Claiming performance to beat or at least match equivalent chippery from Intel yet at a lower price, AMD today pitched its latest Black Edition processor at gamers and enthusiasts.

The Phenom II X4 965 is clocked at 3.4GHz, the highest speed at which any current desktop processor is set to run, AMD claimed, though historically CPUs have been clocked to greater frequencies as standard.

If that's not enough, though, the chip comes unlocked for easy overclocking.

The Socket AM3 quad-core CPU contain eight megabytes of cache, four cores and two gigahertz of HyperTransport clock speed. It's on-board memory controller can address "high speed" DDR 3 memory, though AMD reckons most folk will still be using DDR 2, which the chip can also handle.

if you want to make the most of the bundled OverDrive performance utility, you will need to upgrade to DDR 3, however.

Compared with a Core i7-920, the 965 yielded a performance advantage of up to 12 per cent, according to benchmark data supplied by AMD. The 965 is $35 (£21/€25) cheaper, it claimed.

Over here, you're looking at paying between £180 and £214 for the chip. ®