Q6600 vs Q9400

[n00bmlg]

Should I buy a Q6600, or spend a little extra and get the Q9400?

[Rubenis]

Do the 775 to 771 mod and take Xeon - faster clock speed, biger cache, cooler operation and therefore better OC potencial.

[Jumper118]

what motherboard do you have? a xeon x5450 with e) stepping is best £ to performance. 

[n00bmlg]

2 minutes ago, Jumper118 said:

what motherboard do you have? a xeon x5450 with e) stepping is best £ to performance. 

I have a dell optiplex 755 motherboard

[Jumper118]

2 minutes ago, n00bmlg said:

I have a dell optiplex 755 motherboard

thats not very helpful  thats like saying you have an msi motherboard.

[n00bmlg]

6 minutes ago, Rubenis said:

Do the 775 to 771 mod and take Xeon - faster clock speed, biger cache, cooler operation and therefore better OC potencial.

How do you do this?

[n00bmlg]

8 minutes ago, Jumper118 said:

thats not very helpful  thats like saying you have an msi motherboard.

It's from a dell computer, so no OC

[iHardware Shelden]

755s have Q35 chipsets, I currently am building a hackintosh out of one and it should support the 771 socket mod. Make sure you have A22 bios revision also.

[Djole123]

25 minutes ago, n00bmlg said:

How do you do this?

 

[iHardware Shelden]

Ok so after some research it looks like the 771 mod will work but not with the 5xxx series Xeons.

 

http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/2/

 

I would personally recommend an X3220 (they tend to be cheaper than Q6600s and are 775 so no socket mod is required) If you can get the Q9400 and it is not too expensive then go for that, like I said I'm using a Q9400 in my 755 and works like a charm, also apparently SetFSB works on the 755 boards so you might be able to do some minor overclocking in (note the overclock will reset when the system turns off or is restarted but you can easily set it when booted into Windows)

 

 

Really comes down to what you want to do and what the system is being used for so good luck!

[Inimigor]

I've done the 775-771 mod and IMO it's a much better route than getting a Q9XXX CPU.

The Q6600 is awesome, but is not quite enough for a handful of games now, even OC'd. The E5450, while still sweating for recent titles delivers a great performance still.

I used a Dell Optiplex 330 SFF as base for this lil' project. It's my HTPC/LAN rig (I got a USB monitor that fits in my Backpack, and when going for a lan on weekends I just get my "LAN peripherics" bag and take the PC out of the living Room)

Specs:
Motherboard from an Optiplex 380
Xeon E5450 (SLANB) 3.0Ghz (Haven't OC'd yet because I'm still waiting on the silverstone SFX 450W PSU)
8GB DDR3 Kingston Value RAM 1333mhz (2x4GB)
1TB WD Black HDD (Saving money for the SSD, right now is not a priority, so the 1TB is enough for now)
Zotac GTX 960 4GB (+ a PCI-e Extension)

 

3 hours ago, Jumper118 said:

thats not very helpful  thats like saying you have an msi motherboard.

That is literally the easy way to know wich motherboard it is, the other way to identify it is by part number. The Motherboards for Optiplex are unique for each model.
 

 

2 hours ago, n00bmlg said:

How do you do this?

In a short, not so approfunded explanation, You need to use a sticker that "swaps" the position of a few pins, cut the little plastic tabs on the CPU socket bc 771 is sideways compared to 775, add Xeon Microcode to the BIOS (to support features and recognize properly, also for proper stepping) and rock on!

 

1 hour ago, iHardware Shelden said:

Ok so after some research it looks like the 771 mod will work but not with the 5xxx series Xeons.

 

http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/2/

 

I would personally recommend an X3220 (they tend to be cheaper than Q6600s and are 775 so no socket mod is required) If you can get the Q9400 and it is not too expensive then go for that, like I said I'm using a Q9400 in my 755 and works like a charm, also apparently SetFSB works on the 755 boards so you might be able to do some minor overclocking in (note the overclock will reset when the system turns off or is restarted but you can easily set it when booted into Windows)

 

 

Really comes down to what you want to do and what the system is being used for so good luck!

I'd personally get a Dell Optiplex 380 Motherboard, works perfectly with the Xeon 5450 (Either SLANQ or SLANB) and supports DDR3 RAM instead of DDR2, I have one running with 8GB (Might support 16GB, tough I'm not sure and don't have any 8GB sticks to test it, but I think it would work) It's the G41 chipset. I'm using a 380 Motherboard with a E5450 (SLANB) I'm just waiting for my SFX PSU to arrive. Will be posting my "DELLienware" buildlog very soon.

