There's plenty of benchmarks out there to check. Sites like Anandtech and some of the other big ones have been over them several times now. You really should take a look.

In most games performance is pretty close (and honestly a little slower than equivalently clocked core 2 duo chips) but what a lot of game devs are saying (like Carmack..) is that the Quad Core chips are starting to see more and more use.

Crysis is a good example of a game that should benefit nicely from the Intel Quad Core stuff. The devs have said that the game dumps certain game systems like Physics and Sound off onto other cores and helping overall performance greatly.

I'm hoping the Supreme Commander expansion will patch in better multicore support and offload some things other than sound to extra cores on multi-core cpu's. The other big example I can think off of the top of my head is Alan Wake (though it was delayed to Q1 2008 I think) which supposedly makes extensive use of Quad core cpu's.

*edit*

Here's a link to the benchmarks in Anandtech's QX6800 review.

It's an interesting read. The Core 2 Quad's come in the top five in pretty much every test they run and place top 3 over all the regular Core 2 Duo and other chips in several. With the Q6600 now dropped to a mere $270ish, depending on where you buy it, you just can't go wrong with one. The Marketing vs. engineering argument doesn't hold up against benchmarks showing the quadcore chips winning almost every single productivity based benchmark available. Just as an example.. they run one test in Adobe Photoshop CS3. The E6400 I have now finishes the test in 47.4 seconds. The Q6600 I just bought finishes in 28.3.

That said.. if you're purely after the best gaming bang for your buck right now then the E6850 dual core chip for $260ish is by far the best deal out there.

I'm trying to make this upgrade last longer than my previous ones though. Games like Crysis, Alan Wake, and even Supcom should benefit from this upgrade for me and I'll be far better off a few months into the winter than I would have been with my E6400.

Survey says...

Yes. Sure. Why not

Yeah, it's all mounted and survived the smoke test. AMD64 4000+. Though on S754, but, hey, it's shiny!

Valve has also said that Half Life 2: Episode 2 will support multi-threading. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2050558,00.asp

I'm going with a Q6600...just can't decide which motherboard. Currently running SLI but leaning towards not in the future. Probably end up going with an Intel P35.

I've been thinking about building a new gaming rig, but ....also thinking of burying my pcgaming habit.

I'm still sitting the fence. My next big hardware gaming purchase will be either a cpu/mb/ram/vid card upgrade, a 360 or a PS3. I'm only going to get one. I haven't made up my mind yet on which one. I'm in no hurry. I got a computer that plays BAttlefield 2 well enough and a Wii. And so I'm waiting for a 'Must Buy' signal.

Thin_J I had a ton of annoying issues with my eVGA 680i SLI board I bought earlier this year. It was insanely picky about the way some of the drivers etc were installed with XP. It essentially took me 3 installs of XP just to get the onboard NICs functioning properly. After reading through their forums it sounded like I was fairly lucky with how few problems I had with mine. Then again this was ~5-6 months ago so maybe the newer revisions are a bit friendlier. Back then I think the top end ASUS board was having less problems than the other 680i boards but I haven't read up on it since I built that box in Feb.

I appreciate these affirmations that I was right to just go to the store and buy a computer I could walk out the door with rather than try to assemble some piecemeal monstrosity with no will to live. It almost makes up for the expensive temptations. Almost.

Thin_J, is that high-voltage RAM? If the motherboard is set to 1.8v (the default) to start with, but the memory requires 1.9 or higher, you sometimes can't boot to set the voltage higher. One possible fix would be to visit a local computer shop and pay them a few bucks to set the voltage to what you need.

This was one of the first things I checked out. It boots fine at 1.8v in my Asus board. I exhausted pretty much every possible option to try and figure out if the board was bad. The only thing I did fail to try was booting the board out of the case to see if it was shorting somewhere. It doesn't matter. It's on it's way back to newegg right now and I have an Abit IP35 Pro on the way.

All the parts have arrived today except for the Q6600. I was hoping to put it together this weekend but it looks like I have to wait until after next Tuesday . Your stories kind of scare me. I'm hoping not to run into any problems with the EVGA mobo.

EVGA 122-CK-NF63-TR 680i SLI ATX
OCZ Platinum 2GB SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB PCI Express
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 ATX Mid Tower
Rosewill RP500-2 ATX 2.01 500W Power Supply
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz
Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA
LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA
ACER|LCD 22" DVI X222Wbd Glossy

Well I got everything in and working. I hate installing processors. Since I do it every 2-3 years, I completely forget that I'm supposed to install the processor before installing the motherboard. I think I took the motherboard out of my case 8-9 times. In the end, I couldn't even use the cpu cooler I bought to go with the processor and just used the stock one. I hope it's okay that my processor is at 50c on standby and while running intense games shoots up to 55c.

But other then the heat, everything works great. And thanks again for the advice MikeMac, I did your solution at the beginning and never ran into any difficulties.

Nope, but you can RMA it. But as of right now I see no reason to overclock anymore =/ (and the A1 version only has 1 nic port instead of the 2 that the AR has).

Ive had the AR version since December and I love it. No issues yet. And like I said in the other thread, Vista 64 is working like a charm so far... very happy with it.

PAR

Because I kept installing it wrong. It required a plate in the back of the motherboard, which I've installed them before but for some damn reason I was stupid while installing this latest one. So on the final try, I had installed everything into my computer and motherboard, then I realized the heatsink wasn't perfectly touching the cpu, so it needed to be adjusted. Once I unscrewed it from the processor, the back part slipped, making it impossible to reinstall unless I un-did everything in my motherboard and took it out. Luckly the stock one that came with the processor didn't need some back plate installed. I'll probably install it at some point but I was just so sick of dealing with it.

Installing the cpu and cooler is the least fun part of building a PC, especially with the funky way LGA775 socket coolers go in. That and getting the mobo to line up just right with the rear shield. I built my new rig last week and had to re-insert the mobo 5-6 times. My cooler, an Arctic Freezer Pro 7, is an absolute monster, it barely fit in my Chieftec Dragon case, which is pretty roomy. But it sure does the job! My old temp ranges were 41-57C, now they are 33-41C.