Need some help deciding what to get for my new PC

[Luminaflare]

I'm building a new PC soon and I got an i7 price at £498 and a quad core system at £281.

I can build the quad core sooner so I was wondering should I wait longer and make up an i7 or make a quad core for now and wait for the i7 to come down in price?

[Vyacheslav]

Get a quaddie now and then wait for 2 years or so for i7 to come to earthly prices.

[a happy song]

Can you list the exact specs for each of the systems?

[SlappyMcGee]

i7's will be choked by anything reasonable right now; spend 1000$ on your top of the line i7 and expect to be paying another 4000$ easy just to keep up with it. The quad is far more realistic, and the difference in performance isn't at all noticeable at this point.

[Tunco]

Use i7 if you want the *power* in your hands.

[T3chno]

Take the quad core and use the money you saved to get better RAM/GPU/etc.

[smartalco]

Need more info then that. There are currently 28 quad-core desktop processors on newegg (some of which are i7 admittedly).

[Vyacheslav]

You better look at the Q9xxx series.

[scythe]

You better look at the Q9xxx series.

Intel, shmintel. AMD has had better price performance for the past few years.

[SlappyMcGee]

You better look at the Q9xxx series.

Intel, shmintel. AMD has had better price performance for the past few years.

AMD is what hipsters use. Keep this in mind when making your purchase.

(Hipsters like me and scythe. in the boudoir.)

[Vyacheslav]

Quad core intels outperform the highest end AMDs. Proven fact.

[smartalco]

Quad core intels outperform the highest end AMDs. Proven fact.

Actually the Phenom II X4s are about equal price-to-performance (they are easily in the Q9*** range). Nothing touches the i7s though.

[Ampersand]

The Phenom has been fantastic lately, and the i7 seems to be absolutely great from what I've seen, but I can't fathom what you'd actually need an i7 for, except to show it off. Go with something more modest, slap a few extra gigs of RAM in your box, and go to town.

[SlappyMcGee]

I'm rethinking my position. If you buy an i7 and a decent enough computer, you'll not have to buy another processor for a good amount of time. Sure, you'll have to wait a longer time to get it, but I think that one moderate i7 costs the same as two amazing processors. Plus you can just focus on upgrading video cards and RAM. But you also have to realize that you're spending money on processing power you won't be using, of course.

[scythe]

Your best bet with an i7 is to buy a low-end model and overclock it. Lower-speed processors tend to gain more benefit from overclocking, though they max out at a lower speed than the highest tier. (i.e. a 2.6 ghz i7 might oc to 3.7 while a 3.3 will make it to 4.1)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ove ... 379-3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overclocki ... erclocking
A >4 ghz clock rate on an i7 will not be necessary for anything anytime soon.

[Luminaflare]

I have enough RAM and stuff and my graphics card is ok, It's currently my processor that's throttling my PC so I want to upgrade it but that requires a new mobo so I was figuring i7 with the lowest (920) for about £200 so whenever that starts getting outdated I can upgrade it. I might just get quad core though since it's powerful enough to keep me going for a while till I can afford to spend more money on a PC.