If your a really good boy, I'll bring you one at Christmas

Shoulda' tried an X2 5000+ black edition. With unlocked multiplier, it should overclock from 2.8Ghz to 3.2GHz without even breathing hard.

Since phenoms will not be fast enough to update my single 2.4GHz core speed for quite a while, I grabbed an X2 6400+ black edition at 3.2GHz stock speed and a huge Zalman fan for the AM2 socket. It's the old Windsor 90nm chip but I need the speed. Fry's had a cheap Antec cabinet and 380W PSU on sale for $29 after rebate so I jumped on that one also.

The 6400+ was $179 with an ECS mobo thrown in, but many of those mobos tend to arrive dead. That's cheaper than the normal chip price, so it doesn't matter.

I'll have to wait for the next sale to get a decent mobo, hd and some memory. I haven't yet decided to go for another XP or Vista.

Clock speeds aren't directly comparable any more. My 2.4GHz AMDs will do the same crunching as 3.0GHz Intels.

Plenty now - and the sadly the latest seems to confirm what the rest conclude - not bad if you look at it as a budget upgrade for current AM2 boards (you need the new AM2+ boards to get full benefit), but poor on performance and power consumption compared even to the current Intel offerings, never mind the forthcoming 45nm Yorkfields

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-phenom.html

With all these expantions from V8 to 128 and beyond, and every expansion becoming obsolete as soon as it hits the market, it looks as if the future will have to bring stretchable mother boards with as many cores as the user requires and space for ever increasing cooling gear!

Incidentally; did you know that the British Army had V8 equipment back in WWII?