AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition - Phenom II X4 Deneb Quad-Core 3.2 GHz Socket AM3 125W Processor - HDZ955FBGIBOX

Pros: Easy Overclockability.Highly scalable FSB(on some mobo.) see other thoughts.

Cons: With the great overclock potential it seems a waste to not have an agressive cooling solution.

Overall Review: Have run this on an ASUS M4A79T-Deluxe, with best results. Can run a 328 fsb with a 12 multiplier 3936 Mghz. with the HTT and Northbridge at 2624 Mghz.With 4 gig of OCZ3P20004GK @ 7-7-7-18 1T timings @ 1.8 volts, 3:8 divider giving a memory speed of 1748 Mghz. Awesome performance here...However also ran on a Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P same setup also tried aproved G-Skill 1600 memory and could not get fsb over a 233...Not a cpu problem but if you are looking here at this CPU. Go with the ASUS mobo.

Pros: I really like the 4-cores and the speed/price performance. Planned to use 8G (4 sticks) of DDR3-1333 RAM for a Windows 7 64-bit system. Had all the wiz-bang things I was looking for to build a great new system.

Cons: I bought this processor back in January after reading many glowing reports about it. I have spent the last couple of months just trying to get the system to turn on and stay on. Since I was researching new parts for Windows 7 upgrades and new builds for a computer building class that I teach, it was important to find reliable parts. I finally found a couple mentions about this processor having problems with the embedded memory controller in the processor. The AMD website has a white paper titled "Revision Guide for AMD Family 10h Processors". This lists problems found and what they plan to do. Errata #379 talks about the problem. If you are using DDR3-1333 memory (I was) and try to use more than 2 sticks (I did) the system may perform unpredictably. Mostly I ran into constant BSOD's and problems even trying to install Windows 7. I ran the system with only 2 sticks of RAM and the system ran without a problem. The Model # for the C2 stepping is HDZ955FBGIBOX.

Overall Review: The good news is that they appear to have fixed this issue with the C3 stepping. The Model # for that is HDZ955FBGMBOX. I have not tried this version yet, but plan to in the near future. I would have given more eggs for this, but for systems with all 4 RAM slots filled, this processor has a potential problem that should be avoided. As always, NewEgg has been the best source for computer parts and we continue to recommend them to our students as the one-stop shop to buy their computer parts.