Im out of the loop with hardware tbh, Ive not looked at any cutting edge hardware since I last upgraded over 2 years ago and the idea of spending hours twaling performance hardware sites dosent hold the appeal it once did lol

I currently have a skt 939 X2 4400+ running at 2.6 GHZ with 2gigs of ram which tbh dos me fine as the only game Im currently playing is WoW,   but recently I have been getting 1 or 2 memory errors, so seeing its so long since I upgraded last and rather than go down the route of just replacing the ram, its time to upgrade the CPU (with a decent cooler), mobo, ram to something a bit more modern Im looking to spend around 500 quid altogether.

From the small amount of research I have done a Core 2 Quad Q6600 looks like dam fine "bang for the bucks" or would I be better going for a faster Duo core chip like the Core 2 Duo E8400 seeing I dont really do anything to warrant having 4 cores over 2 and they are around the same price??? I will be OCing btw, nothing extreme just with air.

Im totally lost on mobos and Ram (thinking 4gigs for the ram) while I want decent spec and performance, I dont want to pay threw the noise for it

I plan on keeping my current graphic card (single 7800GTX) for now and my sound card (Audigy 2ZS) will I need a new PSU? I currently have a 550W OCZ, am I right in thinking when you start adding 2 or 3 graphics cards you have to really start upping the wattage of the PSU???

Thanks in advance

Depending on the graphics cards you add 550W should handle two midrange ones.

As Evilsly says it isnt worth buying a quad core, better to save a little and go for a dual core Wolfdale, which should overclock very well. In a couple of years the situation might reverse though as new software comes out.

Q6600 is faster and cheaper than the 8500 Wolfie, why would you even bother with the dual unless you absolutely must have the latest thing, regarldess of the fact it costs more and its no faster?

err did you read my first post? "I dont really do anything to warrant having 4 cores over 2" taking that fact into account what you said really doesnt make much sense tbh. E8400 = 3 GHz, Q6600 = 2.4GHz unless Im missing something?

Thanks for the replies so far any thoughts on mobo and Ram? DDR2 or DDR3, X38 or X48, 2 X 2gig or 4 X 1gig this is confusing lol

Quote from: Beaker

Q6600 is faster and cheaper than the 8500 Wolfie, why would you even bother with the dual unless you absolutely must have the latest thing, regarldess of the fact it costs more and its no faster?

err did you read my first post? "I dont really do anything to warrant having 4 cores over 2" taking that fact into account what you said really doesnt make much sense tbh. E8400 = 3 GHz, Q6600 = 2.4GHz unless Im missing something?

Thanks for the replies so far any thoughts on mobo and Ram? DDR2 or DDR3, X38 or X48, 2 X 2gig or 4 X 1gig this is confusing lol

But why would you buy a processor that isnt as quick as the quad, when the quad is cheaper?  the Q6600 is overall a quicker CPU than the 3.0Ghz Wolfie.  i.e. in real terms the Q6600 is faster for the end user than the 8400, its also between £15 and £5 cheaper depending on where you buy it from.  unless you absolutely must have the latest CPU range it makes no sense to buy the 8400.  Even then it strikes me more as a "I have a Wolfdale 45nm CPU" as a bragging point over the people "Stuck" with Kentsfield/Conroe cored CPU.  

the only time the 8400 would make sense is if you are doing a lot of repetative work like Media encoding.  At that point the dual wins out of the Quad because its obviously had some optomisation for that, but then agian the P4 encoded and decoded faster than the AthlonXP range, but nobody wanting actual grunt bought the P4 did they?

Beaker a Wolfdale starts to pull away from a Q6600 OCed to 3.6GHZ at about 4GHZ, recent chips are hitting 4.3GHZ with decent air, so for myself I see no point in going quad till I next upgrade.

I guess that works!  Though to be fair these days I dont overclock, and I rarely spec "overclockable" rigs for folks.  If I find my machine doesnt do something I want it to, I just upgrade it and leave everything pretty much stock (Well except for bumping RAM voltages, but thats for a bit extra reliability).