New Build (thoughts welcome)

/Jealous  
I'd drop the 6core chips, nothings really using Four cores properly yet and theres plenty of quads out there that will last you a while,
The O/s, is it Vista64 or Win7?
4Gb of ram should be more than enough in a rig as well
But damn, nice job you've pulled there man, I hope you enjoy the project  
Moto

a 965be could work and save me some cash, as well as the ram, but well see as check writing time gets closer...

the OS is win7

AS THE PREVIOUS PERSON SAID
follow his advice and also make sure your mobo is the exact one u need
Check ASUS, they provide a pretty good selection in the AM3 section.
---just my thoughts---

one i wouldnt mind gettings is the crossfire IV Formula board although abit overkill and expensive for what we need...

though i do want the fx chip and not the gx on the MB...

What i might end up doing is having the 4 pc's without eyefinty to actually run with a 965be and 5870. But i havent decided if i wanted to put seperate cards in the different machines, instead of having all 8 nearly identical

Could always do a comparison build (if you have time ofc)

Build one system with the 965be (do you need the potential hassle of overclocking the rigs?) and 5870 (I'd stick with the 5970 though)
and one on the 6 core spec,
test both on actual gaming,not just benchmark software
and see which gives you the bang for buck,
But I would personally go for the 965Be/5970 option,
I cant see many people complaining on one of those,

sort of business slant though, you want something that will do the job for the least outlay, dont build 8 awesome rigs that only see 3-4 hours use a day, you need them to pay for themselves as quickly as possible  
Moto

The Thubans are not good gaming CPUs. If you have to go with AMD then go with a Phenom II x4 955/965.
Personally I would go with the i5 750/760. It is a better gaming chip than anything AMD even makes and unlike the AMD chips does not stop scaling at higher overclocks. With 4GB of decent DDR3 1600 and a 5970 you would be good to go. I also would not waste money on Velciraptors. If you just want fast load times get SSDs. The new 500GB platter design 7200RPM drives are so fast that to me the Velociraptors are a waste of money considering the price per gigabyte.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-cor...

Notice here how the AMD processors are overclocked and Intel is stock.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclocking-phenom...

Could have 4 with the 5970 & 4 with the 5870, all with 965be and 4gigs ram...

These are not personal gaming machines built for "bragging rights" so it really doesn't matter if you get the highest fps or just something highly playable.

^^ Thats what I was trying to say, you put it better though mate  
build systems that do the job, for as cheap an outlay as possible
Moto

well cheap and doing the job are simple, but at the same time, its a investment as well. And there is some sort of bragging rights that go along with it. We want people to use them because they dont or cant afford to have this kind of system. Of course a budget will always limit things but squeezing the most is always fun.

As for the i5, i personally do not favor those chips, my friend has a i5 750, and for whatever reason my 940be out runs him in fps. As well from my knowledge the i5 7xx series doesnt have hyperthreading like its i7 bigger brother...as well does not do triple channel memory. Although correct me if im wrong about those assumptions...

as well how would the i5-7xx chips handle the 5970, because of its 'dual' card status will it be able to run it at full 16x pci because when you crossfire it only allows 8x. But i dont know as i said current intel builds other than i7s are not my alley

at that point its just a intl or amd chip in my mind

I think going with a SSD vs the Raptor might be a good switch, as well as the reduced ram. Ill post what i find with the new build, it might even save me some cash

Umm if your 940BE system is beating an i5 750 system it is because you have a better graphics card or he plays at a higher resolution or something of that nature. An i5 750 is about a 940BE and a half. If you actually read the links in my last post you would see why. The 940BE is roughly the same as the first generation Core2Quads from 2006. Q6600/Q9400. A stock i5 750 beats a heavily overclocked 1090T in everything except certain apps that can use 6 cores. Just look at the hierarchy chart. AMD is still just slightly behind Core2 in clock for clock speed. Now that is just speed in value for a low price AMD wins for sure.

thanks for assuming that i didnt read the links, but this is what i got from reading them the 'first' time...and heavily? define heavily?

3dmark overall score the 965e was 120pts off the i750 and the 1090t was nearly 1k over the 750, and then didnt touch the overclocked. In the CPU department the 1090t was above the i750, whether it be stock or overclocked. GPU nearly identical as it should be. In the pc mark app is where the i5 shines over the amd offerings

head on over to 3dmax and the 750 came in last, pdf dont care about, adobe dont care about, chess game 750 last, cinebench single thread tied for second to last multithread last, compression test dont care about, audiovideo is a toss up with audio to intel and video to amd...

when you said heavily i went to those links and didnt see what you saw, unless im missreading something. I appreciate the thoughts and all but its not clear as day as your making it out to be imo.

mine is a 940e slightly overclocked to 3.6 and running a 4890, not entirely sure what his video card is. we play with the same resolutions. Could be his video card dont know.

Although, i have been putting together a i5 build based on your guys suggestions and seeing what i can come up with in price range and comparable parts etc