E84/500 or Q6600?

[Devil_Spawn]

E8400/E8500 or Q6600?

For budget gaming pc, which is likely to perform better in current games (ut3,tf2,crysis) etc, and which is likely to have the longer lifespan for later games?

graphics card will be an 8800gt

i was pretty sure about getting the q6600, but these new intel chips have a damn high clock speed, and overclock even further!

is the price difference between the 400 and 500 really worth it?

any comments about either?


edit: just to note, i will _not_ be encoding, or atleast encoding where speed or time is much of an issue.

 

[Devil_Spawn]

i dont think i would complain about buying a quad core of some sort in a couple of years, and it would be nice to get the improved performance right now instead of later. Chances are i will get a really cheap sli motherboard available, either

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-099-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=174
or
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-221-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=174
is there a preference on these? is there any point at all in going nforce 7?

(im likely to go for the asus one)

 

[Devil_Spawn]

the idea behind me getting sli would be for longetivity - cheaper future upgrades, as we cant see into the future, its hard to tell if its worth bothering, but in a couple of years time im sure a second 8800gt will be much cheaper than a *insert future graphics card here*

whether i will want a new mobo by then is a different story....

 

[Devil_Spawn]

ok, ill trust you guys on this one, you certainly have more posts than me!

what board would you reccomend?

this one any good? http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-000-OK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913

should i bother with 1066mhz ram?

 

[Devil_Spawn]

difficult decision... i think i might go with the q6600... it still has those 2 cores for gaming than a dual core has, and another 2 as a future investment.... or something like that!
from reviews i hae managed to pick out this cooler
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-041-AK
as far as i have been able to tell it beats the arctic freezer 7 pro, which i have heard a lot of good thing about, is there any other cooler you guys can vouch for?

again... should i bother with 1066mhz ram?

 

[Devil_Spawn]

ah dont get a Q6600 mate, its too easy to overclock. i expected at least 4 days of tweaking to find a stable overclock like i had to do back in the days of my amd 3500+ but this thing did like 3.4ghz stable with only a few voltage bumps... damnit

THE HORROR!

edit: i also have pretty much run out of artic silver 5, if there is not enough to cover the cpu, should it be ok to clean it and use artic 2 instead? or is there a major difference between the two?