i am thinking of building a new system/upgrading my old stuff but not sure what to go for. i wouldnt mind changing over getting an intel i7 but i dont have a massive budget as there expensive. i know that amd have released a new quad core and new mobos (am3) and is cheaper but i dont know which would be best althought i know intel are way over amd at the moment. i want something thats going to overclock decently. system i have now is amd 64 X2 6000+ brisbane, gigabyte ga-m55plus-sg3 mobo, 2gb ocz 6400 ram, nvidia gtx 280. i probably am bottle necking my gfx card as its using pci-e x16 v1.1 whats your thoughts on new processors, is the price worth it etc?
I tend to recommend Core 2 Quad systems, they're still pretty commonplace, very powerful and a decent price. The Phenoms and Phenom IIs don't really keep up, and the i7s, as you say are too expensive, and don't often give much of an advantage in games. Your best bet is to go with a decent board like an EP45-UD3R, a midrange quad like a Q9400 or the Q9550 and upgrade to 4GB of RAM.
i have been looking at the q9550 against the i7 and it seems abit pointless in terms of whats new because the q9550 is around £225 and the i7 is around £240. to me i might aswell save up and get an i7 920 because its newer and possibly better. i have seen that you can clock it to 4ghz on the i7
Yes the CPU isn't the point. The fact is, the motherboard and RAM for i7 costs a minimum of about £320, versus £120 for Socket 775 for basically the same end result.