**** I'm still using a e6600. It runs everything I need.
First off this little thing made things clear, so because YOU are on it still, you think its fine, for me?
I am not a 'light' gamer, and pi.ss on you for assuming so, I am a hardcore b-eep online gaming freak and proud of it.
Fallout 3 was a guideline, so was the OTHER games I mentioned, but you only seem to remember 1. Crysis was another, or did you just pass that in your little "ha she don't need any of this!" rant?
Here's how I see it. Go your way, spend 600 now, buy a decentish rig to play games. In 2 years pay for new Mobo, CPU, RAM , prices will drop but I doubt by a ton. So lets say those 3 parts will come to about 400 dollars. Ok so now in a 2 year span I have 1 and a half computers, spending about 1,000 dollars. WTF am I supposed to do with the Q6600 since now its 2 years in the future and everyone and their dog has better and won't buy them? That would mean finishing another computer just to have a secondary, because ain't no one gonna buy or resell them, they are already losing their edge, and 2 years from now I bet they will be today's P4- yea they work, yea they can OC to do typical things, but ain't no one bragging about owning one.
So now I dish another 300 or so bucks into building that second rig, and decide with the new techs I should go full out on the "good" rig. Now the prices are off. 1,000 spent so far, 300 for finishing the last, thats 1300, lets put 100 into shipping for whatever reason, thats 1,400 bucks.... this is 1,600ish.. NOW... and High quality, sure I don't have ANOTHER computer laying around to mess with.. but I kinda do.... its sitting next to me right now being used as a shelf.
In a nutshell... I ain't spending 600 now to make a shelf later.
You also seem to forget the heavy music and movie editing as well as Game Production (as Iam workin on my own game) which will take an incredible load on the CPU RAM and GPU....
Also... it's impossible to make a q6600 computer for 600 dollars considering how much I need, not just RAM, CPU, Mobo, HDD, PSU, Case and GPU, but also OS and MONITOR. Monitor alone is about 200, OS another 100, theres 300 bucks, so how you building a q6600 on 300 bucks?