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Originally Posted by Xander
The extreme processors have their multiplier unbound which increases the overclocking potential. Not overclocking them seems a waste and to be honest, it's not the processor speed which will inhibit game performance.
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If they made a regular quad-core without an unlocked multiplier at anywhere near same speed, I would have suggested that.
So, what's your suggestion? Go down to dual-core for better speed, or stick with a sluggish regular Q6XXX processor which won't go higher than 2.66GHz? My father unfortunately got me a Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (which I didn't ask him to
), and it doesn't even run most applications as quickly as my old E6600 with a 2.66GHz processor. So you can't tell me processor speed doesn't make a difference. I even notice it on boot time, application start time, even while waiting for areas to load in games. Perhaps I'm just so impatient that I notice performance differences that would elude most people.
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The Velociraptor is due out soon, I think it's available on pre order about now though.
As for performance, it'll make no difference to most in game speeds only load times. I have two Samsung 500Gbs and not only are they quick enough to keep pace with Crysis but also a darn sight quieter than a vibrating raptor 
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Well in that case, he should probably look out for them in case he needs the speed. But if he doesn't get a Raptor, he should at least get a drive with a larger buffer and the best SATA connection available. Basically, I'm saying don't go too cheap for bigger storage. I honestly have never been able to use more than 60% of a 200GB drive, and that was when I was incredibly lazy about cleaning it up for several years. The drive died before I even got close to it's capacity. You're probably right about RAID, although it still might improve performance slightly.
You're discounting the performance impact of all these things individually as negligable, but I want you to consider something... taken together, won't they make a bigger impact and result in a less powerful system where you can't do things quite as well or quickly?
And you still haven't answered my main question... why is everyone's mind so focused on "best deals" rather than "best quality" or "best performance"? It's like you're all internally assured that that's the most important thing.