Below is a review I cut and pasted from Newegg about a guy's experience with his Q9550. Since I am running an E8400, maybe a move to the Q9550 running at 4.5Ghz is the way to go. That way, a new motherboard is not required. What do you guys think?RHPros: Absolutely the greatest processor I have ever purchased. Blew my Q6600 out of the water, along with most i7s (unless they're in the hands of a pretty serious overclocker). I picked up a prolimatech megahalems for cooling and on 1.41 volts with LLC enabled on a Gigabyte P45 ud3p board, it's stable at 4.5 Ghz with idle temps at 36 and load temps at 60 on the hottest core. I am absolutely infatuated with how well this thing Overclocked. Mine was e0 stepping so that may be part of the reason. This chip is probably the best intel quad core design, because it is 9xxx series, which means it has the larger cache size, yet the least expensive one with that sought after 8.5 multiplier for the FSB. The 9400 and 9450 will never come near the same speeds because they are so badly limited by the motherboard's northbridge and max FSB overclocks.Cons: *Newegg prices them a little bit higher (you can get them for 170 new in some places).*If you're not planning on overclocking, I'm not sure it's worth the premium over a 9450 or 9400.

I paid full price for my Q9550 and GTX 260 in January. Now both are almost half price. Go figure. Still the best investment I have made. Bob

4.5GHz on a recent batch Q9550 isn't out of the realm of possibility given the proper cooling, a motherboard with good voltage regulation like the aforementioned Gigabyte board P45 board, and the willingness to use lots of volts. I could push my recently-purchased Q9550 beyond 4GHz with more volts but its tough to keep the temps down on air cooling. With a 2-fan OCZ Vendetta 2 in an extremely well-ventilated full tower case I still see temps as high as 77 degrees C in OCCT Linpack stress testing. Although I should re-test that since our A/C was out at the time and is now working. I'll do so later this weekend and see if that affords me any more overclocking headroom. I wouldn't be surprised to see 4.1-4.2GHz out of my setup now that it's not 80+ degrees Fahrenheit in the living room where my quad core resides. My point being, I wouldn't expect 4.5GHz on air cooling with any quad core chip. Simply too much heat to dissipate, not even the vaunted Megahalems, TRUE 120, Thermolab Baram, nor any other HSF du jour can handle that kind of a thermal load.

How about water cooling?RH

Yes, that's what I was getting at. I see plenty of experienced overclockers on Xtremesystems running their quads at well over 4GHz on water. If I can get to 4.1-4.2 on air I'll stick with it though. I'm as performance-oriented as the next guy but I don't think I can justify the investment in water for < 10% performance increase.

I currently have an E8400 clocked at 4GHz. What sort of improvement would I see using the Quad Core 9550? I am guessting just quicker and smoother textures with no increase in FPS.Thanks,RH

Assuming you could clock the Q9550 to 4GHz as well, you should see a minimization of stuttering when loading textures during transition to a new scenery area. This won't affect maximum or average FPS but it certainly helps minimum FPS, which IMHO is just as important as average FPS. Also, who doesn't love sharp textures to the horizon? Even on my E8400 @ 4GHz I still saw blurry textures and stuttering when transitioning to a new scenery area, this simply doesn't happen with the Q9550 @ 4GHz.

I was looking at the cpu it seems to come in a 95 watt version and a 65 watt version.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115041http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115210A big price increase for the 65 watt model do they take the same motherboards or can any LGA 775 handle the wattage of 65 watts and 95 watts.

Does anyone have any idea how the Q9550 compares to the i7-920? I'm thinking of upgrading from an E8500 o/c @ 4.0. Too many stutters. Is it worth the extra bucks to go to the i7?

I was looking at the cpu it seems to come in a 95 watt version and a 65 watt version.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115041http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115210A big price increase for the 65 watt model do they take the same motherboards or can any LGA 775 handle the wattage of 65 watts and 95 watts.

I was thinking about that too if the 65W version would overclock more due to lower power requirements. I could not find out about it much on the web.RH