E8400 vs. Q6600 vs. Q9300.

I'm upgrading my CPU this Christmas, and was wondering which one of these is the most "future proof". I've heard the E8400 is better for gaming, and it's the cheapest, but I don't want to have to upgrade my CPU for at least another year if I'm upgrading now. Which one of these will allow me to best run any game in the next year on high/max?

When games start actually using quads (like Alan Wake), will the Q6600 still be considered a "good" quad core? My worry is that by the time games actually use it I would need whatever quad is out at the time to run the games well.

Obviously this is not a fact since the game isn't out yet.. but I would bet alot that an e8400 or e8500 @ 3.6-4.0 ghz will outperform a q6600 in Alan Wake and most upcoming games, even if the game utilizes quad-cores. Like I said, this isn't a fact, just conjecture on the part of a guy who's been building cost-effective gaming pc's for over 9 years. No offense to the quad-core users, but the dual-core hasn't seen it's day pass by just yet. I may be pretty biased on this since I have an overclocked e8400 in my system, but I really have to say that you will be happy to spend the $165 or so on your cpu and use the rest for a great GPU or other upgrades. By the time that games start really utilizing 4 or more cpu cores, the i7 chips will be the mainstream, and the core 2 quad will be near obsolete.

Q9300 is the most future proof but for price to performance ratio I say q6600 because games may start uing 4 cores ext year the e8400 is great and can over clock well but duel cores will be a thing of the past kemar7856