Worth hanging on to my Q6600?

[Bukakke]

All I do with my PC is online gaming so no encoding or such for me.

After all the hype about the i7 I was asking myself if it would be worth it to go for one or just upgrade my current system alot and OC to its full potential.

After looking at a few benchmarks I didn't see that much of a performance boost with the i7, and even if it tends to give 15/20% more frames when paired up with CF or SLI I'm not sure that its worth the expensive price tag.

Is anyone here willing to prove me wrong and convince me to to go for an i7?

Here are the parts and price i would use for each rig if i were to build them:
*Note I'm planning to go 260GTX SLI near the end of summer.

Core 2 Quad:
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail
CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply - Retail
OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2G8004GK - Retail
EVGA 122-YW-E173-TR LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
A CPU cooler of some sortes (Looking at the Coolermaster V8)
My old HDD, CD drives and Q6600 of course
Total:800.57CAD + tax (shipping included)

i7:
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R-SLI LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply - Retail
Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail
CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C9 - Retail
Old CD drives and HDD
Total:$1,332.33CAD + tax

 

[kkpudge7]

Although the I7 has some good qualities to it, most imporvements are seen when running high end crossfire/sli setups. Although the gtx260 is a solid card, I would say running them in sli on an I7 you wont see a great deal of difference compared to you 6600, depending on what motherboard you have now.

I dunno, i'm gonna use my xfire 4870's until the next generation of cards comes out. If you want to spend a little bit on your current rig maybe a new psu and another 260?

just m .02

 

[Bukakke]

Sounds good, ill be holding out till next gen of cards with my Q6600 then

 

[kkpudge7]

I'm not trying to steer you away from building another system, just giving you some info. ATI and Nvidia are due to release another generation of graphics cards towards the end of the year (GDDR5 on 512b bus?? ) I was simply stating that it might be worth holding out on.

Also, the 6600 is a great chip! push that thing harder, get it up to 3.4-3.5Ghz range (if you have a good cooler). If not, spend a little money on a good heatsink and overclock the crap out of that thing.