The new AMD FX-2 CPU is quite simply the fastest CPU on the market today. Whether that will hold true in the near future when Intel releases their next platform, Conroe, is debatable. The high-end enthusiast will have no qualms besides price of purchasing the FX-2 CPU. The addition of DDR2 memory to AMD CPUs means that soon we’ll likely see a consolidation of memory to DDR2 for nearly everyone. The 5000+ is almost as fast as the FX-62 in a lot of cases, but has a price $400 less than the FX-62.

NVIDIA’s new nForce 590 chipset is a marvel for the overclocker in everyone. I was able to overclock the CPU using both NVIDIA’s NVTune application and ASUS’s AI NOS (No-delay Overclocking System) 220MHz was the highest I could push the FSB without changing the multiplier. One oddity on Foxconn’s board was it clocked the FX-62 CPU FSB to 266MHz out of the box with a multiplier of 12. Unfortunately, the AMD FX-62 wasn’t up to the task, as it wouldn’t boot to Windows.