Im running an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ BE@3.1ghz, I recently got my stimulus check and bought a 9800GTX with some of it and was wondering about my upgrade options with the rest.

1. Are any of the phenoms better than what Ive got? Do any of them have the overclocking headroom that the X2 5000+BE has?

2. I have a DFI Infinity NF570 Mobo that supports DDR2-800, which Im currently running. Would DDR2-1066 work? Is it worth the upgrade?

1. none of the phenoms can match the easy and headroom of the 5000be. the only actual overclocker of the phenoms would be the 9850, as it has unlocked multiplier. don't know how much you can overclock with it, but mostly i hear that people hit 3ghz with it.

2. ddr2 1066 is not worth it. simply overclock the 800 ram and loosen the timings a bit. this is actually what most companies do when they sell 1066 memory.

I'd check to see if your board supports the 95 watt 8750. The review sites say it can be overclocked easily to 2.8 without voltage changes and does not have the amps issues that 125 watt 9850's have with motherboards designed to support only 95 watt Phenom's.

Except in a few applications, you won't see much of a difference between a triple core 8750 and a quad core 9850, and it overclocks easier. There will supposedly be a 95 watt 9850 out later this year (plus the 45nm Deneb's which will be 95 watt and come in at 2.5 to 2.8), but for now, the 8750 is the surprise jewel in AMD's tin CPU crown.

Since each core is supposed to be around 16% faster than the Athlon X2 core, it should improve over your current BE:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipse [...] i=3293&p=8

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 18-33.html

This weekend, I'll finally have the time to switch my X2 to a Gigabyte 780G board, with the goal of getting an 8750 after our vacation. I also have 4 gigs of Kingston DDR2 800 on my desk, when I get an 8750, I'll see if that overclocks to 1066 levels.