Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 vs Core I7 920

I saw 2 quad core processors with the same base clock speed-q9400 and i7 920 , both at 2.66 Ghz. The first one costs about 9500 and the second one costs 14500. Is there enough performance difference to justify the extra 5000 that one pays to get the i7? If yes, in what areas can one expect to notice the difference?

i7 gives better results in some benchmarks. Nearly no difference in gaming. There are a million articles comparing yorkfields with i7 920, use google.

hey i7 920 is the father of q9400 and very much large diff in gaming

Actually its the other scenarios where i7 has an edge over Q9xx or the PII X4. In gaming, all are somewhat equal, and can be directly equated to the clock [provided the proccy is a Q9xxx/i7/PII X4].

i7 offers no significant performance increase in gaming over Q9400.

noob replies in this thread

Q9400 is nowhere near i7 performance , its totally different architecture , dont just judge by the clock speed .

i7 uses triple channel memory , almost 2x memory bandwidth over dual channel ddr2 . also it has HT which gives around 20-25% performance boost .

Q9400 oced to 4ghz willl be equivalent to stock core i7 performace .

all amd owners think opposite why not post P2 beats i7

Who disagrees with that ? speaking abt nos and specs feels good always

But what one cares is real world performance and OPs interest is in gaming. The memory bandwidth increase and HT feature benefits in other apps. With that view in gaming there is hardly any difference(Nil notable difference). OP wants to spend money wisely for what he wants. Not like others who jump into "latest is greatest".
Refer the CPU charts in Toms hardware to see the differences between i7 and core 2s in gaming. They also have a separate article comparing both.
Now calling others noob is totally uncalled for which makes you the one.

dont talk about old games , i have compared myself , crysis , farcry 2 etc all games perform better with i7 , upto 20-30 fps boost in crysis with 295 compared to Q9550 at high.
i agree for OP Q9400 will be better choice , my reply was to others posting i7 gives no improvement over q9400

++++111111
Qxxx or PII is as good as i7 in gaming. i7 is gr8 on benchmarks and vantage, but in almost 95% games, there are other CPUs out there which offer better performance at much lower price.

^ -11111, why u invested in crappy x3s then, why not Intel 3.4k dual core which will OC to 4.3GHz~ and faster in almost 95% games. ur words.

OP is not gamer IIRC, he wants chip for crunching

Clock speed doesnt matter whn you compare two processors with different architectures.

i7 has got a more advanced architecture than a Q9400 and hence is Much Much faster.

Also, just to add the difference, i7 supports only DDR3 while Q9400 only supports DDR2.

So google

For those 95% games of you people , disable HT. HT (hyperthreading) divides the 4 physical cores into 8 virtual cores or threads.