I'm using penom x4 945 with mabo jetway amd 790 + 128 side port. I compare with Intel i5 650 + mabo gigabyte H55-usl3, bot using 4Gb ram, seagate 250gb hdd and XP pro sp2. The result is not so much diffrent, for my daily computing (internet, email, open office, gaming such as EA red alert or general, photoshop). Both loading time are still slow (around 20-30second) to load windows, same speed to open other program. The main problem is the speed of my harddrive, "the unresolve bottle neck", faster harddisk cost me more then 4time expensiver then the standar one. I try a software called "Super Speed super cache" it help to make it faster, but not stable (sometime).
Maybe if I buy Fast SAS Harddrive my problem will solve better then just buy new prosessor, but I do not have enough money for that... My budget is not more then $500 overall
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