AMD encourages overclocking, kinda

So, say you're AMD and you have a bunch of quad-core chips on your hands that possibly carry a fatal manufacturing glitch. What do you do? Why, market them to the enthusiast crowd, of course! Say hello to the "unlocked" Phenom 9600+ Black Edition, which grants you full access to the clock multiplier control, for all your overclocking needs. Of course, "AMD is not responsible for damages caused by overclocking (even when overclocking is enabled with AMD OverDrive software)" but it's not like that has ever stopped you before. And what of that manufacturing defect? Well, there is a BIOS patch available that should protect your system--though it caused the CPU to take as much as a 20 percent performance hit, in some tests. To its credit "AMD claimed that the bug has not been observed in any production installations," though that's not exactly a guarantee. The choice is yours, Phenom fans.

For more on the special edition chip:
- see this article from TG Daily