1. AMD does not do hyperthreading. Six core = six threads, not twelve.

2. Do remember that the Phenom II may be new for you, but it's old tech at the end of its product cycle. A good Sandy Bridge quad core will likely kick its butt.

3. At the same time, don't get sucked into the "benchmarking" tests that almost always give Intel the superiority. Very few benchmarks are geared toward things that really benefit from having a lot of cores, and rendering is one of those things. (And software will gradually get optimized for multiple cores, so having lots of cores is good future-proofing.)

AMD is set to release Bulldozer in the next couple months, with an 8-core available. It will be interesting to see how it performs in this battle.

kawecki: absolutely not true that all new computers are at least quad core. In fact, both Intel and AMD still manufacture and market older generation tech - you can still buy e.g. Pentium CPUs on brand new machines. (Why anyone would, given how better stuff has come down in price, is another question.)

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3