I'd give the market a while before I'd build one. Intel released (guess a month ago) the engineering schematic for usb3.0 to other mainboard manufacturers. Also, computer hardware will drop in price over time.
I highly doubt core 2 will be EOL that soon. And even if it is, you can probebly buy a used cpu. As long as they are not being overclocked, they won't die until 20 years from now provided the MB doesn't get zapped by lightning.
As for total speed of a cpu. If all cores are going at 100% then yeh, 9.6ghz. But if a game can only use 1 core. It will only be running at 3.2ghz which is already running windows. If a game can use multiple cores then it can run like 9ghz provided the game hogs that much cpu. You'd need alot of monsters on the screen for it to require 9.6ghz of speed.
Most games only use one core. Even if the executable is set to handle multiple, it will only run the 1st core that is already running windows and all your other software.
EDIT:
I don't know how well it would handle multi-core. Xbox is pretty limited with 512mb ram and dvd to play the game so I doubt it will be laggy on a good core 2 duo at 3.2ghz since HDD's are faster then dvd drives and you'd have more ram. I'm doubting D2 will require much more out of a system then any game you can pick up at the store these days. It sounds to me that the 3 core 3.2ghiz cpu is more of a waste in an xbox and won't get anywhere near full usage as data goes threw RAM to be processed unless it uses the HDD paging file (temporary ram) which again is limited in speed compared to the speed of a stick of ram. There is alot more to computers than a cpu.
Correct me if I'm wrong here...
Last edited by LightningLockey; 08/11/08 07:40 PM.
