partial build help..been out of the loop a while

[steven1110]

My motherboard just died yesterday so it'll be a good time to upgrade some stuff.
I've been an amd person since I started building but I see now that intel is the way to go nowadays.

The computer will be for minor gaming, video decoding/encoding, and editing. I'm thinking that quad core will be a little bit overkill for what I'm doing but I thought I'd leave it up to the experts here at hardforums to be the judge. Can somebody give me insight on quad core vs dual core?

I'm looking at about $500 budget for mobo, cpu, and memory.

Thanks

 

[Andhar]

Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor - OEM
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L
A-DATA 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
Tuniq Tower 120 P4 & K8 CPU Cooler
Totals to $478

In this day and age if your doing video encoding and editing your gonna want a Q6600, they overclock nicely.

 

[steven1110]

Ok cool...I was looking at the E8400 for the dual core side. i've heard really good things about those. At stock is there much of a difference between the 2?