Windows 7: CPU upgrade?

Hey guys I've searched google with no real results. I have ASUS P5N-E sli motherboard and I want to upgrade my CPU from an E6850 to Q6700. However as I'm sure you guys know that processor is no longer in production. I've looked at newegg, tiger, amazon.com and nothing. Amazon was asking for too much brand new and I don't want a used one. Am I SOL? Any places you can suggest I check?

What's your budget?

Maybe we can find you something better than a Q6700.

Well in my search ASUS website says the Q6700 is the latest quad core my mobo supports. I don't really have the money to upgrade the cpu, mobo, and ram and PSU right now. That's why I was looking at the Q6700. Unless you know something I don't about the P5N-e. But $200-$300 is the most I wanna spend right now. I just bought a gtx 470 and the cpu is still bottlenecking on some games. Mafia 2, Mass Effect 2 even.

Nahh... I'm pretty sure your mobo supports any LGA 775 Intel CPU (meaning Q8000/Q9000 series CPUs as well).

So, don't sweat it.

EDIT: I'd go for this CPU right here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115041

A buddy of mine has that very same CPU, and it flat out screams.

I checked out your motherboard and you're right, Q6700 is the highest quad-core your motherboard supports. In your case, you can try searching for it on Ebay as that's probably the only place you'd be able to find it at a somewhat decent price but I would recommend against this as a used CPU from Ebay is just never a really good idea because quality can't be guaranteed.

I think the best thing for you to do would be to wait until you can upgrade to a Core i-Series because any other upgrade your motherboard can support would be a parallel and you wouldn't really feel you're getting value for the money. That's what I did with my old motherboard that only supported an upgrade to a Core 2 Duo E6700 and nothing higher (Asus P5LD2), I just got rid of it and purchased a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM combo with a Core i3 530 because if I had bought the Core 2 Duo E6700 to upgrade from my previous Pentium D 820, though performance would have most certainly been better, it wouldn't have been as good a value for the money. And in your case, you already have a good CPU performance wise so you may just want to hold off on upgrading and wait to save up for the full combo; the Core i-Series is really worth it.

While I was looking at newegg's site the Q9505 might work. A few of the reviewers mentioned they have that mobo. I wanna search a little more on that to see if there are any compatibility issues. The Q9505 is at a reasonable price point.

Hmmmm after reading a couple of reviews, message boards, etc... I came to a conclusion that your motherboard MIGHT only support CPUs with up to 6MB L2 cache.

Which in that case your only choices would be:

Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor BX80580Q9300

Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9505 Yorkfield 2.83GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80580Q9505