Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9550 2.83GHz 1333MHz 12 MB LGA775 EM64T CPU BX80569Q9550

At $250 it's still a good option to upgrade your older C2D, especially a 65nm part like an E6850 or lower.I got mine to replace an E8600 C2D I had overclocked at 4ghz. With this quad overclocked to 4ghz it's a nice new level. Paid $200 at the time which is a fairer price. I went from C2D/4gb to C2Quad/8gb for not too much dough and won't need a new PC for another few years.Took a bit of tweaking to get stable 4ghz 1.38v overclock (Gigabyte EP45-UD3P and 8gb G.Skill ddr2 1066). Using Noctua NH-U12P cooler. Very happy now that I have it dialed in. System is quiet and fast.Runs great, stays below 60C. 8800GT screams. No CPU bottleneck here. MW2 runs smooth at 1900x1080 maxed out graphics. I sold my GTX280 and don't really miss it, now that I have this cpu to push the 8800GT.buy an aftermarket cooler if you overclock beyond 3.4ghz (which is easy at stock voltages).Most people won't need to overclock though.Make sure your motherboard is good with the 45nm CPU's. Just because it's socket 775 doesn't mean it will work.If I were doing a new budget build I'd probably choose the i5-750 or a Phenom X4 on AM3 platform.

I have searched for over a year, watching prices on new products skyrocket, watching others stay the same. I had everything-1000 watt power supply, huge quiet case full of fans, Geforce 9800 GX2 video card, awesome motherboard. Finally, after much soul searching, internet bulletin board/forum searching I decided on this processor. I added 8 gig of ram. It rocks. It's stable. It is unbelieveably fast and runs everything my son can throw at it by way of gaming at the highest levels.Never a stutter. Runs Win7 (64bit). No glitches. First thing I've built from scratch and it actually works. There may be some other processors out there which have higher ratings, but, for my money, THIS WAS MORE THAN I EXPECTED. The new 'i-whatever' processors are out and the higher intel core extremes, but I can't see paying the price of a good used car for just a part of a gaming computer. The video card was pricey enough. Now I've got to find another video card to match to run them dual-banging to take care of the near future of gaming.

This is still by far the best bang for buck processor you can get.Out the box its at 2.8 so which is more than enough to run pretty much anything faster than any Dual core, yes even the E8400 4Ghz.The Core is easily overclockable to 3.5Ghz at which point it becomes a whole new level of awesomeness, it'll handle any game like Crysis and run them with no problems or hiccups.I use my processor mainly for console emulation, to put things into perspective i was running a 4Ghz E8400 and the Q9 clocks out 60fps solid where the E8400 would clock 40-55 unstable.Testing this versus the i7, the gains from the i7 are negligable as they clock the same times with any programs on the market right now, so dont bother going i7 when till much much later.Q9 is the processor for you.

Got it to replace my Q6600. What a difference! Runs approx 10C cooler at idle and on any game using real temp log. Also with OCCT and all this with my old Q6600 stock fan as the base on the cooler that came with the Q9550 is much smaller and has less fins/cooling area from what I can see. Maybe the included cooler works just as good but I had this one and it works so good I don't need to use my Zalman cooler, nor make any chgs.Fast enough, I really don't need to OC as I'm not into bragging rights. I'm more into OC'ing memory and video cards which are the gaming workhorses.R.C.

I was fortunate enough to get a used copy of this chip for a good price. This chip is pricey, but I knew that the 12 megs of cache and the 1333 fsb would be a heavy advantage. Benchmarks showed that this chip runs 3 times faster than my old pentium D dual core 3.2 with 800mhz fsb and 2 mb cache. But in real world use, where memory access is very important, it's better than that. The old cpu used to typically spend 30 to 40 percent of its power to keep the machine running, Now it's more like 2 to 4 percent, so that is a fantastic advantage. Of course, the cpu can not make up for slow disks. You may want an SSD or two to keep up with this thing.The advantage of getting a chip like this is that the characteristics of your mainboard kind of fade into insignificance. It has so much cache that it just avoids using the mainboard. Most everything happens on chip, and only occasional requests for data are required.I was unable to overclock this chip, but I think that was a weakness of my old mainboard. Reports assert that this chip can be aggressively overclocked. On the other hand, the machine is so much more responsive than it was earlier, I think I hardly need to overclock.

This is an old cpu from the year 2006 days. It is still fast and powerful. For $70 all you'll get is a pentium. This core 2 quad is as powerfull as an i3-4000. It's the socket that slows things down. One has to used slower memory. Very happy with this cpu.

Although the Core i7 beats this processor handily in just about every application, the lga 775 and ddr2 platform are still considerably cheaper. This baby overclocks fairly well for a quad, I would say 3.4-3.5 Ghz is guaranteed. Mine hits 44C on p95 load with water at 3.4 ghz. I paid 320 just a month ago so 280 is a much better deal on this chip. Still if you have the money, i7 is probably worth it. In games, WITHOUT using sli/crossfire, the difference between yorkfield and nehalem is negligible. GTA IV and Crysis, two hardware hungry games, run very well on this processor with a gtx 260 core 216, far better than on my amd dual core machine with the same gpu. This is a worthy upgrade for older dual core users, but maybe you might want to wait for the i7 platform to get cheaper if you already have a kentsfield or wolfdale.