can't choose between phII x4 940 and i7 920

Let's break it down this way.

i7's strong points: Raw number crunching, folding, video encoding, draining your wallet. There is no contest if these are the things you do 75% of the time or more. The amount it slaughters all else before it in these tasks is staggering, just ask anyone with an i7 that encodes or folds on it.

Deneb's strong points: Cheap, effective in games, uses exsisting platform which is well established, reliable and easy to get, overclocks a little easier. Certain tricores, namely batch 0904, when put in certain motherboards, will even become a quad core! The tricores are cheap too, I think a 710 is just a schmidge over 100 bucks. Also, IMO, AMD's build quality is a bit better...and if you bend a pin, it's MUCH easier to fix. The chips just feel that much more durable.

If you don't do anything the i7 shines in, you don't need to spend the premium for it and it's platform. Remember, i7 REQUIRES DDR3, which is still a bit pricey, and it seems a good X58 mobo with both SLI and CF capabilities is still > 250 bucks, whereas Phenom 2 uses DDR2 and 125-150 dollar SB750 motherboards.

Also note: Cheaper X58 boards will not run SLI due to a licensing issue between nVidia and Intel causing the chipsets to be a bit more expensive. I don't know for sure how it is disabled, there might be a way to enable it anyways. Caveat emptor if you go i7 and one of these boards, then intend on getting a second 260. Crossfire? That works just fine on any one X58 board out there.

Speedma: 200 euros is a huge differance in price. Basing on price, it's a no brainer, AMD tiem.

soto, it depends entirely on what you are doing. If all you ever do is game and browse, you won't notice the differance, so save yourself the money and buy the Phenom rig.

If you fold on your CPU, encode ALOT of videos(One a day or more, not casual youtubing of random game vids), do 3D rendering on the CPU, the extra 200 euros is well worth it. But if you don't do those things, it's wasted money.

If yer like me, you don't do enough video encoding to make it worth while...I encode maybe one a month, usually I just set it to it's task and go to bed. I wake up 12 hours later and it's done, no clue how long it actually took. I don't do enough encoding to make it worth my time or money to invest in i7.