AMD first launched the 955 Black Edition and 945 CPUs back in April both based on the 45nm Phenom II technology. With Intel seemingly forging ahead in terms of performance with its i7 series, AMD's new products aim to compete more with Intel's quad-core range and should offer a cheaper upgrade for users with an AM2+ platform as the AM3 CPUs are backwards compatible with AM2+ sockets.

The 955 BE, of which we are taking a look at today, is a Black Edition product, which in effect means that the CPU features a unlocked multiplier; a huge plus for the overclockers. A dual DDR2 and DRR3 memory controller is also crammed into the chip.

The 900 series of AMD processors are all quad-core CPUs with a 6MB L3 cache, 2MB larger than the 800 series and the stock speed of the 955 BE was the fastest until it was superseded very recently by the 965 BE which clocks in at a whopping 3.4GHz. However, today we focus on the 955, let's check it out.