TechRadar Verdict
Pros
- +
Not a bad overclocker
- +
Decent budget gamer
Cons
- -
No real improvement over the 550BE
- -
Yet more expensive
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AMD has been prolific lately and the next in its line to fall under our spotlight is the dual-core Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition.
As a result of its labours, AMD certainly has a lot of flavours of processor on the market these days, but as a gamer on a budget do you really need anything with more than two cores yet? There's still a dearth of multithreaded titles out there really taking advantage of the hex-core marvels AMD has recently launched, so you could be forgiven for sacrificing cores for cash.
The lads and lasses at AMD obviously understand that too, since the company's bolstering its dual-core lineup with another Black Edition CPU, now hitting the 3.3GHz mark. We've already seen the Phenom II X2 550 and 555 chips, which managed 3.1GHz and 3.2GHz respectively.
Quite why we need another CPU with such a small incremental increase is rather beyond us. Sure it's a Black Edition, with all the unlocked multiplier joy that entails, but then so was the 3.1GHz 550. Why push it further?
