6600: Quad or Not

[RESTfulADI]

I misread that part, I thought it was just dual core extremes......my fault.
I still am reluctant to jump in, mainly because I think by the time a 4 core is the "norm", there will be faster and more energy friendly choices.

I'm anxious to see Crysis and HL2EP2 released.....if there is an advantage I'll be the first to eat my words.

I'm not sure what you consider the "norm", if you do any kind of multimedia work you can put quad to use now. Games that can take advantage quad core are coming out starting in September (Bioshock comes out in August but I'm not sure about quadcore support), and the multitasking benefits can be felt right away. I was planning on getting one of the E6x50s and waiting for Penryn to go quad, but desktop versions won't be coming out until 2008 and they are likely at first to be Extreme editions at the top of the price range. Even if I sell the Q6600 at a 50% loss in mid-2008 when I'll hopefully be able to buy an affordable Penryn, I will have gotten my money's worth.

 

[S[H]ady]

I misread that part, I thought it was just dual core extremes......my fault.
I still am reluctant to jump in, mainly because I think by the time a 4 core is the "norm", there will be faster and more energy friendly choices.

I'm anxious to see Crysis and HL2EP2 released.....if there is an advantage I'll be the first to eat my words.

why are you so reluctant to believe that new games will support quads?
once you implement multithreading, it can't be that hard to expand it to more threads.
the developers of crysis have for sure confirmed quad core use. They have said that each core will be dedicated to specific tasks such as physics and AI.
while there is nothing wrong with a dual core system right now, there are many benifits to having the added cores. As i have already stated in this thread and others, if you only upgrade once a year or less than going quad now is a great idea as it will prolong the lifetime of the CPU.
if you dont do video editing, 3d modeling, or 7 tasks at once, then stick with the duo for now. you can get a faster duo, as long as your not doing the above.
I for one like to encode DVD's from my Divx files. that takes a long time and eats up all resources on my X2. with a quad i anticipate being able to game while encoding.
That is the biggest difference; with a quad you dont have to leave your computer to do stuff like video encoding, it can be done while using the PC. without a quad, your CPU would be under constant load and things would slow down significantly.

I was going to order a 6000+ last night, but i decided to wait till the intel drop and then i might make the switch.