So now that I've read most of the reviews out (except SharkyExtreme's... ahem), I can say that SimHq's got the best review. Hands down, the only thing I care about is games, and simhq put it in quick and dirty. (We of course know that 3D frame rates are largely bottlenecked by the video card, but that doesn't make the cpu irrelevant). It wasn't pretty, but as a sim nut I didn't care, I could get the information I wanted, except for Operation Flashpoint: present only in the AthlonXP review.

The thing I like most about TomsHardware's is that there are almost always enough data points where you can get a rough idea of performance scaling on benchmarks.

However, what is clear is that the benchmark makes a HUGE difference (as it always had). The AthlonXP kicks on LAME but sucks with the Microsoft encoder... The AthlonXP kicks with the Athlon optimized SeriousSam but sucks with the SSE2 optimized Incoming Forces.