Educated upgrade advice required please

[vwgolfman]

I am about to upgrade my PC but I need to ask a few questions of you guys...

Would you purchase a Core 2 Duo Quad Pro 6600 or a Core 2 Duo E6850 (they are similar in price)?

Will PC2-8500 (1066) DDR2 run reliably with an Asus P5K-E Motherboard?
..or should I purchase PC2-6400 (800MHz) DDR2 as some suggest?
Somebody told me I would need to manually configure the BIOS to enable 1066 DDR and that it may not be reliable.

At 1280x1024 res. is the 8800GTS 512MB graphics card a good performer compared to the 8800GTX?

Is the stock heatsin and fan any good on the Quad Pro 6600?
If I wish to purchase a better one, which one should I go for?

Many thanks for any advice

 

[Admiral Huddy]

Go for the Q6600 "Go" and crank up the FSB.. You should hit 3.2GHz with ease but buy a decent cooler though.

As for memory, people are right. Unless you are overclocking to extremes, just buy some PC2-6400.

As for the graphics, you should look really to the 8800GT at the moment.

 

[topshot]

as for the cooler the Tuniq Tower is an excellent choice

 

[vwgolfman]

Go for the Q6600 "Go" and crank up the FSB.. You should hit 3.2GHz with ease but buy a decent cooler though.

As for memory, people are right. Unless you are overclocking to extremes, just buy some PC2-6400.

As for the graphics, you should look really to the 8800GT at the moment.

Please can you expand on this excellent advice Admiral

 

[split]

Go read Huddy's memory page here.

You can see that PC2-6400 is already faster that the stock FSB of that chip, and it generally clocks well over rated anyway.

They have made it confusing by sticking numbers on it that don't really correspond.