TechReport: But I must unleash my spiel, because I really, really would prefer even an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ to the FX-57 for my main system. I play games on that system, sure, but an Athlon 64 X2 at 2.2 or 2.4GHz is plenty potent for real-world gaming. Heck, with the Pentium 4 sucking wind like it is in most games, developers may be forced to keep CPU requirements at a minimum until they make the transition to multithreaded gaming engines. Even before that transition comes in earnest, we may see multithreaded graphics drivers that negate the FX-57's present advantage in gaming performance. Dual-core processors arguably offer better future proofing than the FX-57, as well.

Bit-Tech: We managed to overclock our Athlon 64 FX-57 from its default 2.8GHz clock speed to over 3.0GHz without a great deal of problem by a simple multiplier adjustment. The processor was stable at this speed with a slight increase in core voltage from 1.40v to 1.43v in every application that we threw at it, with the exception of the mother of all torture tests: Prime 95. In order to get the CPU stable in Prime 95 at 3.0GHz, we had to increase the core voltage to 1.54v. We managed to get it stable here for a little over one hour. If you are looking for complete stability, we found that 2955MHz was the highest that we could get Prime 95 to continuously loop overnight. We achieved this clock speed at 211x14.0. With a better cooling solution, we are sure that the Athlon 64 FX-57 will be capable of more than this, much more.

TrustedReviews: So you've got antivirus software running and you're playing a game, perhaps in single player or perhaps on-line. That's two tasks and possibly three, and we're not counting all of the software on your PC that habitually checks back to the mothership for updates. So what you want isn't an FX-57. Oh no, you want the cheaper, better alternative of the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ which is a mere L752 inc VAT. Technically it's a slower processor but in the real world the X2 will deliver better performance that won't leave you shrieking in frustration when one core is hammering away at 100%.