I read that the i7 tends to be a lot more stable at 4GHz than the standard Quad.

I read that the i7 tends to be a lot more stable at 4GHz than the standard Quad.

Circumstantial/anecdotal. You can always take a small sample of cases and say "these 3 i7's run at a higher average clock than these 3 Core 2 Q's" and vice versa. The point is the average case shows ~ 4GHz is possible on both architectures with the right hardware and the right overclocking methodology.

The Core i7 has a different architecture than the Core 2 line of processors. It supports hyper-threading and up to 3 channels of DDR3 RAM. It also has an extra level of cache on the chip that can help minimize performance bottlenecks due to memory requests. At the same clock speeds, an i7 can be anywhere from slightly faster than a Core 2, to significantly faster - it just depends on the workload. At this point in time the platform which the Core 2 resides upon is essentially a dead-end, so if you would like to upgrade again in the future you're much better off with a Core i7.

Keep in mind that this is referring to i7 socket LGA 1366 processors. You can also get i7 socket LGA 1156 processors that run DDR3 memory dual channel, not 3 channels. Also, the 1366 socket has more upgrade potential than the 1156 socket. All of the i7 processors, regardless of socket, support hyper-threading while i5 does not.

"supports up to" is a product family feature that by no means precludes i7 8 series products.

Alrightee! Thanks for the exchange.I am now the proud owner of:i7 920 2.66 ghz12 Gig RAMGeForce GTX 260 1.8 Gig video cardplus a ton of other stuff computerI hope there aren't many glitchs on getting FSX to run on Windows 7