Vista - Stepping and multipliers question

I want to buy a q9550, but the e0 stepping version is tougher to get hold of in the uk for a reasonable price. Does the e0 stepping make a difference At Stock 2.83ghz speed (ie run cooler) than the c1 stepping of the regular q9550.

Steppings are like a "revision" for the chips used, so when a next revision is released, it'll have something like bug fixes, improve and resolve electrical issues, improve frequencies etc.

The naming scheme Intel used, for example, the first revision might be A0. If then ext revision is something like A1, then only a small change was made, but if it goes to like B0, then a larger change was made. A smaller change will be for something like bug fixes, and a larger change will be a manufacturing change, so possibly different materials will be used.

New revisions could possibly run cooler, and overclock better like the Q6600 G0 stepping overclocked better than the E0 stepping one.

It depends on what you want to do, performance wise at stock speeds I don't think you'll notice anything.

Does the multiplier make any difference either at stock?

You don't need to bother with the multiplier unless you're overclocking.

thats cool, especially since it looks like my board doesnt support e0 stepping.

It might do. It might just need a BIOS update.

It may do, but thats the problem. The bios updates read support for up to the q9550 c-1 stepping, but there is some mixed opinion as to whether the e0 actually works with the latest 1201 bios.