Best CPU today

 looking into getting a new setup :)

my p4 2.4c@3.2ghz 1gig of 3200 and 9800pro just isnt doing it anymore guys lol.

What's your budget?

 well really i just want to get up to date with everything and save up and build a new rig.

 Well, Intel is releasing Nahelem in september which will be king of the hill by a large margin for a while. So if your not building right now I would save for that and the X58 motherboards that will ship at the same time. However Pricing will probably be high until the none Extreme editions are made because I am not quite sure if the None extreme and Extremes will be shipped simutaneously.

Today of course the best cpu you can get is the Intel Core 2 series. The q6600 is a pretty good sweet spot for mid to high end performance for 194 on newegg.

All of the new intel chips will be DDR3 required.

Hope that helps

 Nehalem won't be readily available until October, though he's right in that the release date is in September now.  Honestly, if I were to go out and purchase a new cpu/motherboard I'd go with something like an ASUS Maximus Formula and a Core 2 Quad Q9300.  That way you can get the less expensive DDR2 modules and still get similar performance.  Pick up a few 4850's to put in crossfire and you've got a pretty formidable gaming rig.

I can't argue with any of the points here. He did however post this in the AMD section so he may want to know that instead. There is a pretty good arguement for building an AMD rig for gaming, assuming that's his focus. An AMD Phenom x4 based system can be built a good deal cheaper and comes close enough perfomance wise. You can use the extra cash to fund better graphics card(s)and/or more RAM. With modern GPU's taking most of the load off CPU's it's the GPU that is more important IMO. This is what has me on the fence with my next build.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not argueing Intels current lead in performance.