THE PHENOM II X2 550 Black Edition chip is much more than a simple "low-end" Phenom II. First tests show that not only is it a joy to overclock, but if you hook it up to the right mainboard, you can activate all four cores on the processor.

Yes, that's right. The cheapest Phenom II around can have all four cores activated... for free. Using AMD's OverDrive we were able to switch on all four cores through the ACC. Unexpected to say the least.

This means four 3.1GHz cores, all with 512KB of active L2 cache and sharing 6MB of L3, just like a high end Phenom II X4 950.