Hey I'm upgrading from my E6600, I was planning on a quadcore w/ a 1333FSB seeing how my board is only 1066fsb I'd have to upgrade the board anyways... but there's so much discrepancy on quadcores.. price is a big factor for me and so far I'm leaning towards the Q9300 or the Q9400... i think the only real different is the multiplier on the Q9300 is 7.5 and the Q9400 is 8 ? anyone clarify?

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/&menu=bro ... w=original

Also took at look at some of those.. I'd be happy enough to OC a Q9300 to something a QX9770 could do seeing how the immense price difference.

Any thoughts ? Should I wait until after Christmas as well ? I got a VF900 for a cpu fan, and a Thermtake Armor series full tower w/ the big ass side fan.. so cooling isn't a big issue to me

The difference is in the multipliers.

But i'm sure you know that.

if your not going to goto the q9550, then just grabbing the q6600 would be my recommendation its alot better then the 9300 or 9400.

Yep, more cache per core, and will work fine with the P5B with at least the 1216 BIOS. And about $100 cheaper than a 9400. And unless you get a real lemon, it should do 3.2Ghz easily.

Hrm well you see.. the idea is my girlfriend needs to upgrade her PC because of the newer games she wants to play.. my E6600 is fine for her.. and I was planning on giving her that plus the board... thats mostly why I wanted to go for something of the 1333mhz FSB platform.. along with the new motherboard... So if I just bought the Q6600 I'd have to buy her stuff. .and I'd just rather buy myself something.. As wrong as that sounds... she only needs it to play FPS I needed a quad for rendering stuff....

What about Xeons? I've never looked into them before..

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardw ... ock/9.html

looking down the list.. it seems to perform really well in rendering.. then when you jump to games it lacks behind the E6700's and such.. but not by much and i didnt need it for gaming..

Although I may wait until after Christmas.. the Nahalems are suppose to release this November.. and if so I'll either grab one if their not TOO expensive.. or just grab a Quadcore... they should be cheaper once Nahalems release I pressure.. seeing how its practically a octocore... 4 cores that can multi-thread 2 on each.

Also: The $340 Nahalem seems to outperform even $1200 quadcores that are out currently. The only trip-up is that it performs 5-10% less in videogames as of yet. Now given most games arn't designed for octo-core support.. Theres an easy way to see why