Upgrading?

[orionll]

I might be upgrading all the parts in my computer besides the motherboard, case and DVD drive sometime in the next couple months. I'm currently thinking of getting the following components:

AMD Phenom II 940 (3.0 GHz quad core)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285
4 or 8 GB DDR2 1066 (dunno which brand or amount for that matter)
Seagate 500 GB Barracuda 7200.12 (ST3500418AS)
some > 550 watt power supply

My current specs are:

AMD Phenom 9850 (2.5 GHz quad core)
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640 mb
4 GB Corsair CM2X1024-6400
Maxtor DiamondMax 21 500 GB (STM3500630AS)
ASUS M3A-HD/HDMI (not planning on upgrading this)
some Antec 500 watt power supply

Does anyone with similar specs (to the upgrade) have anything to say about the performance of FSX (well and of the computer in general)? Any comments, opinions or suggestions?

[rwmarth]

The Phenom II at 3.2 in AM3 will be out in a couple weeks so it would be interesting to see what price it is by the time you actually upgrade. You can use an AM3 processor in most any AM2+ mobo. AMD may be much maligned by some, but you cant fault their ability to stay compatible with older hardware....

[orionll]

Will it support AM2+ motherboards or will I need to upgrade? I thought AM3 was going to be a separate socket and AMD was just going to make separate versions of the CPU that support each socket. I'm hoping the prices will drop with the release of the 3.2 version. Also, I hear the Phenom II 940 can overclock pretty well, but I haven't overclocked before and would need some help :P.

[rwmarth]

Dont take my word for it, but it seems you can just use an existing AM2+ mother board for an AM3 processor like the p2 955 as it is supposedly backwards compatible. But this wont work the otherway around - putting an AM3 motherboard with an AM2+ processor