Help... Phenom II 940 or E8500

PII all the way. You might not even need a need a new mobo.

Check to see if your current board supports it.

lol@phenom.....

p2 940 better
mobo ASUS M4A79 Deluxe

Well for the P II 940..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Comb [...] mbo.165047

With the X3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Comb [...] mbo.165024

Can try your luck with this mobo in unlocking the 4th core...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Comb [...] mbo.165025

...

Get the 940. Its the cheaper route

Overpriced and/or overrated, imho.

Biostar motherboard are quite good, performnig really nice, and don't cost an too much. Asus was the only brand that died on me, Gigabyte was good, but not better than the other brand I've tried.

I own a Biostar motherboard, the 790gx A2+ and it run my Phenom 9500 @ 2.4 Ghz rock stable. Didn't have any memory incompatibility either.

I am using that MB and CPU at this time until and if I decide to change.

I had been using a Foxconn A79A-S 790FX motherboard... but one of the PCIe slots went bad at about the same time as a nasty smell was coming from my new Xaser case. (The smell ended up being the Thermaltake fans... their fans actually cause a smell that is awful.) My Foxconn might be okay...

Anyway I bought the MA790GP-UD4H because it was the only MB I could get on a sunday in a local shop. It actually "feels" more solid than the Foxconn. In addition I can get about an additional 100Mhz out of the CPU before crashing. (The Foxconn could go to 3.8Ghz; this GIgabyte can go to 3.9Ghz and I bet I could get 4.0Ghz if I tried hard enough. But I generally don't overclock other than playing around and benchmarking.)

This bios lets you change the NB and HT. In addition it has more voltage control than the Foxconn; you can set the NB VID and also the NB Core voltages. With the Foxconn you couldn't set the NB Core; only the NB VID.

AND this bios is MUCH better than my old GIgabyte MA790FX-DS5. That MB couldn't run at stock without crashing. I swore I'd not own another Gigabyte; but this UD4H actually works well. I'm still miffed at Gigabyte for abandoning the DS5... but I'll get over it. (All the MB companies do that over time.)

overpriced yes, overrated no.

the whole argument for quad cores is soooo frigging stupid its mind blowing.

heres the argument:

get a quad core now because in the future it will be good. its the same thing the PS3 users were saying and guess what? the ps3 never beat the 360 in any way and the new consoles that are being planned will outdate the current ones.

the same argument is being user for processors: get a quad core because apps will come out that will utilize all the cores. too bad that will not happen for a really long time for MANY reasons and by the time it does, there will be 6-8 maybe 10 core processors that will render a quad core obsolete. logically, it makes no sense to get a quad although many 'computer enthusiasts' here will tell you otherwise.

heres the deal:

if you multitask like crazy get a quad
if gaming is your primary concern, get a dual

^ right i totally agree with you on that. the price for the wolfdales NEEDS to go down ASAP. i have no idea wtf intel is thinking with their pricing schemes - im inclined to think that it is because the wolfdales still sell like crazy but who knows. honestly though, the 8x series is the i7 of dual cores. being primarily a computer gamer i went with it over the Q6600 because 1) i knew i could overclock it like crazy and 2) i would be set for games for awhile seeing as how the trend to multi threaded games will not happen for awhile. at 4.5 i could run crossfire and obliterate every game out there.

Phenom II, no doubt about it. I've got one in my new computer, very good future-proof CPU for the price.

^ lol. exactly.