Not sure if I should go quad or dual

[Cuppa]

I have decided to upgrade my current system and I had decided on the q6600 as my CPU of choice but after asking a few questions on motherboards I am now not sure which chip is best for me.

I don’t do video encoding or 3D rendering and pretty much just game (WoW mostly) I’m not bothered about overclocking (although i will if i have to and have done in the past), I'd rather spend more on a faster stock chip then save money and clock the nads out of it. So my question is what to go for now? Current front runner for me is E8400. Any advice or recommendations are much appreciated.

 

[Cuppa]

Thanks for the feedback, one of the reasons I am now not sure what to go for was bacause I wanted a SLi MB (a second 8800gt will be a cheap upgrade in 6 months time) but I was lead to believe that quads would not OC well with SLi motherboards. Is this indeed the case or should I not worry about it.

Thanks again.

 

[Cuppa]

Oh dear, I fear I am going to show off my noobness now. I was under the impression that to use SLi you had to have one of the nForce MB's. Is this not the case? All the X38/48 boars I've looked at support crossfire but not SLi.

 

[Cuppa]

I am a bit of a luddite.

For a gaming PC:

No sli or crossfire

Windows XP Pro

2Gb RAM

Dual core - fastest you can afford. Upgrade to quad when you have to. Forget the quad core & futureproofing argument. It is nonsense. Always buy for the present.

Don't overclock. Unless you like to play with hardware.

WoW has been reported to have issues with modern graphics like 8800GT. Check it out before buying. Further if you only play wow you really don't need much of a machine. Athlon 2400XP, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7600GT is pretty good.

Purchasing decisions should be application based. What do you use. What hardware does it need to run well. What can you do to maximise stabilty.

Let the flaming begin!

6 months ago my system was more than fine playing wow (3700 san diago, 2 gig RAM X850XT 256) then I got a 22" monitor and the frame rates have gone into freefall (8 to 10 FPS) in some of the areas, I pvp quit a bit so that is not good I upgraded my VGA to a a 8800GT and that has helped a bit but I've since found out that WoW is much more dependent on the CPU than I realised.

Since I am a gamer I though as long as I get a good CPU having the SLi functionality would allow me a good upgrade option for a reasonable amount of money in 6 months time (i'm not going to be able to do a complete system rebuild again for about 2 or 3 years)

Sadly I have no idea what is the best to do, but I'm starting to come down on the side of the luddite

Life was so much simpler with a ZX Spectrum.

 

[Cuppa]

Yep it was the rez that did it, went from a 17" at 1280*1024 to a 22" at 1680*1050

 

[Cuppa]

OK thanks for the help so far chaps, I will go for a e8400 I already have an 8800GT so its just memory and MB to get I was thinking Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-8500C5 TwinX seems pretty good stuff and not to expensive.

So the last question is what board to go for? I'm not going to bother with SLi now so is x38/48 or p35 the one to go for, again any recomendations are much appreciated.