E6850 vs Q6600 vs MMO's Help me pick

well heres my problem, i want the e6850 because from what i can tell, it runs quicker in the benchmarks i see...

but at the same time ppl say that with future games goin the quad core rout, the q6600 will perform up to 50% better than the e6850...

90% of the time i play MMO's and i want the system i build to last me a good 4-5 years before i "need" to upgrade.

will there even be mmo's that use quad cores within the next few years? im not even sure if theres any that take advantage of dual cores... could anyone help me out with this?

btw i use windows xp pro (no idea if this matters)

im getting a GeForce 8800gtx

2 gig ddr2 ram

a 10krpm raptor HD

and heres a link to my Motherboard:

http://www.newegg.com/product/prod [...] 6813188013

i also dont know **** about overclockin CPU's... i tried doin the GPU one cause its a lil easier but i dunno i just dont trust myself...

thx in advance for the help

Probably not MMOs though, remember that they are geared towards targetting a fan base that doesn't necessarily have good hardware to play today's games, that's one of their appeals.

I'd go with the Q6600 though, it's pretty pointless to base your decisions on MMOs since they are not really very demanding at all (today's top MMO can play on high/maxed on 4 year old hardware) and when quad cores will actually be useful then you'll have it already.

I think the Q6600 should outlast the E6850 because of the extra cores.

Also, in a few years you'll probably be able to replace the either for a much faster model for $100 or less, maybe even an 8 core cpu.

The easy answer is the Q6600. Especially if you are talking about keeping this thing for 4 - 5 years, which is impressive in my mind...i have had my X1900XTX for alil over a year and a half and other than my hard drives it is the longest I have ever had a computer part since I was in the 7th grade...lol. But that aside, Im pretty sure that WoW takes use of dual core as my roommate saw a big boost once he upgraded, but that could be do to offloading the OS. But who knows...if your situation changes and in the next 4 - 5 years you upgrade to vista I then you will have wished you went with the quad and games will definitely take advantage of it soon so I strangely urge you to go with the Q6600 and if anyone asks you the same question from now on always say the Q6600. If you are going to pay over $200 for a CPU then it should be a quad at this point if its under $200 then obviously dual core, but budget should be the only thing stopping people from buying the quad. hope this helps! Oh and yes...even at stock speeds I would still recommend it.)

Best,

3Ball