Quote Originally Posted by coglistings View Post
haha, don't buy CPU's from newegg!

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0346210\

appears its onsale for $179.99. If you have a microcenter intown though, you can pick up an i5 2500k for exactly same price. no such limitation on the i7 950. mail order as you please
Exactly, you have to live by one in order to take advantage of that.
Quote Originally Posted by coglistings View Post
(there was also a bundle deal where you can get a high end asus mb with 1tb hitatchi for almost 300 but can find link)

the other things will need more research to answer without me just running my keyboard, but lets not forget that if you ever go for an intel extreme processor, you will be on the 1336 chipset, not the 1156. IDk about you, but I do enjoy hyperthreading that i-7's offer.
Sounds like you're confusing 1156 with 1155 -- we're talking about two totally different chipsets.
Quote Originally Posted by coglistings View Post
from this point, its really all just academic. the test that really matters is to actually get everything up and running and then report what you find to the community!
I agree, everyone's computer is different; but, the 1155 processors, from benchmarks I've seen, handle everything overall
much better than last generation's 1366 processors for practically the same price.