Looking at purchasing a new motherboard and CPU for gaming purposes. My current setup is listed below - as you can see my CPU is the big holdup. It looks to me like the Q6600 is the best bang for the buck currently. Any motherboard recommendations to go along with it? I currently only have 2 gigs of memory which is DDR400 PC3200 - should I pickup more? do I need the same brand? Will what I have work with the new motherboard? I'd appreciate everyones help - sick of seeing frame lag with all settings turned down.

AMD Athlon 4000+ San Diego - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103529

Asus A8N-E Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131530

ATI Radeon 4870 X2 - http://shop1.frys.com/product/5691 [...] IN_RSLT_PG

2GB Mushkin memory - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820146425

Two 10k 74GB Western Digital Raptors (striped)

Windows XP

Well I have the Asus P5K-E and its a great mobo for the Q3300. But if I were you I would get the P5Q Pro:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131299

Its a great mobo and has PCIe 2.0 and will support the Q6600.

As for the memory, you wont be able to use that DDR. You need to get DDR2. I would suggest 4GB of DDR2800 or DDR1066. My fave is Corsair but they are a bit pricier than the other brands.

What are FPS in COD4, Crysis, etc?

I have a similar machine and I am curious what the 4870x2 does for yours.

My Specs:
AMD X2 4200+ @ 2.42GHz
Asus A8N-E Motherboard
2GB Corsair XMS DDR400
nVidia 7800GT

I am looking at upgrading the vid card to a 4850 or 4870 and I am curious about performance gains. What was your previous card before the 4870x2?

Also for the same buck the e8500 C2D offers better in game performance than the q6600.

To be honest, I haven't done much gaming on my PC in a couple years as I stuck to consoles for a while. My two previous games were Age of Conan and now Warhammer Online and my machine ran it like complete crap. My video card prior to my 4870X2 was a Radeon 1900XTX 512. When I upgraded to the 4870X2 - I saw no performance gain in warhammer, still choppy as hell on 1680 resolution with all settings turned off.

e8500 > Q6600 for gaming eh? I looked at a couple benchmarks and they said different. I will do some more research though.

Ravenware I would be warned that with that processor same as mine that it may lead to some bottlenecking if you got a nvidia 9800GT depending on what resoultion your playing it at

Well I have thought it over. I should some pretty decent gains compared to my 7800GT. If it bottle necks it bottlenecks. I still need the card.

This chip performs about the same as an e6300 while in game.
The game bench marks from the recent CPU charts were ran on a gtx280 which is faster then the 4870, so even if it bottlenecks performance level should be good enough.

I am also running a CRT so I can scale the resolution quite a bit.

I really don't want to upgrade my other components right now. Trying to save up to drop 4k on a new rig.

I decided on the Q6600 cpu. I need to select a motherboard and CPU - hoping some of you all can make that decision for me Jimmy recommended a P5Q Pro - would anyone recommend anything else?

P5Q Pro - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131299

Also, they are running some combo deals with the Q6600, should I go with any of the memory listed or does anyone else have a recommendation?

Combo - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] =10&Page=1

Any help would be appreciated - going to be ordering in the next hour or two.

I'll be upgrading to Vista 64 also.