Need help picking a CPU

C'mon guys...

Hm.

Well, that depends what you do with your system. Apparently most of the newer Phenom II CPUs don't unlock as well as the older ones, but I can't talk for the Athlons since I don't follow AMD much.

If you're going to be purely gaming, then get the 550 BE. If you're going to be encoding, and doing other things with multi-threaded applications then get the Athlon II X4.

Try not to factor the unlocking process into your decision; I think it's unwise to do so because it's not a certainty.

If budget is an issue, the Athlon X3 435 is just £43 from YoYoTech.

Give us a budget and it would make this question a lot easier mate.

At Stock my Athlon II X4 as far as speed of the cpu felt a little faster than my Athlon X2 7750BE @3.01GHz but not much. It chewed through multitasking but gaming see no difference really. Where the 620 shines is when u overclock it. I believe a have a Deneb based core but can't unlock anything.