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**parsec** · 05-27-2013, 02:59 AM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

The first thing you need to check is the BIOS version you have, which must be F14 or later to support that CPU. Verify that by searching for the Q9650 on Gigabytes CPU compatibility list for your board, which is still listed on their web site. It looks like all revisions of your board will support that CPU, with the correct BIOS.

The Q9650 actually has a lower TDP than the Q6600, 95W vs 105W, so extra cooling may not be an issue. The FSB of the Q9650 is 1333, which may be supported by your board, depending on the revision (unknown to us now.)

The only alternative would be a Core 2 Extreme CPU, if it was compatible, and you could get one.

**Dewdman42** · 05-27-2013, 03:47 AM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

GA-P35-DS4 rev 2.0 F14 is what I have. I believe all the revs of that mobo support 1333 FSB, but am I missing something you were asking? Does it matter if my RAM is PC26400 (ie 800mhz)?

Here is what I found on gigabyte's website:

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Socket 775 - Intel P35 - GA-P35-DS4 (rev. 2.0)

Looking at that list, there are several Extreme's listed as supported, though they have a comment on a few of them that says "by overclocking" which I didn't understand. I'm not familiar with the extreme's, what is the low down on those? Different stepping? Does that make them more overclockable or something of that nature? Can you elaborate a bit on the Q9650 vs QX9650, the difference as they are both supported it would appear, but the QX is 130Watts.

There is a QX9770 that also appears to be supported, but I'm dubious about that one, 1600 FSB it says. but any thoughts about that?

The same question will apply though will I run into any heat issues with those? I don't want to spend any more money on new cooling. What I have now runs the Q6600 perfectly cool at 3.2ghz..., I do have an aftermarket heatsink/fan...not water cooled or anything fancy like that.

And if anyone know whether any of those CPU's had any issues with this mobo, even though its on the list..

**krokodil** · 05-27-2013, 03:48 AM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

I wouldn't spend a cent on my old system (GA-X38-DS5 with Q9450 and 4GB) and the speed-up is overrated. There is a GA-EX58-UD5 with an i7-930 and 6GB sitting next to it and on day-to-day work it isn't much faster either. Save your money for a new system :-) From my point of view it's more worthwhile to figure out *what* slows down your system. For my opinion there are far too many programs and libraries loaded at boot time that never or seldom get used and cleaning up this mess is freeing up memory, speeding up the boot and making the system overall more responding. A SSD (128GB or larger) is also something I would consider speeding up an old system :-)

**Brimac** · 05-27-2013, 07:37 AM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

I backup Krokodil' s advise, save money and invest in newer system (Haswell coming soon).
You already have system overclocked to speeds of Q9650.
You're best bet with that system would be a fresh install of Windows7 on a SSD for operating system everything else to 7200rpm mech. drive hd.

**Dewdman42** · 05-27-2013, 02:39 PM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

well I may or may not make that decision yet, right now just gathering some facts. Looks like the Q9650 would be the one to get and they can be gotten now for not much more than $100, so I don't see that as being a large cost if I can get a bit of performance out of it for another year or two. I am building a hackintosh and next machine I am going to spend the coin for a full blown mac Pro, but that is not in the budget this year...

**parsec** · 05-27-2013, 03:44 PM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

Originally posted by Dewdman42 View Post

GA-P35-DS4 rev 2.0 F14 is what I have. I believe all the revs of that mobo support 1333 FSB, but am I missing something you were asking? Does it matter if my RAM is PC26400 (ie 800mhz)?

Here is what I found on gigabyte's website:

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Socket 775 - Intel P35 - GA-P35-DS4 (rev. 2.0)

Looking at that list, there are several Extreme's listed as supported, though they have a comment on a few of them that says "by overclocking" which I didn't understand. I'm not familiar with the extreme's, what is the low down on those? Different stepping? Does that make them more overclockable or something of that nature? Can you elaborate a bit on the Q9650 vs QX9650, the difference as they are both supported it would appear, but the QX is 130Watts.

There is a QX9770 that also appears to be supported, but I'm dubious about that one, 1600 FSB it says. but any thoughts about that?

The same question will apply though will I run into any heat issues with those? I don't want to spend any more money on new cooling. What I have now runs the Q6600 perfectly cool at 3.2ghz..., I do have an aftermarket heatsink/fan...not water cooled or anything fancy like that.

And if anyone know whether any of those CPU's had any issues with this mobo, even though its on the list..

The "by overclocking" refers to the FSB speed. Notice on the mobo specs in the CPU compatibility list, some boards have rated FSB speeds of 1066, 1333, and 1600 by OC, which means the 1600 speed is an OC for those boards, while others are rated to 1600 normally. In other words, the 1600 by OC is not guaranteed. Your board will do 1333 normally, so the 9650 that is rated to use a 1333 FSB, should work. CPUs beyond using a 1333 FSB will be hit or miss.

