cpu bottlenecked,....q9550, or e8600

title says it all. The next logical step in my crossfired gaming rig is to upgrade my rugged, but aging q6600. It's a fine processor, but it's definitely holding back my video cards.

So, of course there's the completely redundant, and simple until it's your problem to deal with question: Dual or quad?

I would much prefer a quad. If a q9550 OC'd to 3.8ghz+ is enough to keep up with my video cards, that's what I'll do. A q9650 is tempting, but I'm not willing to drop $550 for a core 2 cpu with Bloomfield already on the table.

If not, I'll go the e8x00 route. That would require new memory as well though. The 8gb of ocz i'm running will go to 500mhz fsb, but not an inch more stably.

So my question, precisely is, will an OC'd q9550 be enough to keep up with dual OC'd 4870s?

Really tough call. If you get a bad Q9550 and it can't do over 3.8GHz, you won't really see that big of a difference coming from the Q6600. On the other hand the E8600 is guarenteed to do 4.0GHz and up, but I'm sure you're used to having a quad now and like it.

If it was me I'd get the Q9550 and force it to do 4GHz

Get the quad dood. Get the quad and sell me your...ummmm...rugged but well intentioned Q6600 for ummm...$75.50.

If you get the dual what're the odds you'll be back here in a month or so asking if you should swap it out for a quad?

Ideally a quad running over 4ghz would be perfect. But that's just a gamble. My current q6600 is a bit of a dog, and requires 1.45v under load just to run 3.6ghz. So I know how that goes. Then again, this q6600 will run @500fsb on this mobo, which is pretty impressive. Just have to keep the multi limited to 7.