Barcelona Finally Launches

[Starglider]

At last, the next-generation AMD Opteron is becoming available.

Basically it beats the current Core 2 chips on a clock-for-clock and performance-per-watt basis by between 5 and 15%, but current models only clock up to 2.0GHz. AMD hopes to be up to 2.5-2.7 GHz by the end of the year, which is enough to match the best current Core chips. However Intel can easily launch clock-bumped versions to maintain its lead, and Nehalem-based chips (with major gains over Kentsfield) are only months away from launching.

AMD has priced these chips to beat Intel on performance-per-dollar, but given that their die sizes are so much larger and their financial position is so precarious, I am dubious about their ability to sustain any kind of price war. To stem the market share losses AMD needed to convincingly beat Intel's current generation, not match their mid range chips at a slightly lower price.

I fear that unless AMD somehow manages to scale these chips past 3GHz in the near future, or Intel makes another major blunder, we may see AMD forced out of the desktop x86 market and possibly bankrupt within a year.