Advice on upgrade path please

[raf]

I've soldiered on for many years with my e6600 at 3.2 and it's served me very well indeed but with newer titles seeming to like more than two cores it's time for me to upgrade. I'm on a very tight budget as I'm rather skint at present and saw this setup for around £170 in another thread:

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail [HDZ955FBGMBOX]

MSI 870-C45 AMD 770 Chipset (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard

OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3P1333LV4GK) [OCZ3P1333LV4GK ]

I'll grab a new graphics card further along the line, the cpu is most important to me as I mainly play mmos.

Would I be better off going for this or opting to buy a cheap q6600 off ebay or the mm whilst keeping my current mobo/ram and clocking that to a similar speed to my current setup?

I know the i3s are well thought of at the budget end of the cpu lineup but they're dual core which I'm reluctant to stick with.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[pastymuncher]

I would be tempted to drop in a Q6600 for now and clock it as far as possible. Even on the bay the average price has dropped to around £60 these days. Just make sure it's a SLACR G0 revision. The Phenom will be quicker but not by all that much.

 

[raf]

Thanks for the advice pastymuncher, I shall start searching for a Q6600 G0.