IF you only have DDR2 and wants to keep it that way, the 330 also supports the 5XXX Xeons, with a BIOS update, even the SLANB works fine, the motherboard is cheaper, and I tested it myself, gave to a friend who is getting back into computer gaming, I used 2x 2GB Sticks (4GB ECC sticks didn't seem to work properly there) and a 2GB Galax 750ti Low Profile. But that was before I went kinda nuts and decided to fit the 960 in it.

The 4GB RAM was the biggest bootleneck when I had that 330 Motherboard, many games required more RAM, GTA V, for example, used to stutter A LOT with just 4GB of RAM, with the 8GB and the same 750ti the game was basically stutter free.

I can run it with the 960 on high/very high settings with around 35-45FPS or at medium playing above 60. GTA V gets RAM usage up to 6GB in the blink of an eye.
 

2 hours ago, n00bmlg said:

It's from a dell computer, so no OC

You can use SETFSB to OC it, I overclocked a Q6600 to 3.4Ghz on my Optiplex 330.

If you need help I'm glad to colaborate

[Jumper118]

there is also a mod guide in my sig as well.

[Monkeypeas]

theres also the x33xx xeons as alternatives to the q9xxx range, might be able to pick one of those up cheap if you dont want or dont feel confident enough to mod to 771

[NumLock21]

Want to upgrade to a quad core without any mod, then grab a Q9400 or a Xeon X33xx, both of them supports socket 775. Want to do the mod, then it's a 1 time chance to get it right, so do it carefully. Just because some one mentions that mod, does not mean you have to do it. Linus just build a dual xeon gaming rig for cheap a few months back. Let's all throw away our brand new more powerful computers so we can all build the same thing too! YAY! How about NO.

 

Q6600 run is based on the 65nm and has a 1066 FSB. Q9400 is newer, 45nm and 1333FSB.

[Inimigor]

8 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Want to upgrade to a quad core without any mod, then grab a Q9400 or a Xeon X33xx, both of them supports socket 775. Want to do the mod, then it's a 1 time chance to get it right, so do it carefully. Just because some one mentions that mod, does not mean you have to do it. Linus just build a dual xeon gaming rig for cheap a few months back. Let's all throw away our brand new more powerful computers so we can all build the same thing too! YAY! How about NO.

 

Q6600 run is based on the 65nm and has a 1066 FSB. Q9400 is newer, 45nm and 1333FSB.

Yep, that sums it up.

The mod is undeniably a nice way to go due to it being cheap for a great performance! But it requires a bit of tinkering.

[Waqas409]

Well, im using Q9400 OC @3.4Ghz + GTX 960. I'd say don't get Q9400 if you are doing gaming on it, Specially games like CSGO. It will bottleneck like Crazy. 

[n00bmlg]

3 hours ago, Waqas409 said:

Well, im using Q9400 OC @3.4Ghz + GTX 960. I'd say don't get Q9400 if you are doing gaming on it, Specially games like CSGO. It will bottleneck like Crazy. 

Wouldn't it be better for gaming than a q6600?

[Inimigor]

1 hour ago, n00bmlg said:

Wouldn't it be better for gaming than a q6600?

I think he meant to go for something better than the Q9400

[glitchmaster0001]

On 5/5/2016 at 8:52 AM, Jumper118 said:

what motherboard do you have? a xeon x5450 with e) stepping is best £ to performance. 

what about a xeon x5460 with C0 stepping? how would that compare to the E0 stepping? 

[glitchmaster0001]

i run a q9300 oc to 3.0ghz and it bottlenecks a quadro fx 3800 in games like minecraft csgo and tf2. i would recommend you do the xeon mod trick but you only got 1 shot at it and if you fuck up then your in for some deep shit...  heres the video that i followed to mod my BIOS to support the Xeon CPUs. I just bought a x5460 cpu for $19 on ebay. 

 

[Waqas409]

15 hours ago, n00bmlg said:

Wouldn't it be better for gaming than a q6600?

Yes it will better but im talking about in the long terms, if u plan to attach any 9xx series card eg; 950/960. Then this CPU will bottleneck. So i'd say search for i5-2500 Used components. It will be same price as Q9400 or maybe max $30 above. 

[Jumper118]

5 hours ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

what about a xeon x5460 with C0 stepping? how would that compare to the E0 stepping? 

E0 is miles better. 

[trebor1984]

buy a Q6600 i have it to ad its gud 

[Rubenis]

1 hour ago, Waqas409 said:

So i'd say search for i5-2500 Used components.

It will no be as cheap as Q9400. No way! These cpus still go solid in performance and in price!

 

Xeon is best on price/performance. In cinebench score it manages to get higher score then AMD Athlon 760K, wich is much newer cpu. Bottleneck of course will come at some point, but deal with the fact that this ir old generation of cpus.