Pros: -$80 with the rebate? Seriously ridiculously low price. -Overclock monster -Still runs cool -768mb isn't as big of a handicap as some may say

Cons: -Fan is Hoover vacuum loud at 100% -Other vendor's gtx 460's may overclock a little higher (I'm reaching for cons here)?

Overall Review: Running with an Athlon II X4 @ 3.7ghz (another overclock monster). After much tinkering and testing, my card is BF3 stable at 850mhz core and 2200mhz memory. Running all settings high (except textures sadly had to be set to medium because of some lagging) with MSAA off and I get average frame rates in the around 60 in multi-player per FRAPS. The o/c equated to a 18.3% improvement in 3DMark Vantage or anywhere from 17-19% frame rate improvement within the benchmark.

Pros: - Price - So much faster than my 7200RPM WD Green Drive - Loads Windows 7 insanely quick - Plenty of space for Windows 7 64 and 2-3 newer games - RMA process was simple (see cons)

Cons: - First one died in 3 months, but was replaced with an Vertex 2 model with a 90gb capacity instead. - Although installation of first drive was seamless, I ran into issues with the second one acting glitchy and running slowly until tech OCZ support ran me through a checklist. After a secure erase and reinstall I've been running flawless for a month.

Overall Review: This model seems to be hit or miss. For some it arrives DOA, for others it needs some work out of the box, and yet for others there are no issues at all. A rather common theme seems to concerns about longevity but we'll see. I'm only out 50 bucks for my first SSD experiment so it won't be too much of a loss if this one craps out too.

Pros: Solid craftsmanship and attractive design overall. The quality of the chip and components seems excellent to a first time XFX owner. I was able to take this guy up to 1220mhz core and 1475mhz memory. Complete stable in BF4 and a whopping 9300 graphics score in 3dmark11 P setting

Cons: Not a knock on the product itself but more so on product labeling and modeling scheme. There appears to be two DD 270x models - CDFR and CDFC. XFX's website shows the CDFR as smaller and with silver accents while the CDFC is what Newegg pictures (it's bigger and black compared to the CDFR). Oddly enough, my serial number ties out to the silver CDFR. I checked another identical model at Best Buy and it was silver. Who the heck knows? Also, how the heck do you increase the voltage on this guy? Is the box mislabeled and you can only change the voltage on the Black Edition? If so, why put "Unlocked Voltage" on the DD version?

Overall Review: Good card and at a budget gamer sweet spot of ~$200. XFX may be my go to brand if I stick with AMD (come on Mantle, prove your worth). Former Nvidia EVGA/ASUS guy.

Pros: BF3 Dominator! This review will be slanted towards playing BF3, since I got this CPU strictly to play this game without breaking the bank. BF3 is greatly optimized for 4+ core processors. I upgraded my stock cooling to a $30 Cooler Master and easily took all 6 cores up to 3.7ghz while staying right around the max voltage (in "turbo core" mode) of 1.425 (disable turbo mode in BIOS to do this). Temperates with Arctic Silver 5 compound never break 45 degrees C while playing BF3 with this overclock. With my Superclocked GTX 570 overclocked to 865/2100 I can play BF3 MP with all settings on Ultra (MSAA on 2x though) and never see less than 40 FPS (1080p). 40 fps is rare and the average outdoors stays 50-60FPS. CPU usage peaks at 70% (GPU is 99% always) during the most intense battles on large maps (Caspian 32 players). It usually sits around 60% usage, which leads me to believe I have room to substantially upgrade my GPU without bottlenecking the CPU at 3.7ghz.

Cons: Is older tech these days, and will eventually really show its age with newer titles in the next couple years. AMD processors in general get stomped by the i5 and i7 at equivalent speeds/cores in CPU intensive games that aren't multi-core optimized (think Starcraft 2 or Skyrim). In these games the frame rates will be much higher going the Intel route (in SC2 we're talking, for example, 70fps versus 110fps, obviously not a big deal with a 60mhz refresh rate). Not a big deal in BF3 since I can crank up the graphics settings and put the burden on my graphics card while effectively using all 6-cores on the Thuban below 100%.

Overall Review: Phenom is the right choice from a cost/performance perspective, i.e. the AMD route. Bulldozer, core for core, clock for clock, isn't showing it's benefits over the Phenom yet. This could change, but right now for the gamer the Phenom is the way to do, IMO.

Pros: Cheap, fast ddr2 memory.

Cons: Had to manually set timings on Abit mobo; may be a mobo issue though.

Pros: Silent but still highly overclockable in stock form. I didn't use the included software but MSI claims a stable overclock of up to 10% which i've had for a few days without issue.

Cons: none

Overall Review: Size shouldn't be a problem with a normal sized case. I have plenty of room with a mobo that is not SLI capable (single pcx 16x). BF2 plays smoother on all high setting, max res., and 4x AA than my x850 pro unlocked OC did on medium settings, lower res, and ony 2x.