mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

So in other words, a Socket 1366 Xeon is actually a pretty good deal.

Yes, but if you get a quad core with low mutiplier it should be cheap, really cheap below 50$ especially if it is of the first generation (45nm).
For 50$ - 75$ you should get a quad with pretty high multiplier.
45nm or 32nm makes alot of diffrence when it comes to voltage vs speed.
The 32nm quads have 12mb cache while the 45nm ones only have 8mb but it dosnt inpact performance much.
The 6-cores will be 150+$. All 6-cores are 32nm with 12mb cache.
6-core engineering samples are common on ebay and some boards that accept other Xeons wont accept those so avoid of your not sure you can find a bios that support them.
Dont forget to check motherboard compability.

edit spelling

Those low clock Xeon quads should be looked at as an economy option but still a Good deal if you know how to make good use of them vs buying something new. $75 for a i7 9x0 is very good when you start looking at the benches vs the newer quads. The only thing that I don't like is the power consumption but undervolting can do wonders and it comes down to the quality of the sample. Some of them you can push for very low volts but keeping the temps down is a must as the crash temp can often decrease into the 70s.