AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition

All in all I'd say AMD has a sure hit with the X2 5000+ Black Edition Processor. It does amazing speeds for its price, and manages to stay nice and cool when running them. If you're just looking to get into overclocking, then this would be a good place to start, as the unlocked multiplier makes setting the speed beyond easy. Of course, if you don't have any technical knowledge, this probably isn't the processor for you. You'll be able to spend a bit more and get a processor right out of the box running at these speeds, and not have to worry about overclocking. If you're an overclocker, check this one out, with its price and speeds you won't be sorry.

For $130, which is less than you can buy an Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 for, you can easily run at 3.2GHz - at stock Vcore! Honestly, this chip impressed me to the point that I now intend to upgrade one of my multimedia machines at home with one of these beauties; no need to change motherboard, coolers, etcetera -- I'll just just pop in one of these, and be done with it. In the end, I think for most people, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition is a better upgrade than the new Phenom 9600 - and it costs less then half as much. And for a stable overclock of just under 4 GHz, the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition also demands the awarding of Neoseeker's Overclocker's Award.

Overclocking the Black Edition was a blast. With some patience and time, you can have a ball finding the magical sweet spot of CPU/MEM/HTT speed and really zone in on it with the adjustable multipliers. While it's not the +1 GHz overclock that some Intel C2Ds are hitting, and still quite far from the 4GHz mark, a 600MHz overclock is nothing to sneeze at on current silicon from AMD. The performance scales quite well when ramping up the MHz and the price/performance ratio with the CPU being right around the $100 range in the US with some hunting is a pretty good deal. Hopefully, AMD will continue to offer the Black Edition processors well into the future.

For the price and performance value of the AMD 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition Processor, it's really a good upgrade if you don't want or can't afford to spend money on a faster model. Its literal Unlocked Multiplier potential and power consumption make it an easy choice for stock or overclocking users. It's been upgraded enough internally to surpass a few of its own faster predecessors and operates much cooler. If you're still sitting on that older AMD 64 X2 3800+ Processor, or happen to be overclocking yours and it's just not giving you what you want, this is the processor upgrade worth the money. We'd very much like to thank AMD for giving back a little unlocked potential to the consumers.