The Phenom X3 8650 probably makes the most sense at $165. It is 100Mhz slower than the 8750 which made almost no difference in many of our tests. There are a number of high quality Intel processors that actually cost less, such as the Core 2 Duo E6550 ($160), the Intel Core 2 Duo E4700 ($140), and the list goes on. But possibly the biggest threat to the Phenom X3 8650 is AMD's own 3.2GHz Athlon 64 X2 6400+ ($160), which we imagine could punish the new triple-core processor given how the Athlon64 X2 5200+ performed.

Newegg has the 8650 here for $165.99