New PC?

[looqas]

What Abaddon said. Don't get Q6600. It's being phased out quickly by the newer and faster 1333 FSB processors like Q9xxx series.

Spec is right in a way you can get more speed for old games from those new dual cores by over-clocking them. But the gains are pretty negligible meaning that they don't allow you to go to the "next level of setup options in games", like moving from medium to high level of detail.

All the modern a bit better end quads and duals can handle the games well. It's almost always that the vid card is the bottleneck.

What I'd do now is (I own E8750, over-clocked it to 3.2GHz) if given a choice between new duals and quads. I'm almost perfectly happy with E8750. Very rarely I've noticed that I'd rather have a quad (doing some vid encoding etc.) than a dual. But me being always a perfectionist it always gnaws a bit. If given the said choice I'd buy a new Q9xxx quad and over-clock it modestly (just for the kicks and because I can, not really would need the extra push). And then there's always the prospect of The Game that really uses the quad for it's advantage.

I know from a personal experience that changing the processor is always "not really justifiable", because you need a new mobo anyway in most cases, after you've made your initial purchase.

A comment on the mobo. It looks very solid on spec-wise. 1600FSB gives you the option to up-grade later. DDR2 is a good and solid choice. The DDR3 is in a bit of limbo right now because it does not just deliver price/performance at the moment. You can get later the second 4850 to go as cross-fire when you need to have the next up-grade in speed. The rest of specs are yadda-yadda super-this-and-uber-that marketing bull. They are all the same.

It's entirely upto you though which way you go.

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Flying under radar.