help pick parts for first intel

Its like 3 A.M.. anyways there's got to be someone on.

Hardcore gamer: games, games, games as in no video editing/encoding, converting, photo shop and whatnot

These are the two procs within my budget E8500: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115037 & Q6700: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115027 from what I understand both have good OC but the E8500 performs better in games right?

Video cards: right now I got 2x 8800GT and am upgrading from an AMD to intel to see if the performance difference satisfies my current demands for performance. if not, oh well I don't need help in this category

Mobo: I think i want a 3-way SLI capable of handling the upcoming 45nm quads

case & PSU: Already got them no help needed here

memory: haven't got to research this yet. does the memory speed have to match the FSB at all or just meet the standards of the board?

Quads are becomming more and more a great choice for games lately. While there are only a few games today that can take advantage of a quad (as in, the game itself uses all 4 cores), there are other advantages such as offloading Windows and other apps to the extra cores opening up the other two for your game.

So since more and more games will be supporting quad-core processors, it might be to your bennefit to get one and simply overclock it to the dual-core speeds and beyond. I will concede however that my dual-core E6600 gets excellent framerates with my 9800GTX in Crysis, 2xAA, 16xAF, all settings on High, 1280x1024 (yea not a big rez) and I can probably go to 4xAA without a problem. Oh and I'm running XP. Unless you're going to be using a larger resolution, I'd stay with a dual-core if you're on a tighter budget. If not, I'd go with a good quad-core and OC to 3GHz+ with a good aftermarket cooler and enjoy the show