New Build opinions on two setups

[humble]

Since AH only uses 2 cores I'm suspecting you wouldn't notice a diff from my 965 black.

My understanding is that all multithreaded apps can and do use 3 cores. Not up to snuff on all the details but back when I was doing research a bunch of studies on 3 vs 4 core gaming stuff popped up. I think Toms and others have run all the benchmarks. Basically there is a step up from 2 to 3 but almost nothing from 3 to 4. I'm guessing that the game runs on 2 cores and all other stuff on the 3rd but i'm not really sure beyond noticing the observable benchmarks. So I got a 720black...then 2 days later wife's system bit the dust so I built out a 550 black for her. I'd had some issues with by 6600 (cpu went) and wasn't completely sure about the MB...so I popped a 6300 in and gave it to my son since I couldn't afford on going issues. Figure that I'll either build out a gaming upgrade or go back to a laptop for my workstation sometime this year since I don't like using my business system for general use. The 720 black easily outpaces my old 6600 btw....

[38ruk]

Just a little update .  I went with the AMD build but had to RMA the Asus board that wouldn't post. Went with a Gigabyte MA790xt board and then found that one of G Skill sticks is bad lol....RMa'ing those aswell .  Other  than that it went smooth hehe . I'm running a stable overclock of 750mhz (3.1ghz stock to 3.85ghz on water)  and could prolly go more but see no need to . I let Prime run for 3 hours and the load temp was only 36C . I opened up the 3rd and 4th core but it's pretty unstable with all 4. It run's 3 no problem but the 4th must be defective .... I was only looking for a dual core so i've disabled the 3rd core for now and will mess with it at a later date.

 All in all it was a cheap upgrade.....but the performance over my old 4400+ is great, thanks for all the advise <S>