hughyhunter :
You need to seriously read this article... http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/19/amd_phenom_athlon_64_x2/
Dont even consider the dual core.... quad core is the future.... and besides, why get a proc that is limited due to it's 90nm manufacture process? Get the 65nm phenom that is future proof!
You seriously need to comprehend that article :>
You seriously need to compare that article to other articles on Phenom to realize what THG did.
The relative performance results returned by THG were the same as the the initial test results using ES samples from AMD.
Why is this important?
#1) AMD has since cut the NB speed from 2.0 to 1.8 to address stability misc problems. Please Checkout Extreme Systems forums for some of the results. It's a noticible performance cut which THG did not see since they were not using the same chip you will buy in a store.
#2) AMD is proding "TLB Errata" fixes for the BIOS which lowers performance. THG also did not deploy the code to fix the bugged CPUs.
#3) The Relative Per-Core speed of the Phenom is skewed since only a single core is using the full L3 cache.
As multiple cores are active, they will need to share L3 and the gain from each core will be less.
Under un-biased testing conditions, the X2 will have a notibly higher not lower IPC than the Phenom.
Add to this the AMD runs at speeds about 40% faster so all applications which do not support quad cores will lose.
Furthermore, many applications that support multiple cores, will not see a linear gain from more cores because the threads that are distributed among the cores may not be able to balance the load with some threads simply more intense than others.
The result is that in the Majority of cases the Phenom will be extremely slower.
In some cases the Phenom will be only a little slower for those items that support quad cores.
In isolated cases it will have a small performance gain.
In all cases, it will cost quite a bit more which could mean you will need to sacrifice legitimate upgrades such
as GPU, PSU, RAM, etc.... to get the downgrade.
Not wise in my book.