Introduction

It seems like only yesterday that I was building custom systems with the single core Athlon 64 processors.  Back then, AMD was king and everyone wanted to get their hands on the affordable processor that could take on Intel.  Though both companies have slugged it out over the years, there is no denying the presence of AMD and how they can, dollar for dollar, produce excellent results, compared to the more expensive Intel counterparts.  AMD is now celebrating its 40th Anniversary this May and is giving the gift of an affordable processor.  AMD is celebrating this anniversary and the Athlon chip's 10th anniversary this coming June with a special edition Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition processor.  This dual core Athlon is clocked at 2.8 GHz, and with an unlocked multiplier, this very affordable processor could be just the answer for a struggling economy and computer industry.

The new release of the Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition is very exciting and a great way to celebrate this family of processors' 10 year tour of duty in just about any kind of configuration.  I have always been a big AMD fan, especially the Athlon platform.  One of my favorite systems was centered around the 2800+, back in the day.  The Phenom processors are certainly wonderful CPUs that have much to offer any computer user, but we should rightfully pay homage to the great Athlon family, and AMD has just the right idea in mind with this special release.

The big news with this processor is not the number of cores, but the fact that this 2.8GHz, dual core Athlon is the black edition with an unlocked multiplier for overclocking with a price tag of only $69.  Let's see how this special edition Athlon can handle representing this great collection of AMD CPUs.