I was going to upgrade my AM2+ dual core to a quad core and add another 2gigs of DDR2 but the price would have been $150ish. Then I saw this 6 core Phenom II for $197.00 and though why not. The MSI board I got for it has all kinds of options. The cores are on auto clock which raises and lowers the mhz on the fly. I used the stock AMD cooler and have yet to see the temps go above 40C even when gaming. This chip has the Turbo Core thing that allows each core to clock to 3.3ghz when needed. Stock ghz is 2.8. This thing has plenty of power.
Right now I am running Vista 32bit but will be installing Win7 64bit soon and maybe add another 4gigs of dual channel ram. Then I should be set for another 4-5 years on this machine.
13-130-293 MB MSI|880GM-E43 880G --- $79.99
19-103-851 CPU AMD|PH II X6 1055T AM3 --- $197.99
20-161-279 MEM 2Gx2|WINTEC 3AXH1333C9WS4GK --- $79.99
Not a bad upgrade for $357.97.
