[citation][nom]dertechie[/nom]Yeah, makes more sense with AM3 platforms where you can go from a $50 budget CPU to a high end PII. Meanwhile Intel doesn't really do that whole 'backwards compatible' thing.In my opinion the only reason Intel hasn't EOL'd LGA775 yet is because they haven't pushed Nehalem that far down the stack yet. Once we see $50 Nehalerons, I expect LGA775 to die.Most of the LGA775 CPUs seem overpriced for the performance they give. The E8400 costs more than the i3-530, but the two CPUs will go toe to toe in most benches. The Q9400 is only a hair cheaper than the i5-750, and the 750 is going to best it, particularly in poorly threaded apps like games. P55's lack of PCIE is not really a problem unless you're using a pair of top end GPUs. The x4 slot can take care of USB3/SATA6. So you may as well grab a modern CPU with your modern GPUs. If you are building with a pair of 5870s, then you're already spending at least $800 on graphics, the $50 price difference between an x48 and an x58 is rather small by comparison (you won't be buying an el cheapo LGA775 here). The other thing is that if you're using enough GPU to bottleneck at x8-x8, you'll need a good CPU to not bottleneck them anyway. Again, you're already shelling out enough that the difference between a Q9400 and an i7-930 isn't worth quibbling over (especially if you have a Microcenter nearby), and the 930 does have a performance lead over the Q9400.P55 is a pared-down X58, not a crippled/brain-dead one. Intel did well there, the cuts give X58 a solid advantage, but most normal builds won't be bottlenecked by them.TL;DR: If you're spending enough on GPUs that P55 PCIe bottlenecks matter, you may as well go big and get X58. If you aren't get P55 and a decent CPU/GPU pairing. LGA775 is really only worthwhile if you already have parts of it.[/citation]
You kind of missed the point with your rambling.
x58 is a LOT more expensive, and would perform worse in most cases if the extra money were spent on video cards. That's the irony with this type of article - with games, the processor really isn't so important, the video card is. That's why they struggle to find a point in processors in a pretty big cost range and just give honorable mentions.
You're comparing x58 to x48, when you talk about dual GPUs, I was comparing to P55. When you start comparing x58 to x48, you're automatically looking at a much more expensive platform and more expensive processors. Put another way, would you do better on most games with an overclocked Pentium E6500 and an extra $250 on the video card(s), or a i7 930? I think we both know the answer to that. It's not an absolute, but the more money you can spend on the video card, the better.
I like x58, but for this narrow criteria, on almost all price points, and most games, you'd be better off with a cheaper CPU and more expensive video cards. It doesn't make it bad, it's just the nature of games right now - video cards matter more, especially at resolutions where you want to play.
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