I had considered upgrading to an I7 but it would require a new motherboard and new 12gb DDR3 RAM to really take advantage of everything it has to offer. The cost of that would be around $1000 plus having to rebuild my machine.

However, when comparing the Q6600 ($195) to the Q9550 ($280) I'm starting to wonder.

For only $85 more you get 2.83ghz versus 2.4ghz - 12mb cache versus 8 and 1333FSB versus 1066FSB - as well as 45nm versus 65nm.

My motherboard, a Abit IP-35 Pro (love this mb btw) supports both 65nm and 45nm.

Cost of course is always an issue, especially in this lovely economy (I'm in mortgage banking, lol - went through 3 company closures in a year) the 9550 seem slike the best bang for the buck.

My only complaint about the motherboard is it's capped at 8gb of ram, which I currently have - I'd love to go to 12gb but so far in Outland anyways I'm seeing 6-7gb max usuage, but as I just hit 70 on my slaves I'm heading to Northrend...

Thanks,

-Clov