http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0301968


$160 at Microcenter

In store only though

#1, great call on the microcenter deal

Great in-store price at Micro Center assuming they actually have it in stock (quantities are often bogus) and you have a Micro Center near by for pick up.

frys and microcenter should merge or something ARg.

This or a E8500?

E8500: Dual Core, 3.16Ghz, 1333 MHz FSB, 6 MB L2, 65 Watts.

Q9400: Quad Core, 2.66Ghz, 1333 MHz FSB, 6 MB L2, 95Watts.

What would be fastest for decoding bluray? Or does the processor speed not matter and the burner is the bottle neck?

#5, BR decoding only has to happen as fast as the playback FPS so it will not matter.

If converting to another format, "ripping" discs, it will depend on whether your destination codecs are multi-core optimized. Some are, some aren't.

Generally speaking the quad Q9400 is the better option, and when paired with a decent mobo w/oc options, plus a good heatsink, you will find they both oc to closer peak speeds than they start out. That should give the Q9400 a lead in BR decoding or at least let it perform similar enough to E8500.

It seems a rather narrow application though, since either will do realtime decoding for playback and a system can be left sitting doing decoding in the background if you aren't watching, but in the latter case you definitely want quad core so the system has ample cpu cycles left to do other computing, or of course you could set the decoding to lower priority than anything else but if quad core CPUs are available at the budget there is no need for that.

How many games are multi-threaded these days? Just curious how the quad will perform vs a dual ...

Thanks #6.

tis better for MOST people to have less faster cores than more slower. This is a multi-billion dollar problem with the microprocessor industry that is in the process of getting a solution.

You're better off with a Q6600 if you want to do efficient virtualization. Evil Inside took away hardware virtualization support from these "new" processors. If AMD doesn't step up, Intel will screw people out of more features.