I have read the reviews on the phenom, i know it doe'snt compare to a intel quad, howver I have a asum am2 board, the bios is all set to take a phenom, and frankly i don't feel like reinstalling everything.  As i said in another post I want to turn my vhs tapes to mpeg4 or divx.  I have a x2 5600 right now and i love it, it great for games, and runs pretty cool, but i need 4 cores.  I'd rather spend 220 dollars for a cpu than 500 dollars for a board, intel quad, and my precious time, but jeezus i don't want to have a suck ass cpu,  help me decide.

Give it a bash ... or wait a month for a B3 revised cpu which might be about 5 to 10% faster thant the current TLB bugged B2 cpu ... the choice is yours.
 
I'd frankly wait if it were my money ... and in the meantime overclock it a bit.
 
I say a bit because it is a 90nm 2.8ghz Windsor core ... 2Mb cache which is great ... not much headroom in those under a stock cooler.
 
Should be able to push it to 3Ghz tho ... that's a 6000+.
 

I do VHS to DVD convertion and use TMPGenc, Pinnacle studio, and H234 encoding all the time and phenom is quite strong in these areas.
 
It will depend on how heavy you do multitasking, in my case I would put a phenom just because I need more slower cores over less faster cores.
I'm also considering a dual socket F mobo with Nforce 3600 (tyan) as I have a deal for 2 slow 4-cores-barcelonas for less than 500$ the pack. But the Xeons are quite nice in many benchs, the problem will be the price.
 
In other cases, specially gaming, an X2 6000 can beat the phenom.
But as conclusion, I would wait for the B3 revision. I'm pretty sure is not more than 3 months away...  
 
But if you get a phenom, get 4 memory modules to make each core to have its own memory. And it seems that technically it can be possible for an old AM2 motherboard to support DDR2 1066.  
 
There's no benchmarks showing that kind of config as far as I know.

Dont rush to get a flawed CPU.  I, personally, like AMD; that said, I would'nt rush to get a phenom until they fix it.  My family has a small business.  I build most of our systems.  I built one for my parrents personal use and one for the office using AMD lately.  Both are X2's and both are running well.  Wait for the next stepping.  Or if you get one cheep enough, then buy it.  It would have to be REALLY cheep, though, in my opinion.

Thats the thing, my x2 5600 is running @ 3ghz right now, it badass for games, and its gonn kinda suck to drop from 3ghz to 2.3ghz, I would be happy if i could get one to 2.5 or 2.6 ghz, so i would'nt take suck a hit on games, as of last yesterday I'm running a ps2 emualtor, and it's a hog.  I already have a guy who wants to buy my x25600, so the phenom would end up costing me like 100 bucks actually, thats sems a lot better than a rebuild and 500 bucks.

Don't do it. Just hold on a little more, then get the improved Phenom, along with the improved BIOS. Hopefully that will bump up the performance a bit to compete with Intel's Yorkfield.

^AGREED. Wont compete with the Yorkfields tho

Well the Phenom 9500 costs only $190 at newegg. It's a damn cheap quad for the price. If you're not gonna OC, it's probably a good deal.
 
The only problem is that you might not see a large performance gain, if any.

I'd say wait for B3, I'm going to guess that will be around April?

It could be in 2nd quarter as well... but I guess the prices will become more interesting with the release of the Phenom X3/X2. The athlons will become cheaper I hope.

 
Honestly the Phenom 9500 for $189.99 right now on Newegg is a great deal. You already have an AM2 board compatible with Phenom, so why upgrade to a whole new platform? And generally speaking, the TLB bug is a very rare bug. I'm an Intel fan myself, however, given your circumstances and situation, the Phenom 9500 would suit you just fine. Try not to listen to all the fanboy hype and what not, focus on what the processor can do, and, granted its cost, judge whether or not it's a better buy.  
 
If I personally had the money to get a Phenom and I had an AM2 board already updated to take Phenom, I'd get it. Look at reviews on Newegg from people who have purchased the product, the product gets great reviews. So let that be a factor in your purchasing as well.

only if:
1) you get  the unlocked multiplier and know how to overclock it to 2.6-3ghz. its not as easy as intel
 
2) you plan on running multiple ati cards like the 3870
 
or if you can only afford amd!
 
i am getting one but then again i have 10 computers

I agree with TC. I'd wait for the B3 stepping before making the jump. For anyone else that's thinking of the Phenom, you should also be aware that the 790FX boards seems to have a problem with the SB600 south bridge. So hold off until the next board revision with the SB700 south bridge mobos are released. A report on the 790FX motherboard problem can be found at:
 
http://techreport.com/articles.x/13832
 
I've been wanting to go to a quad for some time myself as my computer sometimes slows as I multitask programs that demand more than the dual core can give. Don't know if I can hold off until Phenom is fixed though, so I might buy a new Intel platform, even though its more expensive for a complete system.
 

If your codecs will benefit from quad cores, then buying a 'fixed' Phenom sounds like a good deal; OK, it will be slower than the Intel CPU, but unless you're compressing video professionally and make money from doing it faster, the time savings probably won't be worth $300.

The ONLY reason for the 'bug' in the current Phenom to be a factor in purchase decisions is if your motherboard's BIOS has the option to disable the fix for it, as this fix slows down performance.  
 
Nobody has yet to be able to produce the crash in the L3 Cache memory that is the cause of this TLB errata bug everyone keeps talking about. Anandtech, the guys at Xtremesystems, (H), etc., they've all tried to cause the error with their synthetic software and have not been able to. Only AMD, in their lab environment with their synthetic stress testing software, caused the error to occur.  
 
So as long as your motherboard's bios has the feature to disable the fix I would say this bug is a non-issue on purchase decisions. Actually, I think in the last release of AMD's Overdrive there is a 'turbo' option in it now, which basically disables the errata fix (thus not slowing down your processors ~10%).
 
All that said, Anandtech's Gary said that on the week of the 14th they will be releasing their big 790FX article and how to get the most out of Phenoms. I would definately wait until at least then because (in my opinion) they do an outstanding job with their reviews. If you don't want to wait, I would say get a Black Edition 9500 if you can find one or else roll the dice and play the waiting game a little longer and hope that AMD releases Phenoms with much more overclocking headroom (or at the very least higher clocks at stock).

Wait for new stepping. You'd have to be mad to buy now. Crappy AMD

You have a good cpu now. I would wait for the new stepping or for further price drops. Fry's will probably have one for $199 with board later in the year, just like they did with the q6600, which was a killer deal.

Not to mention that I don't think B2 phenoms will be removed by B3s. Which probably means that B2s could drop in price dramatically til they run out. Still we are seeing the price of the 9500 going down slowly. This is just the beginning...
 
Honestly I don't like the 770/790 chipsets. The south bridge is too old in my opinion but also the crossfire doesn't scale as well as in the intel chipsets as this test reveals: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqu [...] amd-phenom

 
Mostly due to the FSB Overclocking, rather than the multiplier overclocking.  Which kinda invalidates part of his opinions in that review.