AMD has encountered a couple of problems in the past few days. First of all it lost a five-year old exclusive deal with supercomputer maker Cray, which teamed up with Intel in order to deliver improved HPC (High Performance Computing) components. As if this wasn’t enough for AMD, the CPU maker is also facing accusations regarding compatibility issues with the 9750 and 9850 125W PhenomX4 processors. The two CPUs appear to run hot on some 780G-powered mobos and the mobo manufacturers are blaming AMD for this problem.

However, AMD says it’s not their fault in this case because the two previously mentioned CPUs are specifically built to work with the newer 790 chipset and manufacturers are trying to build systems on the cheap by using 780G mobos.

Jake Whitman, an AMD spokesperson, tries to clear up things for CNET: "What people have done, mistakenly, is paired a 780G motherboard with the higher frequency Phenom - the 125-watt Phenom. Not all motherboard manufacturers have tweaked their boards to support a 125-watt TDP. We've never made claims that 780G motherboards are enthusiast-class motherboards."

So keep in mind that any 125W CPU from AMD is only to be paired with a high-end mobo for best results and stability.

First, there were only rumors. Then, AMD made public the first details regarding its upcoming mobile and desktop platforms. That was happening almost a year ago, and today, it finally arrived, but for now, there are only available details regarding the new commercial desktop platform, so let's see what do we have here, shall we?


Released as a part of AMD's Business Class initiative, the platform comes with a lineup of processors with up to 2 years stability and longevity from initial product availability, as they claim. This lineup includes X2 dual-cores, as well as X3 and X4 tri- and quad-core Phenoms.

For the system integrators, the new platform gives the freedom of choosing the AMD 780V chipset with on-board video, or to include the ATI Radeon HD 3000-series discrete graphics cards for improved performance. Obviously, non-AMD graphics are also supported.

AMD's COO and president, Dirk Meyer, said "IT decision-makers have a broad range of commercial client solutions to choose from and it is not always clear which systems deliver the best business value. At its heart, AMD Business Class processors are based on the same innovative technology that powers the world’s most advanced servers. Our solutions are designed to give commercial customers the assurance that platforms are designed with their business in mind to help get more from their computing infrastructure, longer."

At last, you should hear some prices for 1000-units batches, before drawing any conclusion - AMD Phenom X4 9600B for $230, the AMD Phenom X3 8600B for $175, AMD Athlon X2 5400B and 5200B for $120 and $110 respectively, AMD Athlon X2 5000B and 4450B for $95 and $85 respectively, and the AMD Athlon 1640B processor, at last, for $50. Pretty good deals, don't you think?

AMD’s current quad-cores aren’t much to brag about, unless we think of their price. But AMD knows it has to remain competitive on the performance side as well, and so it makes haste for the 45nm CPUs. Not that we’d actually see any 45nm CPU from AMD until Q4 this year.

At least we now officially know that Deneb, the desktop quad-core variant of the Shanghai 45nm CPU, can easily hit 3.2 GHz and go beyond that. Although Deneb can’t be rushed to match Shanghai’s launch, AMD fans can rest assured that the 45nm desktop CPU is worth waiting for a bit more.

Deneb will be the direct competitor for Intel’s Nehalem CPU, which is supposed to be clocked at 3.0 GHz, so the AMD processor with its 3.2 GHz still has a fighting chance as long as performance is the name of the game. It could be that Nehalem might win the race again, hopefully only by a small margin, while AMD’s solution will be more price-competitive.

AMD announced that Deneb samples will be out as soon as Q3, but the CPU will be ready for a commercial launch sometime in Q4 . No problem, we’ll wait on it patiently as we overclock our R700-based video cards like crazy.

For those that would like to see AMD out of business, here's some news - if you didn't figure it out already, because of them Intel doesn't send its prices sky high! In fact, although they may have lost the performance crown, AMD's aggressive pricing policy is helping all those Intel buyers get cheaper processors. Anyway, I don't want to start a war between Intel and AMD fans again. The good news today is about Intel's prices, so let's see the numbers, shall we?


Intel announced price cuts for 14 different processors currently in its portfolio, but the Q6700, Q6600, E6850 and E4600 went down the most, some even as low as 50 percent! Is this insane, or what?

Just check the following - Core 2 Quad Q6700 (2.66GHz) went down 50 percent, from $530 to $266; same thing goes for the quad-core Xeon X3230 (2.66GHz) - from $530 to $266; the Celeron 430 (1.8GHz) - a 23 percent from $44 to $34, and the dual-core Celeron E1200 (1.6GHz), falling 19 percent from $53 to $43.

Considering the above, I guess AMD is soon going to give away processors, maybe even pay us to take them, and Intel will follow close behind! Anyway, big thanks should go to both companies for making such small prices possible. Thank you, Intel, for lowering prices, and thank you very much, AMD, for forcing them to do so!

What’s been going on at AMD lately? Everything looks OK, but there’s always room for improvement, as they always say. Phenom X4 CPUs are selling pretty well, but I’m really interested in the upcoming 45nm lineup AMD is preparing for a Q3/Q4 2008 launch. Here’s some more disclosed info on this matter.

Codenamed Shanghai, as you probably already know, the 45nm AMD CPU seems to be nearly identical to the B3 stepping of Socket 1207 Opteron (Barcelona) that was launched several days ago. However, there’s one big difference between the two: Barcelona has its HyperTransport 3.0 clock generator fused off, while Shanghai is supposed to have it unblocked.

Motherboard manufacturers confirm that, with the advent of the Shanghai series, the HT3.0 will only be used for inter-CPU communication. According to DailyTech, AMD engineers even claim that inter-CPU communication is going to be a big deal with the 45nm refresh. The first breadcrumb comes with a new "native six-core" Shanghai derivative, currently codenamed Istanbul. Of course, AMD has to have its own response for Intel's recently announced six-core, 45nm Dunnington processor.

An interesting tidbit of info disclosed to DailyTech by AMD is the fact that Shanghai and its derivatives will also get twin-die per package treatment. No more nonsensical “native-core” bragging from AMD, when Intel still doesn’t have native quad-cores and manages to beat the Phenoms X4 CPUs pretty easily.

With this perspective in mind, it looks like we could actually see twin-die Istanbul processors integrating 12 cores in a single package. Each of these cores will communicate to each other via the now-enabled HT3.0 interconnect on the processor. But in order to take full advantage of these novelties you are supposed to make the leap for Socket 1207 mobos. So the Shanghai CPUs will be more server-oriented, but we might see some decent desktop derivatives as well.