Phenom ii x4 965 (stock speeds) and 7850 or fx 6300 (stock) and 650 ti

I think the Phenom II is better, but can you get the FX-4300? That's an awesome budget CPU and performs a bit better than the PII.

Really? Isn't it basically a dual core with amds version of hyperthreading, though? Wouldn't I be better with a true quad core? Also, since its priced only 10 bucks less than the 6300, I don't see the harm in tossing in the extra 10 dollars for a noticeably better cpu....

I haven't been following up too much about these new FX cpu, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the FX-4300 was quad-core and the FX-6300 was six-core. I don't think AMD is using anything similar to hyper-threading, so they are all "real" cores. I'm not a big fan of Intel hyper-threading anyways, it doesn't do any good for gaming, even for normal applications it doesn't always work well. I'd rather have real physical cores instead.

Anyways, it looks like you're right, according to this review the FX-6300 is a better bang for the bucks:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-r...

Nope... The fx series uses modules, they contain 2 actual cores each, but they share resources. The 4300 will perform somewhat better than the 965, but price/performance when coupling cpu/gpu price together, the 965 will be better because it will allow for a better gpu.