I assumed he was going to include $250ish nice LCD monitor to the budget. Honestly to me the Q9550 is nowhere near 2x faster then the q6600 so it's 2x cost isn't justified and he was much better off just saving the money and putting it into other components or saving it for the new processor or mobo upgrade. When I evaluate buying decisions between two products I look at the performance % differance compared to the price % difference. Sure they can't match up at times and it is often harder to identify the exact performance %, but in this case I think its pretty clear. Especially since your telling him to put a lot of money into one of the highest end quad cores when the i7s are just around the corner ( they obviously won't be feasible for a recommendation for some time )
Also saltynay with the cheap q6600 at $180, I would start recommending it for gaming PCs as well and not C2Ds, because it is more future proof. The q6600 can be pushed to 3.6 ghz if you put the effort, and some games are already starting to take advantage of quad core ( GTA4 ). Sure a C2D would be a better recommended processor for a purely gaming PC as this is, but with a much shorter lifespan compared to a Q6600 in terms of being future proof.
Also saltynay with the cheap q6600 at $180, I would start recommending it for gaming PCs as well and not C2Ds, because it is more future proof. The q6600 can be pushed to 3.6 ghz if you put the effort, and some games are already starting to take advantage of quad core ( GTA4 ). Sure a C2D would be a better recommended processor for a purely gaming PC as this is, but with a much shorter lifespan compared to a Q6600 in terms of being future proof.