Legit Reviews

I can't seem to break 4.0GHz. I'm afraid to turn up the voltage. If I run it at say 1.55v. is that safe? My temps don't break 60c @ 3.99 and 1.45vcore. To get that extra .01 it's taking a lot of volts. Does that mean that I just got a CPU that won't break 4.0 or must I be doing something wrong. [email protected] is 100% stable. Yet 4.0 can't get stable even at 1.5volts.
I guess what I'm asking is, is turning up volts bad if your temps are low?

I personally wouldn't run it that high. Unless you are on water I wouldn't even run it at 1.45V 24/7 (assuming you are going from 1.125V). It's voltage and heat that kills processors, not the clock speed. So supplying that much voltage you are likely slowly killing it.

Like all chips I guess it's really just the luck of the draw.

@ 1.45 my idle temps are 36C and my load temp after 15 mins of Orthos so far is 67C with a peak of 68C. I don't know if that would make a difference on how much I can supply I got a nice heat sink :-D lol. I'll probably lower it if everyone agrees it is hurting it. While I played GRID for about 25 mins today the highest the temps got was still only 58C and Crysis, about 15 mins it got to 56C

Like I said it's voltage and heat that kills processors. It doesn't need to be a combination, only one of the two.

To get to 4Ghz with my processor I'm pumping 1.275V and that's pretty much my limit (i.e. .15V over stock). I have my Xigmatek in a push/pull configuration surrounded by another 120MM fan in the rear and a 140MM right above it.

Damn the Q9550 gets to 4.00 that easy? I think I'll be getting one soon lol.

Don't bother, the Q9550 is almost as expensive as the i7 920. The Q9550S is even more expensive than the i7.

You gotta factor in the $200+ savings just in motherboard, and then another $100 in ram. So the i7 is still a bit pricey.

True that. Unless you are video encoding or other CPU intensive tasks I think your Core2Duo is fine for 90% of applications and actually better for gaming. The reason I bought the Q9550 to replace my E6750 was because I was playing a lot with Adobe Premiere Pro at the time.

how are strong are the individual cores of your quad? For example what is the super pi time @ 4.0ish

Don't know I'll run the 1M test on each core tomorrow and upload the results.

*EDIT*
Results added.