Unlocking the Phenom II X2 555: 3.2GHz Quad-Core for $99
 

If you read my take on the 555 you'll know that I don't really believe it's worth the price. Most users will be better off with a Core i3 530. There is just one exception I failed to mention: some Phenom II X2s can be turned into a Phenom II X4.

The technique is nothing new. Using any AMD chipset motherboard with a SB710 or SB750 South Bridge and proper BIOS support you'll have a feature called Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC). AMD introduced this feature back in 2008 as a way to improve overclocking on Phenom processors by sacrificing some sort of corner case stability for real world frequency headroom.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3730