Yeah if you get a b3 phenom you won't even need to worry about the TLB fixes in the BIOS's. You might actually be able to test out the performance on the actual release bios's properly. I think as far as the release bios's go maybe 1.2 would be best, since that one still has the custom p-states. I'm just concerned that the SP1 vista thing may be a processor driver issue that may effect all phenoms regardless of stepping.

If I can get the money saved up I'd be half tempted to just save up again and buy a new 9850, just to get around the b2 stepping stuff.

and yeah, that MSI forum thing about the IHS I actually replied to and told em the other way around.