Hey Matt. Could you clarify this a bit?
If you have 1 socket daughter card with 3.2 quad in it you'll need to get a dual socket board for 8-core "upgrade" right? And if you mean 8-core single chip you'll need a whole new motherboard.
How is the 6-core more limited as you'll have to get a dual socket card for it to upgrade as well? to say 3.46GHz 12-core.
Or did you mean limited as in there isn't much faster to replace it with
You are correct from 3.33 all you can upgrade to is 3.46
so if you want to get more cores a year from now or two you will be very limited to what you could do (yes you can go 8 or 12 but will cost you way more money)
having only 4 memory slots and single chip slot limits to only that
knowing that we will be starting to use more multithread programs in 2012 thats when those multi chip computers will really benefit
why spend extra 1300 dollars now on 3.33 why not safe the money if you thing you will never need more than 6 cores or 32 gig of ram and invest in better monitor or a max out your drives,
4 cores today will run all the programs as fast as 4, 6, 8 or 12 core system it may take you 1 minute longer in 1 hr to compress DVD but if you running one program who will really notice this, all the 4.1 and 5.1 computers will last you at least 3 years but with dual processor slots upgrades will always be cheaper
3.46 4 core system will always run faster than 3.33 6 core system any 32 bit programs and even some 64 bit programs
you can update any 4.1 or 5.1 4 core processors to to any of those chips, but 2 years from now any 8 core and 12 core system with a bit lower speed (MHz) will run faster than any 4 or 6 core system with top speed do to amount of corse available for 64 bit applications/programs
Some people will be ok to upgrade their computers every year or two but some want to keep them for more than 2 years,
there will always be talk who is faster or the best, but there always will be someone better
today 2.93 may be the fastest but tomorrow 2.66 may be faster because it has the double ram or running on SSD drives only
You can make your 3.1 8 core MP faster than stock 12 core 2.93 by just doing those things
so the question is what will make you happy and not what will be the fastest, if you already have a MP do you really, REALLY need to upgrade it. If you running on 4 year old iMac than look at 4.1 or 5.1 revision of MP but if you are using it only for internet browsing, word documents, iPhoto or iMovie than don't spend all your hard earn money as your iMac will do all your jobs with exactly the same speeds
just my $0.02
