Upgrading

any of those three will work fine, the 955 is obviously the better of the three.

I suggest you ask this question when you are ready to upgrade though "in a few weeks or months" the CPU market can change.

yes true but it is likly these will still remain viable upgrade options

I would grab either the Athlon II X4 630 or the Phenom II X4 955, really depends what you want to spend.

well does the phenom's L3 cache really make a diffrence in games?

Well Yes, http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=105 That comparison is the 955 vs the 630 scroll to the bottom and see the difference in gaming results. Also, you could compare the 555 vs the 630, http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/120?vs=105 the 555 does better in gaming in almost all the benches except the Dragon Age one.

This should answer you're question as this clocks a phenom ii down to athlon ii speeds. Measuring just the performance differance between the L3 cache and no L3 cache.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-l3-cache,241...



Will is make a difference. It could have some noticeable affect on some game but most of the time, the difference will not be noticeable.

On the cpu side of gaming: the GHz of the particular cpu will affect the performance of a game more than the cache in a cpu (up to a certain point on some (if not, on most) cpu's.)

Although the Gpu performance will have the most effect on the majority of games.

Under normal setup, this would be the case. As the Phenom ii's have l3 cache and have higher ghz. Equalling better performance.

Although he was asking about just the L3 alone which would not be much of a performance changer unless he targeting only app that will use the l3 cache to it's fullest advantage.

Haha, yes I realized my error when you posted your message. +1 on the review you posted.