E8500 - Upgrade or wait???

I recommend you go to the Best CPU for gaming charts. You can find that on the home page.
An i7 means new mobo, etc. q9550, I'm not sure you'll see much benefit. Your setup sounds like it can run pretty much anything right now, so how badly do you want to upgrade?

It sounds like your current needs are being met. If it was me, I'd wait until I found software that I can't run, but I am poor.

If money is no object than what the hell, give your current rig to a friend or relative and go for it.

Wait. Wait until you can get at least 30% performance boost at a minimum before you upgrade or until your system is found unable to do a task you can't live without.

Maybe. Most quad cores can be OC'd high enough that the graphics card becomes the limiting factor to performance. Once you reach that point, more CPU speed doesn't help that much.

Again, maybe. And even if games are optimized for dual core, a quad core gives you two more cores to do motherboard and OS stuff in the background.

But if your present computer does everything that you need, there's no real reason to upgrade.

I'm at 1.325

You can usually get the Q9550 a bit cheaper and is almost as good. I doubt you would notice the difference in performance as much as you would the difference in cost...

You know, I've got it up to 4.5 at 1.375 but the cpu fan is loud as hell. That is the only reason I don't have it up that fast.

yeah i have hit 4.5 stable too wolfdales are BEASTLY overclockers. im going to keep mine for a couple more years bro - i recommend you do the same. you really will not notice a substantial difference even if you upgrade to the i7... keep the E8500 and keep overclocking when necessary.