A few questions related to my upcoming build

Hi all. I'm looking to build a new PC to replace my 5000+ BE/8800GT machine. I can mostly pick all of my own parts and such but I need to clear up a few particulars before I pull the trigger on this.

First of all, I've been a lifelong AMD supporter starting with the K6. Lately, I've become more familiar with Intel platforms but I'm still in need of some clarification.

This build is for gaming primarily. I need to be able to play all but the most resource intensive games like Crysis at 1680 x 1050 with high settings. I'd also like to be able to run a web browser and maybe a messenger client on a second screen while playing.

I decided on this P45 motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128344

Seems like a good bang for the buck. The memory standard is listed as DDR2 1200. Newegg doesn't carry any ram that's rated as such. What speed would be recommended. I do plan on overclocking.

I'm having trouble deciding between the Q9550 and the E8500. Would an E8500 @ 3.4 - 3.6GHz allow for the kind of gaming multi-tasking that I want or would I be better off spending the extra money for the quad-core?

As I mentioned, I already own a 8800GT 512 which, I think, should hold me over until the next round of updates from NV/ATi.

I also plan on using my PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 in my new build. It's been running strong for almost a year now and I'm sure it will last for several years to come.

Any advice is welcomed and appreciated.

- Brian

At the level of the E8500 or Q9550, the vga card is much more important for gaming than the cpu.
At that level, overclocking is good for bragging, but it will not net you as much increase
in FPS as a better vga card will. Today, very few games can make use of more than two cores.
Flight simulator X and supreme commander are exceptions. It is not a trivial matter to code multi threaded programs,
and game vendors will not sell too many games that require quads to run.
I don't see this changing in the next couple of years.

Net: E8500 for the increased clock speed.

As to ram, the core 2 cpu's are not very sensitive to ram speeds. In gaming performance, I would not expect more than a 1-2% difference in FPS between the slowest and fastest ram. DDR2-800 (get 4gb) should be all that you need. If you want record overclocks, then get something much faster.

IF you're planning to OC your new intel CPU, then get the E5200 ($85) and a GA-EP45-DS3L board ($100). The E5200 is a 45nm CPU that runs on 800FSB with a 12.5x multiplier, so basically if you run at 333FSB the CPU will be clocked at 4.16Ghz... Pretty easy (and cheap) to overclock if you ask me.