If you are looking for performance out of the box and the AMD 6000+ wasn't recommended then whom ever it was that gave you the advice was truly making a mistake. The 6000+ is less expensive than its Intel counterparts has a higher clock speed right out of the box and performs within a margin of error in most benchmarks, even though it has half the L2 cache and only has a FSB of 200 MHz opposed to Intels 266 and 333 MHz. So if you are an end user looking for performance and price this should not be overlooked.