I dont live in the USA, but New Zealand, the Q6600 is discounted and i7 would be too expensive, having to buy a expensive mobo ddr3 ram and a high end CPU. In NZ a Q9300 is $400, a Q9400 is $480-515, a Q9450 is now discounted also? am i correct? and a Q9550 is $624-$673
Plan on using for gaming. I know a Core Duo is better with the majority of games, but from now to 2 years would a quad core be better is alot of games have already gained a benefit from quads.
Read this
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=362187 a Core duo is pretty useless, and this game was realeased only this decemeber. I reckon Alan Awake is gonna benefit even more with a quad over a Duo core, released in Feb 2009.
"If you overclock, the 7.5 multiplier of the Q9300 will make it very hard to reach more than 3.5 GHz. A $70 cheaper Q6600 would give you roughly the same performance, OCd to 3.6. "
remember if you over clock a Q9300 to 3.5Ghz you need a Q6600 to reach 3.8Ghz for it to be equal, because of the 45nm tech the Q9300 has. 10% more per clock with it.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q9300_9.html#sect0 The Q6600 is overclocked 0.1 more Ghz then the Q9300 and the benchmarks shows it to be equal or more better for the Q9300. Any way I cant get a Q6600 as it is discounted.