Four New AMD Chips Given the Rundown

Of the four processors launching today, the Phenom II X2 550 BE is most interesting—and certainly worth $15 over the Athlon II X2, which doesn’t make as much sense. Priced in between the Intel Pentium E6300 and Core 2 Duo E7400, AMD’s solid little contender has an unlocked multiplier (to counter Intel’s easily-overclocked FSB), a massive shared L3 cache, and its full list of value-added extras (the E6300 drops SSE 4.1, while the E7400 loses VT-x virtualization acceleration).

At $100, the X2 550 BE is strong enough to earn a nod from the Tom’s Hardware crew. Match it up to an $85 motherboard like Gigabyte’s MA770T-UD3P and an affordable video card (check out the Radeon HD 4850 for under $100—I’m done recommending the Radeon HD 4770 given its current [un]availability); you’re looking at a plucky little gaming rig.