{"id":3296,"date":"2009-02-17T16:24:24","date_gmt":"2009-02-17T16:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=3296"},"modified":"2009-02-17T17:15:48","modified_gmt":"2009-02-17T17:15:48","slug":"q9550s-vs-e8600-delayed-by-motherboard-meltdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/q9550s-vs-e8600-delayed-by-motherboard-meltdown\/","title":{"rendered":"“Q9550S vs. E8600” delayed by Motherboard Meltdown!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes things do not go as planned and I thought I’d give you an update on my Q9550s vs E8600 – Quad Core vs. Dual Core Shootout<\/em>.\u00a0 Three weeks ago, we originally got an engineering sample of Q9550S\u00a0 from Intel.\u00a0 It is the new low-power quad core Penryn CPU.\u00a0 Part One went up a couple of weeks ago: Overclocking Intel\u2019s Q9550s with Cooler Master Hyper N520 . . . Part One of \u201cQuad Core vs Dual Core\u201d Shootout.<\/em>
\n <\/a>
\n Yesterday afternoon, I was really done with Part Two of my benching when I swapped out Q9550s and put in E8600 for ONE last test<\/em> of Crysis<\/span>. ‘Why’, you may well ask.\u00a0 Well, I discovered that Crysis<\/span> apparently uses 10 watts less power with Q9550 at 4 Ghz than World in Conflict<\/span> does, and I just needed to compare E8600’s power consumption with these two games and to check it with Kill-a-Watt again.\u00a0 My motherboard is the usually very reliable ASUS P5e deluxe and everything has been working perfectly since last Summer.<\/p>\n

Of course, I did remember to set everything back to stock before I shut down my PC.\u00a0 On boot-up, it recognized my CPU correctly as E8600 – but at 2.83Ghz! Exploring further, the multiplier was no longer correct nor was it available to change and when I tried to load ‘defaults’, the BIOS screen completely froze.\u00a0 When we tried to get back into BIOS after resetting the CMOS, it wouldn’t go past the BIOS first screen; eventually nothing at all.\u00a0 Of course, trying every combo of HW possible did not make any difference and I guess it is\u00a0 heading to ASUS for RMA this week.<\/p>\n

Well, my article is now a bit delayed further.\u00a0 I am still able to do Part Two of “Quad core vs Dual core Shootout” <\/em>and it should be up in a couple of days.\u00a0 Fortunately, my back-up PC and external hard drive are available so all my data is available to write my article.\u00a0 This very next article covers Quad core scaling with HD4870 and GTX280 and compares E8600 at 3.99 Ghz and 4.25 Ghz with Q9550S at stock 2.83 Ghz, 3.4 Ghz, 3.6 Ghz and at 3.99 Ghz.\u00a0 Finally, to complete Part Three of this Quad vs. Dual Core shootout<\/em> series, an ASUS Rampage motherboard should be arriving in a couple of days from NewEgg.\u00a0 Although it is “open box”, we are pretty confident that we can use it to replace the ASUS P5e deluxe as they are functionally identical.\u00a0 I was actually planning to flash my now broken P5e Deluxe BIOS into Rampage.<\/p>\n

To summarize my personal hardware debacle, Part Two of Quad core vs Dual Core – Q9550S vs E8600<\/em> is a bit delayed and should still be up this week.\u00a0 Part Three – exploring multi-GPU with 4870-X2 and CrossFireX-3 scaling with Quad core – is still on track for the next weekend and should be up March first.\u00a0 In the meantime, we are working hard to bring you up-to-date news and articles that are useful to you.\u00a0 Expect a FarCry2<\/em> game review that also focuses on multiplayer.\u00a0 We have a new high-quality mid-tower case review coming this week also.\u00a0 Best of all, we are now working on an ABT contest for March – with nice prizes to giveaway to you!!<\/p>\n

Stay tuned.\u00a0 I apologize for my delays and I promise to make it up for you. Feel free to sign up at ABT forums<\/a> and say what is on your mind.\u00a0 Our international staff is always available to answer your questions and we expect to stay responsive to what you want us to explore for you in our hardware testing.<\/p>\n

Mark Poppin<\/p>\n

ABT Editor<\/p>\n


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