oblivions demands on the cpu

Forget wat i said earlier. I'm just gonna ask a more specific question and hope i get some answers this time. Is the e8400 overclocked like hell really necessary to keep up with a radeon 4850, or will a e7200 overclocked like hell do just fine? Im asking in regards to performance in Oblivion, gonna use 1280X720 res, 1366X768 if i can get my monitor to work right. Maxed settings, 4X aa, and any texture mods/detail mods i can get my hands on. Theyre both over my budget, but im thinking the e8400 just to be totally certain my comp will handle this game like butter. The other main question is how important is a big L2 cache with Oblivion?

i ran this game on a :
socket 478 ~ P4 3.0; 2 gigs ram; 7800gs AGP 8x card; and 160 WD EIDE drive.

it ran beautifully. not maxed out. you wont see much - if any difference between the two. the L2 cache doesn't make a difference in any game. the real place where you see the difference is in programs like - music/video/photo editing programs

"The L2 cache effect will really all depend on what you are doing with the processor. If you are playing a game that has continual refreshing, new graphics, then your utilization of the cache memory is probably not so good (thus no benefit). If you are doing something in photoshop, where you have a continual algorithms executed over time, using the same code, then the larger cache will assist your experience."

And these are some of the best mods for Oblivion. at least thats what my friend has gave me to start out with, and hes tried over 26GB's worth so i trust him.

http://www.4shared.com/dir/8093763 [...] _mods.html

and really for the money why not buy a Q6600(8mb L2) for under $200 instead of spending extra $100. i know the E8500(6mb L2) is better for games cause no game are written for a 4 core cpu. but the Q6600 is the best bang for the buck and it has better benchmarks than the E8500. thats what i would do at least.

Hows the q6600 do with power usage compared to the e8400, and also how well does it overclock? If it gets like 3Ghz, will oblivion run better with that that an e8400 at 4Ghz? And lastly how much heat output does the q6600 create when overclocked A LOT. I need to make sure my cooler will handle it and that it would actually help me. Man, people online keep getting me to bump up my cpu choice, anything i list is never enough.... Tho if the q6600 gets better performance than the e8400, both overclocked, in oblivion i might spend the extra $20 on it. Oh ya, and would a corsair 550W psu still be enough for the q6600 and a 4850, 4Gb ram, hdd, p35 mobo, and 2 disk drives?

two words for you : Prozac & Ritalin. you best answer is to Google what questions you have and if that doesn't work then your S.L.O.

does anybody do that anymore beside me?

this really should be in a different section to answer those questions. this is why i hate posting on forums these days cause of ppl like this.

Sorry about too many questions, guess ill just go back to google, where i was originally, and hope i find some unbiased info. Thanks for the answers tho ppl.

forgot to add that i ordered my computer yesterday, and im getting the e8400. I saw a lot of bad reviews for the q6600 on newegg involving the customer recieving a chip with "d3" stepping instead of "go" or something. There was one dating back to this month even, so i was kinda worried about wasting all my $ on a crappy chip cuz newegg doesnt guarantee "go" stepping. And of course, there were no reliable online stores with a lower price than newegg, but at least they guaranteed "go" stepping.