Quote Originally Posted by 'puppychow',index.php?page=Thread&postID=150031#po st150031
the new i7 processors use triple channel memory, so you want to do memory in x3's for best performance. The person who posted the rig said the website was having problems configuring more than 3GB, probably for this reason. Anyways 6GB or 9GB should be fine for Vista64.

For kicks I priced out two PCs on newegg, more or less what I want to buy. It was:

$100 case, $100 power supply, $20 DVD-dl drive, $100 1-TB hard drive
$260 for GTX 260 (216 core), same price just about for a 4870 instead (benchmarks show the new 260 is slightly faster than the 4870 for things like wow)

Suprisingly the processors are the same price! The Q9550 is $320 for NewEgg, the i7 920 is $309. Of course the Q9550 stock is running at 2.8ghz while the i7 is 2.66ghz.

The RAM and motherboards are huge differences though -- ddr2-800, mushkin 8GB for the Q9550 is only $140 whereas ddr3-1333, gskill 6GB for the i7 is $279 - double the price for less memory.

The motherboards are also different, the Q9550 can use a Asus P5 for $150, whereas the I7 will need a $300-400 motherboard (Asus P6T is $300 but oos).

So now I'm kind of leaning towards the i7, it should overclock a lot better and you'd be paying around $400 more for mostly DDR3 and a i7 compatible motherboard. Going to sit on the sidelines for a few days and think about it.
id rather a pay a bit more for something like the i7 for future proof, i.e. 6/8+ core cpus in future might come out for socket 1366.