Today, AMD has changed things a little, and this is probably the biggest shift they've made since the launch of Athlon 64. AMD's latest flagship gaming CPU - known as the FX-60 - is a dual core processor. Fantastic.

The Athlon 64 FX-60 may not be the most attractive processor, based on its price, but it's good to see that the two slower Athlon 64 X2's with 1MB L2 cache per core keep up quite well with it. At £350, the Athlon 64 X2 4400+ is an attractive buy compared to the Athlon 64 X2 4800+, which currently retails at £535. We suspect that this will come down in due course, but we can't see it dropping down to a price that makes it even more attractive than the X2 4400+.

Lets not forget the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ either. It offers tremendous value for someone looking to get into the dual core market on a budget. We've not heard final pricing on the Pentium D 900-series just yet, but we expect the lower end processors to be reasonably competitive with the X2 3800+.

With that said, with the exception of one multi-tasking scenario, the Athlon 64 FX-60 is the fastest all-round processor on the planet.