I've been really happy with this E4300, overclocked to 3.0ghz.  But I built this system to upgrade to Quad later, as I do a fair bit of video & audio encoding.  I guess later has come and now I have an opportunity to get a used Q6600 for $200.  The question is whether to buy this one or get the Q9450 in a month or two.  I expect it'll cost around $350?
 
The motherboard is Asus P5N-E.  I game some but the main purpose is encoding and productivity.  But I could put that extra $150 into an 8800gt to replace my 7600gt.  I expect to use the new CPU for 2-3 years.
 
Thoughts?

A used Q6600 @ $200 is a good deal as long as it's a G0 stepping.

The Q9450 will be faster, but it probably ain't worth the price difference in your case.

Of course, one caveat is whether your encoding applications takes advantage of SSE4, either now or in future versions. I know the latest DivX codec benefits greatly from SSE4, but other codecs are slower to jump on board. I would assume that over time, more programs would be taking advantage of SSE4. If you plan to keep the CPU for a few years, SSE4 could well make a big difference down the line.

The 8800GT will only result primarly in better gaming. For encoding work you can either get the Q6600 or wait and get the Q9300. Either one will be better for what you want to do.
 
If anything get the Q6600 and OC it to 3-3.2GHz and that will greatly increase your productivity as compared to a new GPU.

Question is do your programs use all the cores?  I use 3DS Max 9, Maya008, Premier Pro & After Effects CS3.  Main system was a E6600 oc'd to 3.6.  Now it's a Q6600 @ 3.2 normal, 3.6 for hard-core rendering.  I did notice a SIGNIFICANT decrease in production times, usually.  But there are processes, even in the newer versions of my software, and in some software overall, that will not use the extra cores.  Older versions of After Effects are famous for this, though there are some commercial plugins that will help.  I will say it is nice though to have those rendering times almost cut in half in most applications.

Almost all of the apps I'm using will use 4 cores.  DivX, Nero, h.264.  I also transcode from DivX to wmv for portables.  I expect most software written from now on to take advantage of them too.  So going to a quad is a no-brainer.
 
My main concern is future-proofness.  I want the cpu to last up to 3 years.   Of course, by then octo-core chips will probably be $300...
 
If there's not a big difference between Q6600 & Q9450 I may as well save the $150... but $150 spread over 3 years is really nothing for a long-term chip.  It's a tough call.
 
I do realize the GPU won't help encoding.  It's just a bonus for me..  I think what I'll do is wait for the benchmarks. A lot of people will be dumping their Q6600's soon and they might retail for $200 in six months.
 
 
 

 
Q9450 is certainly the more 'future proof' chip. As I said earlier, SSE4 has the potential to really improve encoding performance, DivX has already shown it, and if other codecs start taking advantage of it as well then the Q9450 would be significantly faster than the Q6600.  
 
If you intend to keep it for 3 years, definitely consider the Q9450.

"q6600 is 12 and 8800 is 16.......... so its not possible that ur CPU WILL HOLD UR GPU !!"
 
... er, what does that mean?

 
 
I seriously hope thats a joke lol
 
Id get the used q6600 for sure the performance increase with the new 45nm chips will not be great enough to justify the extra costs. 8800GT is a nice card and will improve gaming performance no end but will have little effect on your video/audio editing.
 
Just out of curiousity, there seems to be alot of people on this forum who use video and audio editors and creators... what do you guys use them for... is it a work thing or just a hobby? and what do you produce?

My company produces education videos, which are streamed online.  The office encoding stations at work do the final encoding.  But I encode samples at home for client review.  It's quicker than trying to get time on the encoding stations at work.  Plus movies for myself
 
I still don't understand the 6+6+0+0 vs 8+8+0+0.  Does the 8800gt have a higher fsb?
 
 
 

Alright I get it now... bad joke dude.

Mines a hobby that has turned into a semi full time non-paying job.  Make education videos for elementary school kids on what ever subject.  Try to make it fun and educational at the same time.  Wife is a school elementary teacher.  Made a crude one for her, and sort of took off from there, other teachers see them and ask for copies or if I can do one on a specific subject/lesson.  Have to admit I do use a lot of "public" domain work though as there is no way I could do even a fraction of it on my own due to the amount of time involved.  I also have a small render farm, couple of quads and a couple of dual core machines to do the grunt work, results of my "upgrades"...  
Couple of months this system will be in the farm, going to get a Tynan mobo and a dual quad Xenon or such system.  Too many times have had my commit charge go over 8 gig, my physical memory installed.  Will be going with 16 gig at least.

Q9450 easily.
 
Q9450 vs. Q6600
 
12 MB Cache-8 MB cache
45 Nm Process-65Nm process
SSE4-No SSE4
95W TDP-105W TDP if B3, 95W if G0
2.67 Ghz stock clock-2.40 Ghz stock clock
 
Not really hard.

Q6600 Easily.
 
#1) The 650i boards will likely not even run the Q9450.  Some 680i will but not all.
 
#2) Even if it does work, don't expect to be able to get hardly any OC due to the high FSB.  The Q6600 will likely run faster and cost you less.

I hate the Nvidia chipsets.

I would go Q6600, then, since I don't think the Penryns will work.

Ok if I read this correctly, the FSB on my board is maxed out at 1333, which means I can only run the Q9450 at the stock speed of 2.67mhz.
 
Whereas I can overclock the Q6600 pretty much up to 3.2ghz reliably.
 
Seems like an easy choice now.  Thank you for the info.