I'm dropping my Q6600 G0 and current board for a 780i and an E8500. 45nm w/ 2 cores vs 65nm and 4 cores. You'll get a much higher clock out of the e8500 w/ 2 cores than you'll ever see with the Q6600. Since 97% of what you'll do throughout the day will only utilize a single core, it really makes no sense to get 4. The dual core at 4.5Ghz will be about 30% faster than the quad with most of what you do.