It seems that the Q9550 prices were not cut along with the E8400 and E8500.
They were supposed to drop to the level of the Q9450. Even then, the price is
a bit steep for an 8.5 multiplier when compared to the Q6600.
Somehow, I lost my Q6600 overclock stability on the Biostar P965. I had to
drop it to 2.8 GHz at 1.35v. It seems that board does not even officially support
the quad cores. So I swapped the board for a Gigabyte DS3L version 1 board
I had bought for my son and was planning to use as soon as someone made a
decent value video card. I built his system with my old E6400 and the P965
in an Antec P180 case and Antec NeoPower 500 power supply. I got him an
HD 4870 because I had a Fry's gift card and they were out of stock on the COD4
that he wanted for his birthday. I considered the HD 4850 that was on sale for
$180, but then I saw the little whizzy fan and said, naa. I really wanted to get
one with more than 512 MB of memory as he has a 24" monitor, but he GTX 260
prices were ridiculous there. I wish now I had just bought something else as I
came around a corner in BF2 and got "the pause." Shortly after, I was dead,
but didn't get to see what killed me. Other than that, it's OK, but we already had
a hair dryer.
Anyway, the Q6600 is now stable at 3 GHz at 1.2875v, which droops to 1.26v
under load. Go figure. Actually I haven't tried higher yet. It gets hot enough
in this room with three computers and a big window facing the sun in the morning.
> It seems that the Q9550 prices were not cut along with the E8400 and
> E8500. They were supposed to drop to the level of the Q9450. Even
> then, the price is a bit steep for an 8.5 multiplier when compared to the
> Q6600.
Q9550: No price drop?! 
Linear Mode
