I looked all over and i did not see the answer... forgive me if I missed it. If this has been already answered... could you please forward the link?

I have a E6600 OC to 3.2GHz. I am wanting to get a Q6600 or Q6700 (prices are getting cheap). I have the Gigabyte n680i-dq6 v1 mb. It is worth it to buy one of these and oc to at least 3.2? Will I have problems doing so? Multitasking is a big thing with me, however I am also a gamer. It is worth doing? I cannot use 45nm procs in this mb... unfortunately.

thanks for the opinions!

yes sir. please for yourself do the upgrade to quad core. if mutitasking is your thing. i use vista ultimate and when it comes to multitasking i can never use a dual agian.

think crysis open in the background minimized. internet explorer up and running multiply pages up . and playing wrc3 dota and not feel a hitch.

quads are so much better. remember with antivirus and whatever else your running your mahine is keeping tabs on treads ready for commands. with 2 more core open it frees your machine to run and play games on the open cores with out so much as a hitch. trust me. i just sold a high end 3.2 ghz dual core 4 daysa go and i couldnt help but think how slow it was in windows. quad man. its the way to go

A Q6600/6700 at 3.2ghz+ is a beast. If you do more than game it is all around better and if you game it is faster than current games need. A win-win in my opinion at the current prices.

Your E6600 should be sufficient in handling most tasks you throw at it today. However, if you have the funds to purchase a quad, along with a better cooler for overclocking, I don't see why not.

In this case, I would get the Q6700. The binning is slightly higher, which means your processor is better. Also, some Nforce 6x0 boards suffer from chipsets, which cannot be overclocked far (I had that experience personally). Therefore getting a processor with higher multiplier may be a better choice.

does the q6700 come in the g0 stepping?

I have water cooling... right now my cores run 31C idle and 40C ripping a movie to xvid.

Q6700 does have G0 stepping.

Watercooling is great, isn't it? Quads get pretty warm @3.4+ so keep your water loop handy...

I had an eVGA 680i board running with an E6600 OC'd to 3.6 GHz, TRUE/S-Flex HSF. Decided to upgrade to G0 Q6600 after word got out that 680i's wouldn't support Yorkfield.

Couldn't go beyond 3.0 GHz without some strange stability problems. I know that it's not the CPU, because I have it now running in a GA-EP35-DS3P at 3.6 GHz.

The reason I would choose a Q6700 in your case (forget the higher binning, fabrication is a mature process) is the higher internal multiplier. nVidia 680i chipsets run hot. You'll be able to hit any particular OC with a lower FSB frequency.

thats becuas you were using a 680i . the higher 7xx series does fine ocing these chips. the 680 not so well it wasnt the chip in the least

I had similar nightmare with the 650i chipset. It would only do FSB 300Mhz, and I was stuck at 2.7Ghz on Q6600. I've adjusted every single settings in BIOS, to no avail. After switching to P35 board, the Q6600 did 3.87Ghz.

The newer chipset solved this problem though.

The 700 series chipsets may solve this problem, but since I do not plan to use SLI, it doesn't matter.

Thanks everyone for the info. I may just stick with what I got until i have the cash for a new mb also. Unless I can get 3.2 at least on the q6700, then it wont be worth it. I love the mb for the fact it has 10 sata ports on it... if i could find another motherboard with close to that amount, I would consider it.

GA-EP35-DS3R and DS3P have 8 SATA ports.