Ok so as you can see in my sig im not ready for any advanced gaming. Needs an upgrade me thinks, probably you to. My plan is to upgrade in the end of october, hoping that prices will have gotten a little bit better by then. There are some things i can't decide though so help me out with your elite knowledge of computers.


CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3,0GHz /or/ Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2,4GHz

quad or dual, top dual or low quad... same prize. Some people might say why not Quad, like the most obvious thing to choose, well yeah maybe. There is a great test/article on these 2 processors.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q6600_12.html#sect0
Small conclusion from the 3dgames test.

QUOTE:
Summing up the results we have just seen, I can conclude that if the gamers don’t feel like overclocking their processor, they shouldn’t go for CPUs with more than two cores. Gamers-overclockers should definitely decide in favor of the Core 2 Quad Q6600, although a strong opposite opinion exists these days.

Well i have never OC:ed anything in my computer. Not that i don't know how but, i don't feel like pushing the hardware. I've never used any special cooling either, just the regular, couple of fans.
So the text says buy a Duo, but if games like Crysis, CoD4, Hellgate, and whatever will have multi-tasking support, then Quad feels like the most obvious choice. Looking at the test on Supreme Commander Quad "owned" Duo even when not OC. I mean I don't plan playing quake4 or fear for years forward . Meeeh... hard to choose
.

Motherboard: omgihavenoidea 5000/socket 775

Yeah I haven't really taken a look at this yet. Socket 775 anyway.
Any advice here would be helpful. what's the best board out there?..

Graphic card: GeForce 8800GTS 640Mb

I would really like a GTX but so expensive , and i've heard they get pretty hot. So i had decided for a gts 640, until i read Vairos "Latest drivers of 2900XT BEATS 8800GTS640 for sure" thread. damn you ... . But I also read that 2900xt can get pretty loud, been there done that, i don't want another loud graphic card. I'm not really sure but isn't nvidia more widely supported then ati?.. so 8800gts would work better in general?.. (expecting Vairo to stand up for his lovely card<3)

Coming down to one card, what brand should one choose? Asus.. Leadtek.. Albatron.. ? is there any greater difference?
Read something about 8800gts640 from leadtek was working a little bit better then asus and seeing leadtek being a bit cheaper then asus, leadtek looks great.

Memory: Corsair XMS2 Xtreme TwinX DDR2 PC6400/800MHz CL5 2x1GB (TWIN2X2048-6400)

CL5 or CL4?, prize is pretty much the same. Better with CL4 then maybe.
Or if there's some better memory to choose, plz tell me.

Other stuff:

I'm guessing i'll need new power supply, just don't know what kind or how much?

I'm also wondering about soundcard. I now have a Soundblaster live! audio [E800], it's kinda old yes. Don't know if i need to upgrade this but sound to me is really important. I have a 5.1 speaker system, nothing special but it works out great IMO.

As for monitor i'm thinking Samsung SyncMaster 206BW.

On the harddrive part i guess i'll go for some seagate 500Gb or something.


well this got quite long, thx for any help.


UPDATE:

ok then.. im starting to get finished. so far it looks like this

cpu Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2,4GHz
motherboard Asus P5K-E/WiFi-AP
gpu Leadtek GeForce WinFast PX8800 GTX TDH 768MB
memory Crucial DDR2 BallistiX PC6400 2048MB CL4 2x1024
powersupply Corsair CMPSU-520HXEU 520W
harddrive Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 16MB 500GB

still wondering a little bit about the motherboard so let me know and powersupply, I might also change to a GTS gpu just because i dont have much money, but we will see.

well yeah... comment. something wrong?.. speak up. thx