[Irinikus]

I still plan on upgrading this machine to with a QX9770 or a XEON  X5470 @ 3.33GHz (The XEON looks to be the better option actually!)

Xeon parts quickly drop in value when old servers start to hit eBay. When I bought my HP Z600 it had a pair of quad core Xeon chips at 2.something GHz, but within a year or two I replaced them with a pair of X5675 hexacores. Put in 48GB of RAM for fun and giggles because it was _that_ cheap. Single thread performance of newer CPUs is better, but throw it something where it can use all 12 cores (24 threads) and it still stands it's ground. And that (transcoding, rendering) is what I got that thing for in the first place. For most other things I prefer my MacbookPro.

It's great that this is the case! As If I had to buy a QX9770, I can only presume that it's been heavily overclocked all it's life, as it's an enthusiast's chip! Whereas a XEON has been run at its correct clock speed in a stable environment.

You can really breathe new life into machines by following this path! That being said, this machine is surprisingly usable in it's current configuration! (Being a 2007 vintage!  )