Home Built Computers

[Fish]

Originally Posted by SuperChief

So you're saying I'd probably be better served to get something like so:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX

Yes...

Or if it were me, I'd get the AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8Ghz, and unlock the other core.

The Phenom II X3 is simply an X4 chip with one of the cores locked. The mobo you're getting has a built in core unlocker specifically for this purpose, which makes the chip an X4. And the X3 720 is very easily overclocked as well. So you could save big bucks and get the X3 720 at 2.8Ghz, and turn it into an X4 at 3.2Ghz very very easily. I've done exactly this with several builds, and it's turned out great.

But honestly, you're not going to notice much of a difference between 2.8Ghz and 3.4Ghz if you don't want to mess with overclocking. It won't really show up in performance other than running advanced benchmarks. Your RAM and Vid card are more important than CPU core speed.