New CPU advice

[Dobzhansky]

Hey people

I'm looking to upgrade my CPU to get the most out of the rest of my set up.
I know I'm not going to be getting the latest CPUs, mainly because I bought the motherboard reasonably recently but also price-wise I don't mind being a bit behind for more of a bargain.

Anyway I have:
ASUS P5Q-E
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
Sapphire ATI Radeon 4870
3GB RAM (spread across 3 slots - someone is bound to tell me this is a terrible idea)

I was thinking E8400 / Q8400

Any opinions?

cheers

 

[Dobzhansky]

I will ebay for the q6600, looks good with the G0 stepping.

For the RAM, I already have 2x1GB corsair XMS2 and another 1GB of generic RAM. If I just get another two sticks of 1GB XMS2 (and lose the generic) will that be equivalent to the 2x2GB setup or does running 4 sticks lose dual channel capability, could save me £20 so I thought it worth asking...

cheers.

Ps previous ram is XMS2 PC2 6400 C4, new Ram would be C5, different latencies might be a problem?