These CPU's are engineering achievements for sure. But when AMD releases their CPU's in early spring, these new quads will drop in price and be worth a look-see.
I kept asking my friend did his QX9650 arrive yet, and he has been shining me on. He finally asked me over and embarrassed as he was admited little if any improvements with his audio apps., and Nuendo 3.2. It was nice to see this tweaker silenced, it was a first. He always has an answer for everything but not this time.
He has a Q6600 he OC's and in the audio apps this runs a little warm @ 3GHz, but there was no difference between the 2 CPU's ?
The 3GHz QX will OC well above 3.6GHz before having to consider a better cooling solution, but even at that mark the gains were not worth the risk.
Thankfully our DSP's do not need this kind of boost, but even the big sequencer apps seem to use more memory than raw speed at this point.
This CPU runs really cool though at it's stock speed, and when it drops to 4 or 500 USD, I'll be dropping one in my P35 board. Until then the best bang for a buck is still the Core 2 Duo's, but w/ a P35. The G0 stepping on the newer E series CPU's is a big bonus. So a low priced E6850 w/ a P35 is a solid cheap fast, upgrade.