EggXpert

What do you guys think?

How long would you be willing to wait?

Q9450 now

Depends on your budget and whether you building from scratch or just upgrade.

If you building from scratch perhaps Intel (Nahalem) or AMD (Shanghai) cpu would be probably the best way to go.

If you already gotten the rest of the parts, you should get Q6600 IMO still the best bang for the bucks.

my rule of thumb: best you can afford when you can afford it

So,

What are the chances of getting the Q6600 G0 stepping to 3.6 GHz (400*9)?

I'm looking at the OEM Q6600 on Egg right now (Item#: N82E16819115018 ).  The pics show SLACR (G0) stepping.  Does this mean I'm gonna be getting G0 if I order that part?

It would seem there's a good chance to eek 3.6 out of the Q6600, and it's really hard to pass up that opportunity for less than $200 bucks.  However, if it's difficult to do, then I'm in a conundrum again I suppose.  I kind of figure going to 3.2 GHz (400*8) on either the Q6600 or Q9450 would be a cakewalk.

I've all but discounted the idea of a Q9300 as it's rather neutered L2 Cache-wise, and I couldn't push it past 3.0 GHz without screwing with my RAM, which is more than I want to do realy.

Thoughts, opinions?  Appreciated!

~Nate

SLACR (G0) do mean a G0 version of the Q6600, as in term of overclocking there is no guarantee.  Even with identical setup performance may bevaries, so whether the Q6600 can reach to 3.6GHZ is still questionable.  It is very do able with a decent mobo, ram and cooling solution. 

If you have the money go with the Q9450

Here's a good review of it. 

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/intel_q9450/

This is a day late, but Newegg had one fire sale going for the AMD 9600 quad core.  It was effectively priced at $115 with the Sapphire 4850 combo, no mir, a few days ago.  Then Newegg went loco and dropped the 9600's price to $135 while still keeping the same -$55 combo discount, effectively making it the cheapest quad core in existence at $80.  Better yet, both were free shipping... so both for $274.

But that was yesterday and yesterday's gone.  The cpu is now out of stock and no longer part of a combo deal. 

Yeh that would have been a buy.

so what are you waiting for?  Nelham?

but  i don't think it is a good idea to wait for any newcomers

and go with the Q9450 the new 45nm tech core it will run cooler.  

It's really a question of what u can actually afford or how much you want to spend. Well, i'd personally be happy with Q6600, it's a beast of a processor (for me).

The Q6600 overclocks very well and gets to around 3.2 to 4 Ghz. The Q9300 doesn't overclock as well and has less cache, but still has a 7% performance increase against the Q6600. For $100 more, then just get Q9450 with 12MB cache, but still the same hindrance in overclocking....

So....if wanna the higher end processors that clearly perform better, then go for Q9450. XD

Though I have seen the q6600 clocked to 4 do realize that this would be a more unstable solution, and at that would probably significantly alter the life of the cpu, also note when you get that high into overclocking on this pc, liquid cooling will be something you wanna think about, 3.2 is very possible on air, 3.4 maybe, but most above that will need a better cooling solution. Last thing you want is to fry it.

I'd say you wait

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8297&Itemid=1

July 20th will be sweet ! :-p

I may be tempted to get a Q9550 then and ditch my Q6600