Nearing my cash goal, wait for Q9300 or grab a Q6600 now?

[specialmias]

I'm very near my goal of a $1500 rig to replace my P4 2.53 with 1gig of ram I built in '03. Still runs perfectly without a hitch and still plays all the recent games on very very low settings. Nvidia stopped supporting drivers for my geforce Ti 4200 and the fact I'm still on a CRT has been pushing me towards a new rig. I've Been saving up for a while now but I'm stuck with a bit of a dilemma. I'm going to apply for grad school in a year so that means I need to use my vacation that lasts from Dec.15-Jan.22 to have it shipped, built and ready. Otherwise I won't have time to build another rig till about next August.....

I'm stuck having to make the hard decision of choosing to wait for Intel to release hopefully in the first week of Jan by keeping my fingers crossed. Or I can just buy a Q6600 now and OC it hoping it lasts me as long as this rig did. Looking for some opinions on this and some info on upcoming for graphics cards coming in dec/nov. Oh and if anyone knows where I can get a nice LCD monitor that'd be spiffy.

Thanks in advance.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

I think personally it's gonna be whatever you think, the trick I learned was that you build a system right behind the leading edge, then you have a great system that lasts, but you still save some money.

 

[dmroeder]

Just buy the Q6600. All you are going to do by waiting for the latest is delay your build and pay the new technology premium.

I mean look at the people that waited in line to buy the first iPhones. If they just would have waited a month, they would have saved $200.