Phenom II X2 550 BE

[ElPolloDiabl]

It's probably a good idea to post on Toms Hardware to get all the information you want.
The best CPU for your money is the plain Athlon X3 The extra level 3 cache on the Phenom doesn't seem to do much.
Check your bios settings and see if the CPU FSB etc. is set up correctly. I always turn off eco settings etc.
Download CPU-z and see all your CPU details.
Is Second Life flash based? Flash is notorious CPU hog.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I saw a Youtube video of the i7 980X, the heatsink on it is massive.

I always try to get close to double the cpu power before upgrading. Otherwise I feel like I just spent money for no good reason.

If I remember right... flash has graphics card acceleration on Wintel boxes, but not yet on Macs.

[ElPolloDiabl]

The quad core runs quite a bit hotter than the triple core.

[ElPolloDiabl]

The 650W power supplies look like good value. Just avoid the one or two nasty ones only output 400W (read the fine print).

The stock cooler is always good quality nowadays. That's all you need.

[ElPolloDiabl]

Why waste your time on these rubbish processers. Why dont you spend you money paying people to port SLto amiga. Should run on all amigas including 500+. It will fly , everyone knows amigas are soooooo fast and PC are rubbish hardware and software

Because starting up a multi core processor is like starting up jet fighter, the thing goes whizz, beep, shhhhh, whirrrrr!

[ElPolloDiabl]

This might be an interesting project. Use a quad core machine to emulate 4 parts of the the Amiga. One for cpu and the rest for custom chips. I think this has been thought of before for multi-cpu system.

You will have to wait for the UAE guy to get around to it. Or design something yourself.
What we need is new approach to programming for 4 or more cores. Burn all the old programming books and rewrite them with multicore CPUs in mind.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I ordered a Radeon 5750. It looks like a lot of bang for your buck, I'll let you know how it performs on tuesday.