Jeez, looking to build a new rig and now here comes an AM2+ quad core. Man, I can't keep up anymore! Anyone have this yet? ncix.com

I've checked out the reviews and had hoped for a lot better. $ for $ there's still more bang for the buck in Core 2 Quads is the conclusions I saw...unless your mobo is already AM2 and can use them with a BIOS update.

This one at AnandTech is good and objective and indicates the prices will ease.

The customer reviews at Newegg concur as far as price/performance go. There's also this 'Errata' bug in the chips clocked beyond 2.4 GHz, not that I'll do that, but nevertheless it annoys me even though Intel has apparently also done the same with their C2 Duos.

Hehe, I built my current rig to last for 5 years (2 yrs. ago) but the only thing left to do is add some memory and an 8800 gfx card which I don't think the expense is warranted, at least not the gfx card . I want more oomph! This will be the kid's gamer machine when they're here, otherwise it's all mine.

I think the "errata" was fixed with a BIOS patch? Personally, if I was going for a new system right now, I'd still go for Intel. It's more proven at this stage and seems to walk over the current Quad offerings from AMD. Price wise I think one would do better with Intel too.

I had a bit of a tough decision to make with motherboard and RAM when I upgraded a few months back...DDR3 or DDR2...and decided to take it on the nose with DDR3 prices being what they are relative to DDR2. Gives me some "future proofing".

I'm getting myself an AM2+ quad core in the New Year, as the mobo on my desktop is basically deepfried, and will only run XP x64 at best ... Yeah, it's brand loyalty I know, but I can't get rid of a feeling that the native AMD quad cores will be more stable than the Intel ones.

I will go out on a limb though, and because AMD now have the native X4 chips, I believe that they will beat Intel in the race to make an octo-core X8 CPU....

I found a comparison between the two at Tom's Hardware. As far as gaming is concerned, they're near equal if they did their job properly. At this time I'm still leaning towards an AM2+ Quad as the mobo/CPU combo is a couple of hundred cheaper. This rig is for the kids but doesn't have to be bleeding edge. Thanks to all who took the time to respond.

For the kids? Yeah I've heard that one before!

It will be great to see the new system once you have it up and running Algis

Yes, you'll definitely have to let us know how it runs
I think I might be getting that on my next upgrade

AMD Phenom 9500 is pretty cool, my friend had just upgrade to it, he told me thtat it works pretty cool, and I think you can get it for a better price, my friend got it for $240 with a deal in dealstudio.com,if there is not compatibility problem you should go with it.

Well, I'm going to build my Phenom rig next week --- except without the Phenom :

My desktop is getting flakier and flakier with Vista (whilst it runs XP x64 perfectly, I cannot continue to ignore these warnings...)

So I'm upgrading !

Already have :

Case
Excellent Bluestorm PSU
DVD and DVD Burner
Floppy
GeForce 8500 (NEW!)
1 GB Buffalo DDR2 (NEW!) 800 Mhz
Silicon Image IDE controller card
Various hard drives, including the two 160GB SATA drives (to be upgraded later)
Multiple copies of Windows

Have ordered :

Asus M3A motherboard (mid-range AM2+ mobo)
1 GB Kingston DDR2 800 Mhz (not ideal, but they don't sell Buffalo RAM modules here, the Buffalo was a freebie, but imperfect dual-channel will be better than the wastage of a perfectly good RAM module or no dual-channel at all) (possibly to be upgraded to 1000Mhz DDR2 later )

And, while waiting for non-buggy Phenom CPUs :

Sempron 3600+ (probably faster than my current socket 939 Athlon64 single core -- and dirt cheap --- and the rest of the rig will be faster, so I'll already see some performance gain )