and I was wondering if anyone had any gotchas or glowing reports with the Phenom II X6. The current plans for the new workstation box is: Gigabyte GA-890XA-UD3-RT ATX mobo G-Skill 2x4gb DDR3 ram (ultimately going to have 16 gigs ram) AMD Phenom II X6 1075T (and most likely will be replacing the factory heatsink with a larger, copper heatpipe unit). E-Mu 1616M audio card and breakout box. Existing 1.5tbytes of secondary hard drives (the current Phenom II X4 65watt board, 8 gigs DDR-2 and 750 gig boot drive will be moved in toto to my main system, replacing the Athlon II X2 I currently have). Probably Win 7 Pro as the OS (unless I find some pressing reason for Ultimate). And yes, the difference is worth the hassle. On a Vue Infinite 9 300 frame test animation, the current CG box was doing 3.5 minutes a frame average, while the main box was doing 22.3 min average. After getting the office squared away, the plan is to start upgrading the renderboxes in the rack downstairs so that I can take advantage of the gigabit network I'm building into the house, moving away from the old Athlon socket 939, which you can no longer get anything for (AM3 boards are cheap again, and those let you start with the new Athlon II's and move over to the Phenom II as finances or sales permit). Plus you can get the Athlon II X4's in 65 and 85 watt flavors, to save on heat and power bill shock. Haven't decided on video card upgrades, if any. As I go through this, anything I find will be passed on.....