The motherboard supports quad core although I still suggest you go for a dual core. The E6550 will fit well into your budget. Remember a balanced system is better than having a system with a highend cpu and rest of the components playing catchup. ex: E6550+ASus p5 mobo+2/3GBddr2+8600GT or above is better compared to Q6600 + mobo+ 1Gb ram + sluggish GPU. ARonald
I agree with the above statement, if you go for the quad, make sure you add enough RAM and get a good video card (if you're gonna be gaming). If you're gonna be running a little home server or something, you might just need to balance CPU and RAM (and perhaps hard drive capacity)
if u use big heavy db application tools u shuid get quad core or if u do heavy designs, otherwise dual core is more than enough for avg user
I suggest you do the following: If you are running Vista: Go with Dual Core CPU, High End Video Card capable of Direct X 10 with 1GB Video Memory, and a MINIMUM 2 GB of Ram. 3 or 4 GB of ram is preferrable. Vista is a Ram hog, so get as much ram as you can afford. 4 GB is probably the most you will be able to afford, because 2 GB sticks of ram are still very expensive even at wholesale prices. If you are running XP: Go with Dual Core CPU, a moderately decent video card, like 512 MB, 2 GB of Ram. That will handle just about anything you can throw at it. Special Cirumstances: If you start using a lot of Adobe applications at once, then you may want up the XP specs to 1 GB Video, and 3 GB System Ram. Anymore than 3 GB and it would be a waste due to the limitations of XP. Other Comments: Like someone else said if you are only browsing the web and do simple desktop tasks like word, excel, etc. Then dual core is more than enough. I don't know enough about the current applications to know whether or not they would see any benefit from a quad core CPU. This is what I do know. The difference between Vista on a 3.0 GHZ Hyperthreading CPU with 2 GB, and a Vista machine with a dual core CPU at 3.0 GHZ and 2 GB of Ram is just unreal. So if money is not a problem, even if it is a little tight right now, I would opt for as much machine as I could afford. But that is just me. I tend to make my machines last for at least 3 years, with plenty of use left in it for someone I might give the machine to in my family when I get a new one.
bad time to buy processors right now but, I'd go for a dual core processor the quads are okay but just not optimzied, yet, for many programs the quad cores are terrible overclockers too and beyond that, the quads are just two dual cores stuck together (assuming you're not going to get a phenom, but if you're planning on getting one wait until AMD has sorted out the errdata)
heres what I think this dude should get AMD AM2+ mobo athlon 5600x2 ATI 2600xt SATA II 250gb hdd ect it'll do until the new processors line comes out why would he need anything better? he can play games at medium / low settings (new games) and he can multi-task with adobe. firefox, AIM, msn, YIM, dreamweaver and some music playing (I can with a 4000x2 processor) theres no need for so much power which he'll probably never use