Quote from pik_d :

How is that different than cars? Also, if the CPU is fast enough to not be a bottleneck much more than any other CPU, it's fast (enough).

That's the (rather controversial) stance that HardOCP took last summer in their view on "real world" benchmarking. However, a faster CPU gives you more headroom for further upgrades. Also, talking specfically about LFS, the minimum framerate is directly related to CPU performance and scales perfectly linearly with clock speed, provided your video card is not a huge bottleneck.

I've noticed that small bumps in OC'ing my CPU increase framerate faster than small bumps in GPU OC'ing, so I'll accept that.

But will the FX-74 hold back any graphics card in LFS? You asked if it was a fast CPU, I'm pretty sure you'll never notice the difference between an FX-74 and a QX6800 in LFS. Sure the number in the corner may be higher, but your eyes wont be able to tell. In that sense the FX-74 is indeed a fast CPU.

personally i would MUCH rather the quad core QX6600 than the X6800 - what you loose in clock speed you gain MASSIVELY in mutli-threaded apps

That's all good and well (it's QX6700 that's out, by the way), but I'd rather have a QX6800 (not out yet), same 2.93GHz clock as the E6800, and four cores like the QX6700 and the X6x00 chips.

There's a quad core 6600 too.

Quote from Dennisjr13 :

The FX-74 is only marginally faster stock. A MODERATELY overclocked Intel Quad core can easily beat them as the FX Quad's barely overclock at all before they hit a boundary. The Intel Quad's overclock extremely well just like all the other Core 2 Duo's.

things like this make me chuckle lol. it's like saying lets get a stock impreza and put it up against a 89 mini with a v-tech engine. what's the point compairing a stock cpu with an overclocked one