In real life use, FORGET STUPID SYNTHETIC BENCHMARKS, the AMD64 X2 does NOT bottleneck the 8800GTS. Anyone that says that and bases it solely on 3D Mark scores should really rethink how they rate hardware. What WILL bottleneck that card with the X2 is running a low resolution under 1280X1024. Then, almost ANY CPU would bottleneck. If you have the 8800 and don't run atleast 1280X1024, you will never, with ANY CPU, ease the bottleneck.
OI am sorry for sounding harsh, but the constant drivel about C2D is just annoying. of course it is faster and outbenchmarks the AM2 by a good amount. BUT, in real life use which cannot be measured with synthetic benchmarks, the difference is unnoticeable. I have owned 3 C2D systems and I am on my 2nd AM2. In games and every other real world everyday task I see next to no difference from my Conroes @ 3.2GHz compared to my AM2 @ 3.2GHz. My benchmark scores are sure different, but as I said, in REAL WORLD use there is little to no difference.
3D Mark and every other synthetic benchmark is useless to tell you how your PC will game. There are a few actual game benchmarks out there that can tell you a helluva lot more about your performance. Try the HL2 benchmarks for one. Also remember. It's all about the minimum FPS, not the maximum. It does not matter if your PC can do a max of 200FPS+ if the minimums drop below 30FPS. My PC plays everything on high settings or higher and never drops below 30FPS in ANY game @ 1680X1050 resloution with AA and AF cranked. That is at 2.88GHz as well. So anyone stating the X2 is the bottleneck is wrong. Period.
The suggestions on bottlenecking weren't that his "X2" was the culprit, it was that his 3800 was the bottleneck.
From there, because he was running S939 he needed a full upgrade to get past that particular bottleneck, and like it or not, the best bang for the buck currently is C2D.
If he had already been running an AM2 system, I would have suggested that he'd see a good boost by dropping some coin on a higher end AM2 chip, that wasn't an option.
If AM2 was a better price point you'd see a lot more recommendations for it, unfortunately with AM2 & C2D priced similarly, why would a person pick up an AM2 system over C2D?