Just wondering what people have to say
research for future build/ case i decide i can spend the money
at microcenter for $80, tiger direct for $100
don't feel like driving all the way to microcenter, but it's not out of the question, especialy if i can save more on other components
If you're shooting for power, don't nickel and dime your way to a sub-par rig.
Go big or go home.
Save up and get exactly what you want. Trust me. If you try to get "good enough" hardware that'll hold you over until you can get something better, you'll end up spending far more than you would if you just saved up until you have enough for a dream machine.
For that price, you'd be much better off saving a bit more cash and getting an FX-6300. It's a six-core, just like the Phenom II, however it has much better per-core performance, and is also much more power efficient for about 30$ more. Also what GPU will you be pairing with it?
i dont really know, mostly i was just "window shopping"
i just know the x4 965 BE get's alot of love around here for the lower end (people say it beats the fx-4xxx in most senarios, i haven't really looked into that)
i don't listen to the people who say fx has 1/2 the claimed cores (i know for a fact that there are 2 seperate dies in that modual spinning at x Ghz), but i will believe amd didn't make the wisest decisions on what resources to share
If you're willing to overclock a bit, the 1045T can produce very competative performance for it's price. Most will hit 3.7~3.8GHz on stock voltage. The 1100T 6x runs at 3.3 / 3.7 clocks and is pretty much equal to, if not slightly better than, the 6300, depending on the application.
If you plan to overclock either chip, be sure to get a motherboard with well built VRM power supply circuitry. You might give this a read: http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database