I recently saw a FX55 processor (max my current mobo can take actually) at newegg for 200 bux... its unfortunetly gone now and the cheapest one I can find is over 600 bux (unless I go on ebay which I dont want to use, then the wifey can find out lol)so I was wondering about a cpu/mobo upgrade... I'm thinking about a dual core amd x2 4600 with a SLI mobo... I found few that is roughly 300 bux...or I can go for a intel e6300 core 2 duo for roughly the same price...anyone have reccomendations?I currently have amd 3800+ with 3 gigs of ram and 6800gt gfx card with water cooling... I would love to just upgrade to a fx55 if I could find one for cheap, but i'm not having any luck so :( FX55 should be plenty for fs9thx!

i'd also like to add I like OCing things when possible and like pushing things to their 'stable' limits... with water cooling things work pretty well :)

Hi Emir, you've got DDR1 RAM, right? I also guess going DDR2 won't fit the budget. A cheap s775 board which supports DDR1&2 RAM is made by Asrock (Vista something). Maybe the bios has improved? A while back, I wouldn't necessarily have called it a stable, steady and suitable FS-platform. Otherwise and as far as I would dare to judge, the 4600 eats FS9 for breakfast! :-) I'm fairly surprised how much FS9 likes dual-cores. Upon a FS-reboot for example, it loads within a handful of seconds. Hope this adds to thoughts, kind regards Jaap

I'm not sure which DDR ram I have honestly, I can't remember.... the bios for my mobo has improved, but its a emachines so the bios might be locked and lsat thing I want to do is kill the mobo with an invalid bios update..so you say the AMD X2 4600 is good for fs9?

Personally I'd go for Core2Duo as Intel cpus are beating AMD now but you will need a new mobo and probably DDR2 memory, was it AM2 or S939 processor you were considering because the S939 has been replaced by AM2....???CheersMike