looking good, especially for a non bios optimized engineering sample. The Nehalem architecture seems to scale well from four to six cores, in many cases achieving a nearly 50% performance increase over the i7. I do a lot of video/3D rendering using programs like After Effects and Maya, and fortunately these applications (especially 3D rendering apps) really take advantage of having a processor with more cores/threads. I've been looking forward to its release for a while now, but unfortunately I've heard rumors that the i9 will only be available as an Extreme Edition to start... meaning outside my budget. the 32 nm LGA 1366 processors are looking to be a worthwhile investment for me though, so I might finally be able to put together that long awaited and much needed new system.