I'm trying to figure out what's the beter buy, a Q9450 Quad 2.66ghz Yorkfield (12mb cache) vs. a E8500 Duo 3.16ghz (6mb cache).... The quad's about $60 more, I was going to go the Quad and now am reading the 3.16 duo will kill the quad 2.66 in most things... I'd be using the cpu for light multitasking, but most of the time just downloading, surfing web and listening to music..... what's the better buy??

E8500

I bought the Q9450 for heavy multitasking like gaming and compressing video at the same time.

The Q9450 is better off with doing encoding work and for heavy multitasking. If you overclock the Q9450, you can make it match the E8500 for clock speed.

E8500 isn't worth it, E8400 is worth the price IMO,because the difference is that E8400 runs @ 3.0 with 9x multiplier and E8500 runs @ 3.1 with 9.5x multiplier so the difference isn't much.

I would go with Q9450 and OC

Yeah, the E8400 vs. the e8500 is like the q9450 vs the q9550 in terms of price and ghz, and maybe I dont need the quad cores afterall and like when I downgraded (in my planned rig) from the q9550 to the q9450 b/c of price/ ghz, maybe I should go the E8400 following that same logic. 3 ghz is still pretty fast I guess, does anyone know when the quads kick in in terms of value? like what if I'm running spyware and norton scans, downloading 2/3 files/ movies, surfing diff sites, have word/ excel open, plus multiple itunes, would this kind of use warrant the quad cores?? Or is the quad cores for way more heavy use? Still undecided it seems...

an E8400 is prety fast,i myself have an E6600 @ 3.2 and its blazingly fast for everything i do(gaming,phothoshop,movies......)but for your work, i think u better go with the Q9450,the extra 2 cores may help u in multitasking, also u can OC the Q9450 to 3.0GHZ or even more because its a good OC'er

For your stated use I'd say get the E8400 over the Q9450. However, if you want to be happiest in 2009/2010/2011+ with this purchase I'd say go with the Q9450. Multi-core processors are the way of the future and its only a matter of a little time before developers really focus their efforts on exploiting them. ...but if you're only concerned with today, get the E8400.

damm... a 50/50 vote, maziar do you think the q9450 is worth the extra $130? Do you think I'd get by with an E8400?? Anyone else want to weigh in on this, bit confused as to who to listen to over here...

I think all things considered as far as CPU's go .....we will be in this rut for some time.
Picture the future road map for cpu's.When intel goes 8 cores you can bet the 4 cores will be higher rated than 8.
One really has to figure out how much will be running as one games.Thats something you need to think about.And the lenght you plan on getting out of it.
Soon the E8600 will be out at 3.33 so maybe that may be your best bet.But again.....stop and smell the Roses.........
Besides even the fastest right now will be considered slow in 4 or 5 years.

yeah i'm not going to get an e8600, those things are way over priced for the ghz, i'm not worried about the future either b/c when it's time to build anew rig again, so be it, but for now I'm just trying to decide on duo 3.0 vs. quad 2.66 (which is about $130 more here in Australia), as I said I want to be downloading tons of stuff, have multiple int windows open, run spyware and norton scans simultaneously, use word and listen to music all at the same time without getting lag/ delays.... it sounds like I'm in between needing an e8400 and a quad....