Nice going charged!

You said the Phenom first only did 2.8Ghz and was hardly stable. Were you actually able to clock it to say 2.7Ghz and let it be 100% stable (so no idle freezing either?).

My CPU couldnt boot really above 2.8Ghz. Sometimes I was lucky and managed up to 2.9Ghz, but when pressing enter to log on everything froze (no matter what Vcore, usual SB600/Phenom problem).

I actually got even at 2.6Ghz idle freezes, then gave up and let everything run at stock.

For the Asus M3A78-T board, i think I read somewhere the BIOS wasn't 100% yet, if I didnt read it, I most certainly know it anyhow.