Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday introduced its second Black Edition processor, a lower-priced dual core gaming processor targeted at enthusiasts looking to set their own clock speeds.

The AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor 5000+ Black Edition is available with a customizable clock multiplier, enabling amateurs and enthusiasts to maximize the performance of their desktop computers. For upgrading machines, Black Edition processors can be combined with the AIT Radeon HD 2000 series graphics processor and the AMD 580x or upcoming AMD 700 series chipsets.

AMD in August introduced the 6400+ Black Edition as the highest frequency processor from AMD to date at 3.2GHz. The Black Edition series provides channel partners with customizable chips to provide a broader range of performance in mainstream and gaming machines. Chips are also targeted at users of digital media applications and photo editing.

The Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors include AMD's HyperTransport technology, which provides I/O communication up to 8Gbytes per second. Other high performance features include a 64Kbyte Level 1 instruction and data caches per core, and up to 1Mbyte of Level 2 cache per core.

The new 5000+ Black Edition is available to channel partners for $136 in batches of 1,000 units.

AMD this month announced plans to ship in the first quarter of next year a triple core processor for the desktop. The new Phenom microprocessor would be in addition to the quad-core desktop chip AMD plans to ship this year. The Phenom microprocessors are native multi-core chips, which mean the cores are on a single die of silicon.