is the q6600 any faster than the e6600

depends, with the extra cores, all ur other 1billjillon windows processes would be off shifted to other cores.

Dont forget multi core is still somewhat new, and game developers are the slowest to take advantage of new things, for fear of losing consumer base due to incompatibility. Give it time and more programs will take full advantage of the available cores.

It depends on what you do with the cores. For me, a quad core CPU is useless for now. I can multitask fine with a dual core CPU.

i sit on the other side of the fence i could really do with the extra couple of cores as i do loads of video encoding. and quite often queue up jobs that take 48 hrs to accomplish if i had a quad theoretically the job would take 24hrs (given extra core and not including better arch) at the end of the day you have to ask what you need it for then look at the cpu charts btu from what i can make out you wont see any improvement

For me, four cores, even eight or sixteen cores would be useful. On all of my systems I run BOINC (boinc.berkeley.edu) to take advantage of the left over power. On each available core, the BOINC manager runs an extra BOINC project data chunk, so the more cores the better, at least for this use. So I would definitely go with the q6600.

i sit on the other side of the fence i could really do with the extra couple of cores as i do loads of video encoding. and quite often queue up jobs that take 48 hrs to accomplish if i had a quad theoretically the job would take 24hrs (given extra core and not including better arch) at the end of the day you have to ask what you need it for then look at the cpu charts btu from what i can make out you wont see any improvement

That's exactly the kind of person Intel is marketing quad core CPUs to.   For me, two of the cores would sit idle 95% of the time, making the added expense totally not worth it.

well all im goin to do is game,internet,and music

in that case you wont start seeing an improvement from quads unitl the middle of next year (alan wake, and whatever the upcoming half life episode will be)

yes it is
the more core you have the better, coz you have load of program running in thr background using up CPU usage, however its not worth paying for unless its really useful to you.

if you use 2 or less high spec programs, then save the money and spen it on a more expensive dual core solution ie 6800.

If you have a finite budget... get a dual and spend the extra $100 on a better GPU, Ram, PSU, etc..

No budget problems, why not go Quad??

I went e4300 + really good other components in anticipation of a quad upgrade (post price drops)...

However, the e4300 is suprisingly more than I need right now... so I'll delay my quad upgrade longer (benefit from more future price drops).