Should I buy a Q6600 now or wait for the Q3 price drop on the Q9550? Also,any estimate on what date the price drops will occur?
Thanks!

Do not do either. A Q9550 seems like a horrible deal. Buy a Q9450 and overclock it to the speed of a Q9550 or beyond.

Whether or not you want to wait for a price drop is your call. I am doing the same thing. Right now I am running an E6600 and just waiting for that coveted price drop on the Q9450.

If you are desperate or cannot wait any longer I would buy the Q9450 now over the Q6600. They seem like good processors. They overclock well and are 45nm. What that means in a practical sense I am not sure, but I do know they have an extra megabyte of L2 cache per core compared to the Q6600.

A review comparing the Q6600 to the Q9450 among other processors:

www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/intel_q9450

Good Luck,

William

All Q6600,Q9450,Q9550 are good CPUs and OC well, so i say go for the cheapest one and OC

3rd quarter prices will start dropping for the q9550 and q6600, as well as the q9450.

Thanks for the responses! I wasn't actually considering the Q9450 because I couldn't find anything saying that there would be a price drop.I have only read that it will be phased out and replaced with the Q9400. Also after reading about the considerable price drop on the Q9550 I thought it might be a better option over the Q6600.

Microcenter has the Q9450 for $299 on a regular basis. For $100 more I'd say its worth the extra performance clock for clock vs the Q6600. Also probably not worth waiting for the price drop unless you dont desperately need to upgrade right now.

My $300 Q9450 from Microcenter's running like a champ at 3.2GHz... I'm sure it could go faster, but I just don't need it to, and I like to keep my temperatures and voltages as low as possible.

What sort of a goal do you have in terms of overclocking?

45nm is cheaper to manufacture but they're selling it much higher.

yup. q9450 at 3.2 is sure sweet

i think this is a comfortable spot in OC-ing...temps are low...performance is high.

I'm waiting for the Q9550 and I think it's a much better choice than the Q9450 because of the higher multiplier. (Assuming my mobo will support it because it currently only supports dual core 45nm chips)

If you're in the waiting game, wait for Nehalem.

What is the advantage of Nehalem and how much will they be retailing for at launch?

I never recommend waiting,because if u want to wait, u cant every buy a new thing

your still paying for the millions in reasearch and building the Fabrication plants

Completely agree. On the other hand though those additional Ghz that would come with an upgrade begin to look pretty enticing the more you wait.

Unless you absolutely need the upgrade then you should wait.

If your video card is capable of playing the latest games...why upgrade?
If your processor encodes video at a reasonable speed...why upgrade?
If your power supply is 500 watts but powers your system...why upgrade to 1000?

My point is that if you don't need to spend money why spend it? You can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a system and it will be top of the line. Give it a month and it will be second best in one way or more.

William