Pros: I’ve been building computers for more than ten years and this is, by far, the most powerful, well balanced system ever. In fact, It’s AWESOME!! The CPU and motherboard temps have never been higher than body temperature and performance is through the roof! I built the system primarily for producing and editing video with Vegas 6. The bottleneck with any non-linear video editing system is the time required to render video after the editing session is finished. I tested my old system vs the new system with and without the dual core processor. The results were mind-boggling. My old system (Asus A7N-8X, Athlon XP 2500+) rendered 13m 10s of wmv video to avi in 3h 31m 0s. The new system (A8N-SLI Deluxe) with an Athlon 64 3200+ rendered the same video in 0h 32m 55s. By upgrading to the X2 4200+ processor my render time decreased to 0h 15m 27s!! It’s render speed is almost as fast as the playback speed. Now that’s impressive!

Cons: None, but here are a few words of wisdom to those contemplating an upgrade to an X2 processor. First, the speed of the X2 4200+ with 512K of L2 cache is only about 8% to 10% slower than the X2 4400+ with 1Mb of L2 cache. Spend a lot less money to buy 90% of the processing power. Next, before you install the dual core processor it is essential that you flash the most recent BIOS. Be careful that everything is right (correct BIOS for the exact motherboard, correct BIOS flash program, etc.). If you screw up the BIOS flash you’ll have a nightmare on your hands. Finally, install the latest chipset drivers from the chipset manufacturer (Nvidia for the nForce 4, etc.). When you finish this step then, and only then, install the X2 processor. Here’s the BIG secret to success - after you successfully boot into Windows XP you should reinstall the chipset drivers. This will eliminate lingering chipset driver conflicts that will cause strange problems with some, but not all, software.

Overall Review: The DREAM Machine – Get yourself one of these! Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (Overclocked to 2.42 GHz) ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 BIOS rev 1016 THERMALRIGHT XP-90 Multiple Heatpipes Cpu Heatsink RAM 1Gb (2x 512Mb) Corsair CMX512-3200XL (2 – 2 – 2 – 5) 36.7 Gb Western Digital Raptor (WD360GD) 10,000 RP SATA Boot Drive 500 Gb RAID 0 array (2 x Maxtor MaxLine III 7L250S0 250GB SATA) 250 Gb Maxtor MaxLine III 7L250S0 250GB SATA 300 Gb Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L300R0 300GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache ATA133 NEC Black ND-3550A 2M Cache CD/DVD Burner SAMSUNG Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Model SFD321B/LBL1 ATI ALL-IN-WONDER Radeon X800XL 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 VIVO PCI Express x16 Video Card ViewSonic VX2025WM Black-Silver 20.1" 8ms Widescreen LCD Monitor Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro 7.1 24-bit 192KHz PCI Sound Card Logitech Z-5500 505 Watts 5.1 Speaker System GIGABYTE 3D AURORA GZ-FSCA1-ATS Silver Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case Antec True 550 EPS 12v 550w Power Supply

Pros: Power. Sheer unadaulterated power. I have mine overclocked to 2.6 ghz. It runs faster than the dual core Xenons that my campus uses. It runs Max better than any other competitor processors. It is a very reliable processor that runs anything I throw at it with no lag, no hang ups, nothing. My jaw dropped when I witnessed 5 minute renders drop to only a 30 seconds.

Cons: Heat, of course. This processor, especially when overclocked, produces a tremendous amount of heat. That's hardly a con, however, when given its power and the fact that you can simply purchase a couple 120mm fans and be fine.

Overall Review: As a modeller the less time I spend rendering, the more time I can spend modelling and getting real work done. This processor cuts my workload in half many times. It comes with my sincere reccommendation.

Pros: Very nice processor, the dual cores tear thru whatever you give them. Did a slight over clock to 2.45gHz, and it is still only at 39 degrees. Works great with gaming for me.

Cons: The heat sink was a little hard to mount, felt like i was forcing it. but it went on with no incident.

Pros: I would like to point out that it says manchester but i got a toledo runs great though

Cons: none

Pros: I've been running this processor for about 3 months and have no regrets. Very overclockable with correct Heatsink/Fan. Overclocked mine to 2.7Ghz and memory at 494Mhz. (247x11) Even at stock speeds, it is faster with rendering than my old P4 3.0 OC' to 3.8Ghz by about 35%. Awsome!!

Cons: Absolutely none.

Overall Review: Runs hotter if using stock HS/Fan. Overclocking this to at least 2.6Ghz puts it if not close, even with the FX60 for way less!! Get One!! Abit AT8 MB Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 4x512mb Patriot DDR 3200 ATI Radeon X1600 PRO

Pros: See the title. I upgraded from an Athlon 3000+, which was no slouch, and the difference in speed is INCREDIBLE. I've overclocked it to a stable 2.64 gHz using 240 FSB 11x multiplier with 1.45v for the CPU using a Thermaltake Blue Orb for the heatsink/fan... idles at 25 degrees Celsius, with a max load across both cores it tops out at 35... I ran two instances of Videora iPod converter to encode .mp4 videos on each core... I made sure each one was working at the max, then added 20 videos to each queue and let it go overnight. When I woke up, everything had finished hours ago and my diagnostic software said the CPU never broke 36 degress the whole time. ^_^

Cons: - While the price has dropped since it's introduction, I've never spent more than ~$170 on a proc before this one. Now, I WILL say that I think it is well worth it, but if you're patient the price will come down even more. - If the L2 cache is that important to you, double it by saving up another $100 or so and getting the 1MB 4400+ with the Toledo core. - If you're interested in saving money, get the 3800+. It has VERY good overclocking room and has dropped in price from $xxx to $xxx in the two weeks since I bought one for my friend.

Overall Review: For anyone doing multiple tasks, this is definitely recommended. Setting up two encoders at once, I can rip my music more than 4x quicker now. I played back an H.264 vid encoded at 1024x768 resolution with softsubs on, and it was flawless even with AVG scanning, BitComet (50+ downloads) working, 30+ IE windows open, and Videora running! ^_^

Pros: Fast as hell, running 230 x 11 at 1.425V for a nice 2530 MHz. Idles at 39C, highest I've ever seen it go at load was 46C. Get one of these, a tube of Arctic Silver 5, a Zalman CNPS9500, and you're set.

Cons: None, don't know how much of a difference 512KB cache VS the 1 MB of the 4400+ makes.

Pros: Very good at multitasking, ran Half Life 2 while burning a DVD and not a single stutter. Upgraded from a Barton 2500 and the speed improvements are huge.

Cons: Most games not configured to take advantage of the multiple CPU's and some even get video artifacts because of it. Make sure you get AMD's X2 patch on their website. And games that still won't play ball you can configure to use a single CPU.

Overall Review: If gaming is your main concern you are probably best sticking to single cores. Not sure that games will take advantage of the dual cores and even if they do there probably isn't a very big performance boost. On the other hand every game I've thrown at it has performed flawlessly (including COD2, HL2, EQ2). System: AMD 4200 X2, XFX Geforce 7800GT, 1 gig Ram