You'd really need to find someone that uses a configuration that you are thinking about, which is not me.

Like the others that have posted here, IMO the CPU is not the bottleneck in PC performance. Does your use of that PC cause the CPU to operate at 90%+ usage on all the cores most of the time? I don't see a one generation difference in CPU design, like a 9650, making a big difference in performance. If you're not using a SSD now, that would be the best investment in performance, as the others have said.

**Dewdman42** · 05-27-2013, 04:05 PM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

I do music/audio which can definitely need as much CPU as possible. But moving data around the busses is also part of the equation for sure. But definitely we crank a lot of cpu when we're mixing a lot of plugins, etc. Every little bit of CPU helps. Also the newer processor is using SSE4. It also has a larger cache. I'm willing to bet I can see 15-20% improvement in performance, which is well worth the $100-150 or so to get the CPU on ebay, plus i can sell my old one for about $50.

Here are some benchmark comparisons:

Intel Core2 Quad Q9650 vs Q6600

A solid state drive is not going to make much difference for what I do. My boot drive performance is not nearly as critical as readwrite large amounts of audio data to secondary drives. SSD do improve the launch of apps and a lot of typical stuff that a lot of users do, accessing email that is stored on their boot drive, etc. But its not the bottleneck generally for audio workstations. When I get my next power machine I will definitely put one in that though for good measure.

Anyway I am not really interested in debating with you all about whether it makes economical sense to do this or not, I was mostly looking for friendly advice about what I need to watch out for if I decide to do it. There are plenty of other forums where they debate all night long about that. This is the Gigabyte support forum, so was just looking for any specific info I need to know about.

Thanks for the info so far.

**Vinster** · 05-27-2013, 07:29 PM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

I'm sorry, but I agree with the other guys that are saying that its a waste of money, but hey if you have it to burn then go ahead... to get any noticeable differences you pretty much have to double what you currently have...

I've done upgrades similar to this in the past, 2Ghz to 3Ghz dual cores, and initially had a placebo that is was faster, benches supported the though of improvements, but then using the system over the span of a week or two I realized that the difference what not nearly as noticeable as I had hoped.

You want an improvement? Get a used X58 with DDR3, or get a used i7-2600k and OC it to 4Ghz+ on air... don't bother with a new Ivy, wait for haswell

You can read all the numbers you want, you want a noticeable difference, the numbers need to be near doubled in the benchmarks.

Vin

**parsec** · 05-28-2013, 02:28 AM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

Regardless of whether it's a good or poor choice, the Q9650 will work on your board, has a lower TDP than your Q6600 does, and shouldn't be a stress on the rest of that PC, although we have no idea what other hardware you use. Hopefully it will OC as well as your 6600 does, and given its lower TDP, should be a nice little upgrade.

The Core 2 Quad Extreme processors all have a TDP of 130W or more, so will need additional cooling. They were also not cheap in their day, almost $1000 for the QX6850. Some of those need a 1600MHz FSB speed, which is considered an OC on your board. So those look like less of an option.

Why myself and others are reluctant to agree with you on the amount of performance improvement is due to our experience and also what we don't know. You seem to assume the 9650 will OC just as well as the 6600 does, but that is an unknown. You may find that a 9650 will OC well according to information on the Internet, but mother boards are not identical in OC capability.

The difference in the performance comparison you linked to, overall performance using all cores: 6.8 to 6.3, a difference of 0.50. 10% of 6.3 is 0.63, and 1% of 6.3 is 0.063, so the 0.50 difference in score is just a hair under 8%. Some of the other scores looked better than that, but that was the overall scoring.

Of course all of that ignores the big $$$, which is what you are trying to minimize.

**profJim** · 05-28-2013, 04:48 AM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

Originally posted by Dewdman42 View Post

I do music/audio which can definitely need as much CPU as possible. But moving data around the busses is also part of the equation for sure. But definitely we crank a lot of cpu when we're mixing a lot of plugins, etc. Every little bit of CPU helps. Also the newer processor is using SSE4. It also has a larger cache. I'm willing to bet I can see 15-20% improvement in performance, which is well worth the $100-150 or so to get the CPU on ebay, plus i can sell my old one for about $50.

< snip >

Your best performance increase will probably be with ram disk software where you move your TEMP folder and your audio input and output folders to the ram disk. Look at the attached screen-shot that shows disk benchmark results for older motherboards like yours. You would probably want to set up a ram disk that has 2GB or 3GB of space. DataRam's RamDisk software is free for setups that use up to 4GB for the ram disk. I had some issues using it with my system when I set it up to save the ram disk as a disk image so that it could automatically be loaded the next time I rebooted. It took several minutes to save the contents when shutting down or starting my system when I used this option.
RAMDisk - Software - Server Memory Products & Services - Dataram
It's best to think of the contents in a ram disk as temporary and you might loose the files and folders if your system has a BSOD.

