My goal with this multi allotment bloodbath of tests, benches, overclocks, and all out mayhem is to explore an assortment of questions and myths and all around shenanigans accompanied with all the above. Now you may be sitting there thinking, “Well Duke no one cares about old 775 socket CPUs and for sure don’t care about reviews they have seen on other sites.” For you I say people do care, my fan club cares, and I care. This review will cover many questions and one being is it worth it to upgrade and would the be the best thing to upgrade on a limited budget. Now you may say, “But Duke why spend $300 on a chip when you can spend $5-600 on an I3/I5/I7 system.” I would say that there are a lot of people who do not or can not upgrade to the newest tech every time it is released and therefore the $300 on a possibly amazing chip would be as far as they would go (we shall see in a later segment of the review,  so stay tuned) Then you may say, “But Duke Windows 7 is just another measly operating system why do you care?” First off I would back hand you for questioning me so many times and ask if you are a MAC fanboy. Secondly I would say that it may or may not be another measly operating system. It could be the best thing since sliced bread. It could also be the worst thing since Mickey Rourke started acting again *jab jab*. Who knows but I will hopefully find this out and at least provide some solid evidence one way or the other. From what I have heard Windows 7 is living up to the hype and blows Vista out of the water. We shall find out …

I want to explore just how dominant the QX9650 is over the dual core E8400. Does it come close to anything the QX can do? Would it justify the upgrade albeit the same 775 socket? Does the performance suffer if you upgrade to Windows 7 64bit operating system? If so, how much? Do you gain anything from the upgrade apart from just a shiny new GUI (graphical user interface) Is it even worth the money to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7? What are some nifty changes some users my not realize?

Well in my multi segment review, yes I said multi segment review, I will answer or at least try to answer every question above. Heck I may even answer stuff I didn’t even mean to or set out and to try to do. The reason for multiple segments is that there will be a lot of pictures and information that would put people to sleep in 1 read. So with knowing that I decided to make more than 1 and plus I can post as I go for the most part. That is what makes it all worth it and fun to boot. The unknown is out there and I am going to try and wrangle it, tie it down, kick a little dirt in its face and make it give me answers!

So with that said here is a list of my plans of action for this multi allotment review.

1) I will run benches and other tests at stock speeds (Win7 / XP).
2) I will run benches and other tests at overclocked speeds (Win7 / XP).
3) I will run benches and other tests with just the CPU overclocked and Just the GFX card overclocked so people can see what they add separately and see how important each is to the tests.
3) I will overclock the Nvidia 280 along the way and supply results and benches of its performance and see what all I can get out of the beast.
4) I will provide my best commentary and hopefully some well thought out repartee along the way
5) At the end of this I will hopefully be able to answer all the questions and come to some solid conclusions as to whats better or is the upgrade legit ect. ect.

Programs I plan on running: (the list is subject to change. I may add or subtract stuff along the way)

• PCMark05, 3DMark05, 3DMark06, 3DMark2001 SE
• Gun Metal Benchmark
• SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2009 ( Processor Arithmetic, Multi-Media, Multi-Core Efficiency, Power Management Efficiency, Cryptography, Video Rendering, GPU Processing, GPU Bandwidth)
• Aquamark3
• Wprime
• Cinebench R10
• Meta Bench
• Copying DVDs
• Super PI – 1M, 32M

I think I have enough programs to keep me busy and put out a nice overall review on everything.

Soooooo with all of that said lets check the system out that will be running the tests:

E8400/ QX9650   //\\ Fuzion V2 Water Cooled
ASUS Maximus 2 Formula P45 //\\ Swiftech MCR320 tri rad
PC Power and Cooling 750quad //\\ Swiftech MCP655 pump
BFG GTX 280 1GB //\\ Danger Den DD-Tieton Water Cooled
2×2 GB Corsair Dominators Creative SupremeFX X-Fi

Windows XP SP3 //\\ Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Keep checking back because I have already started benching the E8400 and I should be working on typing up part 2 in the next few days.

Cheers!