Breathing new life into an older platform

Just to keep this short, I have an HTPC that uses Jetway's JNC64-LF board. I have taken my T9900 chip and paired with an external videocard which performs quite well. The cooling on this platform is better than any laptop and will handle higher tdp chips.

My question is: Is it worth trading in my T9900 chip + $50 for a Qx9300? The benefit is not only will I have 2 more cores but I will have a chip with unlocked multipliers. I've seen these qx9300 reach 3.06ghz online.

Just wondering if this is worth the upgrade of $50 or am I really just better off in investing in a whole new platform (board, cpu, memory).

Just a comparison - here's a c2q desktop @ 3ghz compared to an i5-2500k.
AnandTech - Bench - CPU

 

If you can cool it you can reach 3.5GHz+ on that quad, with Throttlestop

 

If you currently CPU limited, a QX9300 at 3.06GHz may actually be worth $50 if you can get it to work (of course, if you know that you will still be CPU limited after the swap, you might as well switch platforms). If you're not CPU limited, you shouldn't do the swap at all.

 

You already have an Nvidia chipset. So, you can probably overclock your t9900 to 3.5ghz with nvidia system tools FSB overclocking. And, it would be possible to get maybe 4ghz with a qx9300. Although it all depends on the chip (i'd say with an OEM chip you'd be almost guaranteed to get 4ghz if you can cool it, if not there is always overvolting).

The q9200 is always the best cost effective option.

 

My t9900 of course has locked multipliers and fsb overclocking is not really effective. I originally bought it for my notebook but looking back, maybe i shouldve gone withthe cheaper x9100. Anyhow, the qx9300 sounds very tempting. Overclocking it to 3.5ghz will get me near sandybridge performance.

My temps should be adequate as my current t9900 does not get more than 51/52c on load.

 

Does the q9200 offer unlocked multipliers?

 

Yes




10char

 

The guy I was about to deal with sold his qx9300. Boo. Will have to keep an eye out.
Anyone looking to trade a T9900 for a Qx9300 plus a bit of cash?

 

I had a Jetway JNC64-LF. If you were unsuccessful overclocking the T9900 by upping the FSB, you need to figure out what the problem is. Drop the multiplier and up the FSB to see if the processor is limiting you. The cooling on it was not that great. Better than a cheap laptop, but not as good as some laptops. For me, overclocking was always limited by the cooling, usually for the CPU, but sometimes for the NB until I improved it. I think a quad-core at stock speeds would be the limit of the CPU cooler. Fortunately you can improve the NB cooler quite easily as it is just a standard NB heatsink with normal mounting hole spacing.