My P35-DS3L motherboard is a step or two lower than yours and I can easily o/c with my FSB set to 438 - 450MHz.
I'm currently using FSB = 438MHz so that I can run my 8GB of memory with 4-4-4-10 timings at 876MHz.
My system had a huge improvement when I upgraded from win2k to win7 and installed an ssd boot drive.

Your Q6600 can probably be overclocked to 3.40GHz and possibly up to 3.60GHz.
If you go with one of the higher powered cpu's that you listed I think that the best you will get is a 5 - 10% real world improvement with your audio processing.

**Dewdman42** · 05-28-2013, 12:03 PM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

Thanks for all the comments guys, I'm definitely taking it all into consideration. ProjJim, thanks for the tip about ramdisk, I will look into that later and look for something similar. This machine is actually running as a hackintosh, so I would need to find an OSX solution and/or do some research to make sure OSX isn't already optimizing that sort of thing, not to mention that if such a thing was doing really low level stuff, then it might not work on a hackintosh anyway.

A few years back when I first built this machine, I did a lot of OC testing, tried to push it as far as I could and run overnight stability tests with different OC settings. I ended up staying at 3.2ghz because with just a quiet aftermarket heatsink cooler and very quiet fan cooling, I was able to run stable and decent low temps at 3.2ghz. When I got into higher OC speeds, I would have to increase the voltage for stability and the heat would soar...which I wasn't comfortable with, it would ultimately mean more fan noise or some kind of water cooled system which I was not motivated at the time to pursue. For me, I found 3.2ghz to be about the right compromise of overclocking and quiet/cool performance. I also have the memory running at around 450mhz, so yea am getting around 900mhz there.

As far as overclocking the Q9650, people on the net say it can overclock just fine, some people reported over 4ghz with it. I believe it can multiply up to 11x, but the Extreme version QX9650 has the additional advantage of unlocking the multipliers so that you have more options to run different ratios, etc. I think right now I actually am doing different ratio with the Q6600 in order to boost the ram speed a little more than I am boosting the cpu speed, but its been a few years since I set that up and I can't remember now what I finally settled on. A lot of people say 1:1 is the best way to go anyway, which is essentially what the Q9650 can do. So yes, its theoretical until I actually do it, but I can't see a very compelling reason why I would not be able to OC the Q9650 a bit also into the high 3's at least. The downside might be that I would not be able to boost the ram speed as much as I have done currently with the Q6600, but i'm not sure about that.

At any rate, I am looking at $100 or so to try to upgrade this hackintosh to the max it can do, or else $2000+ to just go ahead and buy an honest to god Mac Pro, which is on my list, but not quite ready for that. Of course I could go buy a used i7 system of some kind or get just a much more modern PC, but if any of you have spent any time setting up a hackintosh you will understand that once you get it working, you don't want to mess with it too much, its a lot of hassle actually, that's why the next one will be a real mac, which is not cheap. $100 to maximize what I have now is really the easiest solution for the time being without making a large investment, even if its only 10% improvement.

**profJim** · 05-29-2013, 05:01 AM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

Your welcome.
A google search using: ram disk macintosh turned up quite a few promising links.
See if you can create a ram disk and if it offers better performance with your audio processing.
Hopefully you can buy a used cpu that hasn't been abused and that it will work well.

Good luck, let us know how everything works out.

**Dewdman42** · 05-29-2013, 12:29 PM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

I did some researching about ramdisk. It seems most people have decided that in real use its not making any difference, because OSX and apps are already making use of the RAM as much as possible to optimize performance, especially audio apps. OSX already has built in support for it, so its easy to try. I will try to think of ways I might use that, but not really coming up with anything that would not just end up stealing memory away from the OS and apps that are already trying to use ram that way as much as possible. creating a ram disk might end up causing other things to swap more. If I had 16gb or more maybe, but this mobo only supports 8GB max.

An SSD is becoming more of a possibility. To get a decent sized one is more of an investment then the CPU, but I could use it in my next machine too. The latest ones are advertising over 500MB/sec for both reading and writing... that is practically as good as a ramdisk and doesn't use any ram. In fact I'm thinking about putting one into the superdrive slot on my macbookpro as well.

Still haven't decided about the CPU. I've seen them new in the box too on ebay, $200 or best offer. It might not be worth the hassle though.

**profJim** · 05-29-2013, 01:04 PM

Re: should I upgrade my GA-P35-DS4 to Q9650?

You should be able to run a Mac monitoring program that shows how much memory is being used with real time updates.
My P35 win7 system seldom uses 4GB out of the 8GB that is available but running a resource intensive program might use a lot more memory.
If most of your available ram is used with your audio processing program, then a ram disk won't help and it could hurt overall performance.

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