E8200 FTW!!
Its half the power, half the cores and half the price of the quad core Q9450.
Even student can afford $160.
And ofcourse you can overclock the bejeebus out of it... if its not a good chip, you can do your own binning... buy a 6-pack for less than a Q97xx.
And as others and I have mentioned before, Wolfdale clock higher fsb, and usually let you get higher overclock. Vast majority of apps you run are not muli-threaded so they would run faster on higher clocked wolfdale.
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