I've been waiting and trying to get my hands on the E8400, but it seems everywhere it's sold out, and if a site does have the chip it's selling it for an inflated price. Meanwhile, I just noticed that Newegg is carrying the E8200 for the same price that it had the E8400 for. My question is: is it really worth going through all this trouble for the 8400 when the 8200 is more readily available? I mean we're talking about a GHz difference of like .3 I believe. Is that such a deal breaker? Please give me your opinions because I'm on the edge of the cliff here, and all I need is a good shove to go ahead and purchase the 8200.

8200 might hit 3.4Ghz.. possibly 3.6...., people want the E8400 for an easy overclock to 4Ghz.  If you're not overclocking too much, then it's not an issue for you.

Maybe they are phasing out the 8400.

 
The E8200 would have to be well below 3/4 the price of the Q6600.  At neweggs price of $239.99 I wouldn't even think twice before buying the Q6600.  Simply put buying a dual core is the same as buying a celeron back in the single core days.  It would take a major beefing up of the core before I would suggest a dual over a quad at near the same price.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115038
 
At $254.99 the Q6600 is just an unbeatable CPU all things considered.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115017
 
Pay attention to the last benchmark because that is what the future holds for current dual v/s quad performance.
http://xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/d [...] 600_8.html
When you see all these benchmarks note one thing they don't include anti-virus, software firewall, and many other programs the average user has running in the background.  Ever noticed how your latency drops if you limit your frame rate?  Thats because your CPU is taxed to its max with little time to process for your networking this doesn't occur with 2 free cores.  There are many benefits to getting a quad many reviews just don't talk about.
 
Here is a thread about how the 2 match up.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] s-included

 
 
 AMD wishes!      
 
 
I agree with Beurling.    If all you want is a 3.0ghz Wolfdale, just get the e8200 and overclock slightly.   If you were looking for 3.8-4.0+, spend the extra couple bucks for the E8400.
 
 

It really depends on if or how much you want to try to overclock the chip. With the 8400 most decent MBs and decent ddr800 can take the chip over 4 gig while to do the same you need better for the 8200 since the 9x multi on the 8400 gives you 4 gig at 445 fsb while it takes 500 on the 8200 (which most of either can do on a modest/safe voltage increase) but not all MB/ram combos can do.
 
I have run mine as high as 467fsb with only voltage increases on the cpu and ram which is 24/7 stable but 500+ starts requiring increased voltages on other parts and begins to be more complicated to achive.
 
 

 
From what I have seen the 8200 clocks very similar to the 8400 (I don't think Itel did too much binning of these chips) but requires better support equipment (MB & Ram) than the 8400.

wait for the E8500 or run the q6600 or  E6850