My latest upgrade

[Chilly]

I realized today that my motherboard supports AM3 via a BIOS update, so instead of holding off and waiting for the AM2's to drop in price, I went ahead and ordered this:

http://www.amazon.com/Phenom-Black-3-4G ... B002SRQ214

Compared to my current X2 6400+, this should completely blow that away (benchmarks are almost 200% faster). It'll also allow me to upgrade to 12GB of DDR3 at some point (currently have 6GB of DDR2), so I still have room to upgrade. Not to mention being able to go with the latest video card in about a year.

This goes to prove that when building a new system, the #1 thing to splurge on is the motherboard. It allows you to upgrade individual components down the line without having to do a complete upgrade of everything.

[Falcon]

You shall highly enjoy it! Had the same previous CPU and I now have the 965 which pretty much blows any game away.

[Sharp]

don't think ive ever ordered anything off amazon pc parts wise...

i like my i7 920

[Chilly]

I got a $200 Amazon gift card for Christmas. Normally I'd buy from Newegg.

[Dr. Salvador]

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Publi ... er=9195429

much better

[Chilly]

If by "much better", you mean "marginally better in almost all benchmarks" then sure. Your RAM is faster though. I still paid much less for this system than you'll have paid for that, though. I got my current setup (just a bit slower than what you have listed) plus case, 2TB hard drive, video card, and 22" widescreen LCD for around $1100.

I installed this processor and picked up a better heatsink for it today. Thing is blazing fast. My next bottlenecks are: video card, RAM, and hard drive (want to go SSD once they're a bit less volatile).

[Sharp]

I installed this processor and picked up a better heatsink for it today. Thing is blazing fast. My next bottlenecks are: video card, RAM, and hard drive (want to go SSD once they're a bit less volatile).

raptors are nice. and can get am ajor deal on them sometimes