For enthusiasts, AMD has finally done the best it can with its 65nm K10 core although we have to say it's too little too late as a K10 dual core would have been competitive 12 months ago. Even then though, the lack of overclocking headroom and higher power consumption would still turn today's cost concious power users towards Intel's 45nm alternatives. We'll delve in platform value and how overclocking affects the performance results later in the week.

While the Athlon X2 7700 series CPUs may not twist the nipples of our readers quite so much, for the general public who just want a cheap upgrade with great, well rounded performance, they're a decent heart to a great platform when combined with a 780G board and an ATI Radeon HD 4800 graphics card. What's more, the new Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition and 7550 CPUs appear to offer better price to performance over Intel's competitive offerings and they're certainly worth buying over the older K8 Athlon X2s.