Intel advances on all fronts; AMD crouches in its bunker muttering about "secret weapons." We know how this war turns out.

The secret pins consists of an AM2 to LGA775 converter. Underneath the heatspreader is a Core 2 Quad CPU.

Thank goodness I outgrew the benchmark scene a few years ago. It's amazing how "competitive" the 9850 actually is when you run it with the software you have as opposed to many 3d gaming benchmarks--benchmarks supposedly based on those games. I'm enjoying the fact that my 3d games seem not to care about what their purported benchmarks indicate and all of them run wonderfully well on my 9850 under Vista x64.

Speaking of benchmarks though, as we've seen in some server-related benchmarks published of late, lower-clocked Phenoms sometimes waltz all over higher-clocked Core2 quad cores, even with their far smaller internal caches. Gee, I guess it depends on what benchmark you use as to whether something is "competitive" or it isn't. What an original idea...;)

But...for the crowd that lives and dies by the gaming benchmark, I don't think that AMD's upcoming overclocking tips and tricks are much of a "secret weapon" because I think the real secret weapon (which really hasn't been very "secret" thus far) is AMD's upcoming 45nm Phenoms, which are going to sport a lot more internal cache as well as few other little surprises that are going to blindside a few people who are still wearing their currently fashionable "InTel RulZ" decorator blindfolds ...;)

They call this a secret weapon? What a joke

Meh, clockspeed has nothing to do with it. Even at 3.2 Ghz, K8 is long past its prime.

#42...yeah, no one knew how good the original Athlon64 was 6 months in advance of its release. <<edited...this was sarcasm, I'm not good at it>>

#12...as has been stated before, opinions are like a-holes, everyone has one :-)

#1-#43...Wasn't Intel getting derided for 'Tejas', a post-Prescott, netburst based 150 Watt barn burner that was thankfully cancelled and the Core arch pursued...

Quick, I'll activate those secret pins for a 50% clock speed increase and flip the switch for 'reverse hyperthreading'!!

The secret is Kryptonite!

AMD => Green => So is Kryptonite!
Intel => Blue => Superman! (Well, his tights are!)

Maybe its a "pull my finger" joke? Or was it "smell my finger"?

I don't know...

An Asus statement released earlier this week hints that AMD will soon introduce Phenoms with thermal envelopes of 140W, or 15W higher than the Phenom X4 9850.

Hmmm..... With that power-dissipation, AMD should go into the waffle-making business for real. They already are in it metaphorically, judging by their recent CPU marketing announcements with little real action.

And the $64 question.... where are the public demos of the 45nm version of Phenom installed in complete systems? Not a squeak on this subject from Computex. No reputable independent sneak (or otherwise ) benchmarks a la Anandtech with Nehalem.

Seems as if the (projected by AMD) 2008 Q3/Q4 release of 45nm Phenoms will be eclipsed by the imminent arrival of Nehalem, the true second generation 45nm CPU with a huge leap in speed over Core2, let alone Phenom and incorporating all the architectural features that AMD once claimed for themselves.

Intel hold all the cards. If the initial 45nm Phenom/Barcelona turns out to be a significant threat to the Core2 Penryn family, Intel can no doubt advance the production schedule on Nehalem and even make it a loss-leader to crush AMD's 45nm sales --- otherwise they can sit back continuing to rake in the money on Penryn and release Nehalem when the economics makes sense.

As usual, it depends on what price points they'll sell them at, but I'll believe it when I see it.

I just hope that AMD has something radical to counter Nehalem. At this rate, they're REALLY gonna need it, and I don't want to see AMD put in real jeopardy due to further major financial problems.

Pfft. If they could have done it, they'd have done it already.

What is this secret weapon? Automatic overclocking?

Can't wait to write home about this.

These new southbridges will pair well with 45nm Phenoms in the future. I like Nehalem but my budget will probably be in the AMD realm in Q4 so I have to be realistic.

There is talk that the clock generator in the current AMD SB is broken/loses sync. If AMD has fixed this then I could solve stability problems and would allow for a higher overclock.

Now is not the time for AMD to be keeping secret weapons....they should be unloading whatever they have.

Behold the power of Cheese.

Possible early Fusion tech?

Wierdness indeed. Would love an explanation from AMD about this.