AMD's 690 chipset doesn't stop turning heads. The way it was introduced, as a low-priced alternative to Intel, with budget trim and no enthusiast options, belittled its raucous performance. It looked like a stopgap, especially since AMD had little to do with its design and released it as a last foray before the new AMD could re-group. It's not likely that even ATI expected the chipset to be the thin edge of the wedge. 690's ripples keep on growing. As it turns out, people seem to like motherboards with complete multimedia support, great onboard graphics, insignificant power envelopes, unparalleled performance, and low prices.

Testing the Phenom 9600 has been interesting. The BIOS and CPU-Z agreed on the speed of the processor, but AMD's Overdrive utility showed the "actual" speed as being roughly 5% faster than what the processor was set for. Regardless, at either 2.65GHz nor 2.75GHz the Phenom turned in some decent numbers, but frankly it could not touch the overclocked Intel results. The office results for Phenom were outstanding, however Phenom is not at this point capable of matching Intel parts clock-per-clock in performance. There is no doubt that it is an interesting piece of technology; and AMD's initial pricing for it does give it a chance for some market penetration. Personally, I would not hesitate to recommend a Phenom 9600 to someone who could use it to upgrade an existing Socket AM2 system. Getting a quad core processor for around $250-$280 for an existing single or dual core Socket AM2 system - without having to change anything else except updating the BIOS - is an excellent deal (provided such a BIOS update were available).

The Black Box package holds the CPU and the warranty information. Maybe even a sticker (though I really don’t know because I received the bare processor from AMD). No fan is included, so that particular unit needs to be purchased separately. Which is probably a good thing for enthusiasts as I myself am overflowing with stock fans that I do not use. AMD is pricing these products very competitively, and they are attempting to establish a niche with budget enthusiasts. Now that we have that prolonged (and most likely unnecessary) introduction to AMD’s X2 5000+ Black Box, let’s dig in and see what happened.

The K9AGM2-FIH does have a couple of things working for it, but they're both stock features of all MSI products: MSI Update and the fan regulation. With them out of the equation, you're left with a motherboard without a bundle, a poor layout, and few features. Given the performance of the board, it's pretty hard to recommend it.