise, it's just that if someone is going to buy something it doesn't make sense sticking with a socket from the Pentium 4 era that will probably be EOL by the end of the year.

Lucky you live in the US, I have had great difficulty acquiring DDR2 RAM and LGA775 motherboards here in Australia. They're generally at massively inflated prices.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/778-14/giant-roundup-146-intel-and-amd-proces...

Q9550 on average is slower than Phenom II 965 and Core i5 750. Of course, it's possible for that to change in FSX, but I haven't seen any in depth FSX benchmarks.

For the sake of mis-information avoidance..   let me clarify 


If someone were building an FSX computer on a budget.. I would NOT  advise them to get a Q9550 over an i7-920. The i7-920 is THE choice for budget computers

I'm just saying that to get reasonable performance gain over a Q9550.. you have to get into the 'i' CPUs in the $600 range 

Still hoping to avoid flaming.. if a $280 CPU is over a person's budget for building an FSX computer.. well.. you know    And the current stock of AMD processors are second-tier to the current Intel CPUs.. even dollar-for-dollar.

kinda of lost... so ultimately seeing as I can only use AMD's in my mobo will the phenom II 965 (which is at the limit of what I'm willing to pay) be able to run FSX at a good rate?

Thanks

Look at my signature.

In case someone has a socket 939 dual core Athlon 64 X2 to spare (any model will do, up to the 4800+, as long as it's 939) please drop me a message, thanks!

hhomebrewer wrote on May 26^th, 2010 at 1:15am:


Is it new?
Where did you get it from?
What motherboard do you have?

1. Reset CMOS.


2. Trying updating BIOS to the newest one applicable to your board revision.

Newer BIOS should be on Gigabyte website, but remember to scroll down and read the warnings.