780i Motherboard with Q6600 or Q6700

What way would you suggest going, considering I would want to overclock to 3 - 3.5 (or higher if possible)

Q6600 & EVGA 780i - $550
- NCIX - Retail Q6600 - $270
- NCIX - Retial EVGA 780i - $280

Q6700 & EVGA 780i - $500
TigerDirect.ca - $500 Bundle
- EVGA 780i
- OEM Q6700

Is it better to get the slightly slower CPU, that is retail not OEM, since i'm overclocking it anyways? or should i save the $50 ? Either way i will need some sort of cooler if i'm overclocking wont I? what do you suggest?

i guess that deal has expired it was on there for the last couple weeks atleast, so now would you suggest a retail Q6600 and buy the 780i separate?

Well, yeah, at $500+ alone, the Q6700 makes no sense, especially considering the Q9450 gets better performance at stock clock, can oc more, and is cheaper than Q6700. So go for the Q6600, unless you want to trade up for a 45nm quad.

The 780i isn't the best overclocker chipset, but is still decent. I believe you should be able to oc Q6600 to 3.4-3.6ghz without too much trouble. X38/48 is the best overclocker board. I've gotten my Q6600 to 4ghz on X38, ran prime95 for an hour stable. But toned it down to 3.6 for day to day use. Of course, X38/48 do not support SLI, only Crossfire.

yes i'm getting duel 8800 GTX cards in SLI... what would be a good board for me ?

3.6 is good enough for me anyways, and yes i have 4gb of ddr2 800mhz, thanks for your help everyone

Yeah, get OEM!!! I am thinking intel started to weed out their low VID processors and sell em as low wattage processors! Waaaahhh!

All the retail boxes for the past few months have been 1.3000 vid! That blows. I just ended up with a new box a few days ago, behold, 1.3000 as well.

--Lupi

Thats true as well, costs more, but new technology!

--Lupi!