Tom's Hardware: Topic yes, another post about the Q6600, but please help me!
Tom's Hardware > Forum > Homebuilt Systems > New System Build > yes, another post about the Q6600, but please help me!
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I know that this issue is all over the web, but i want ur guy's opinion.
This is how i got into this predicament.
Tigerdirect was holding this pink friday sale thing, giving all proceeds of certain items to Susan G Komen.
And so later in the day, i was listening to their all day webcast, and when the time came to auction off a Q6600, i made sure i was listening, they were auctioning it off for $169. I actually got it. That price is $30 less than the E6750 I was going to buy, and its a quad core (i know its not necessarily better performace, but its future proof.).
Anyway I was in the middle of building my computer...so this is what i have so far:
Core 2 Quad Q6600
Corsair XMS DDR2 800Mhz (cas latency 4) 2gb SLI certified memory (so if i put it in an SLI board, the Mhz jumps to 1200)
What mobo/graphics combo would supplement the Q6600 the best, I have taken a special interest to the X38 chipset (tho expensive) from intel. it offers PCI E 2.0 support, makes it more future proof, the problem is, I LOVE NVIDIA. and it supports ATI Crossfire. What should i do!?!??!
go with the X38 and get a radeon 3850 XT (pcie 2.0)
or go with an nvidia mainboard and get the $100 more 8800GT
any other ideas?
__________________
almost all x38 mobos do support ddr2, and that is good ram. i have some 
about the sli stuff, i have no idea about doubling ram speed, i have never heard of that before.
also, there is no hd 3850xt. it is just hd3850 and hd3870. to repeat from above, if you are running one video card, chipset doesn't matter a bit. with two cards, yes, x38 and p35 will only run ati crossfire, not sli.
x38 can certainly match p35, but there are more p35. personally, i would recommend p35 as x38 is usually more expensive with no performance increase. (even pci-e 2.0 shows almost no performance gain over standard x16 pci-e slot).
side note, if you are planning on running sli or crossfire, be sure the board supports x16 x16 pci-e slots, as some split the lanes used when two cards are present to x8 x8, lowering performance somewhat.
3850 and 8800gt aren't really comparable, as they are in different performance ranges. 8800gt is my recommendation, though 3850 shows strong performance in lower resolutions, even against the 8800gt. i would take a look at the resolution you plan to run most of your games at and then check the benchmarks online for both cards. if the difference isn't enough for $100 more, i say go for hd3850. however, if you are gaming at anything higher than 1680x1050, 8800gt is the way to go.
p.s. if you are running 64-bit vista, you need to be looking at 2x2gb ram . the os uses quite a bit.
Shadow703793 
I love Tiger Direct they have very informative information on QVC, and they never hype anything. 
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