Quote Originally Posted by RazberyBandit View Post
I'd agree that $150 for a Q9400/9500-series CPU wouldn't be a bad price, but anything more than that and it's just not.

Now, the problem with MicroCenter is there are only 19 stores in the entire country. (And the USA is big!) But if that weren't bad enough, that kind of pricing is typically only available to walk-in customers, not online shoppers. So, unless you live near one, you're pretty much SOL. And since they don't show any online, it's unlikely any stores have any. But, you'd have to call each store to be absolutely certain.

With that in mind, I see the following two options:
Attempt overclocking, for which an aftermarket CPU cooler may help (the Hyper 212+ is great and only ~$30)
Replace the core (mobo, CPU, RAM) of the system when SB is re-released.

Ed. Just checked MicroCenter's i5-2500K price - $180 online. But, they have no P67 motherboards as they're all recalled.
I like the idea of, and didn't think to mention attempting a good OC. It's not something a lot of people are willing to do but if OP wants, it's a good, cheap (free if a 3rd party cooler is already installed.) way to extend this rig a short time to possibly gather the funds for the whole core upgrade.

Quote Originally Posted by Faile View Post
Games rarely multithread very effectively and even when they do, two cores is usually enough.

That said, you can get higher GHz CPUs if you look in the dual core category.

I'm running an E8500 intel dual core, natively 3,16GHz ( and cheap as bread ) and is rock-stabile even overclocked to 4,2GHz

Couple that raw computing power with a good GPU ( GeForce GTX 240 ) and I can run RIFT at 1920x1200 at full spec details and still get ~60 fps everywhere (probably dips a bit in large public boss raids but still, it's good)

The main issue you have to remember is that your GPU and CPU have to be in balance (slow cpu slows your gpu perf, slow gpu slows your cpu perf), in addition to that your system must have enough RAM to always have atleast 30% spare for system cache ( these days that means a minimum of 4Gb RAM )
I have one instance where a quad performed much better than a C2D, but it's possibly been fixed since that time. TF2. When multi-core was first implemented, my e6850 would choke on multi-core. I got the q9550 and it had no issues and ran like a dream. Shame I get crappy FPS when I enable Crossfire though. I get 100+ FPS with 1 5870 on a full 32 slot server, 70s with 2.