Originally Posted by
Delsus
Yors may be more powerful than low end i7s but i7s are have alot more featured to use all cores more effectively than yours, also the have 2 threads per core which allows them to multitask or run applications that support hyperthreading more efficiantly than the Q9550.
The high send i7s are the extreme seires which have 6 cores at 3.4 or 3.6 so they are hugely more powerful, but even with a low to mid range i7 you should see some performance increase.
Also a low end i5 is not comparable to your cpu because the i5 is dual core (admitedly with 4 threads) and yours is quad core, while I say 2 threads per core makes it more efficient, it does still have the physical limits of a dual core for i5 and quad core for an i7