AMD have plenty of good ideas but the lack of R&D funds and a "get around to it latter" mentality means they miss the market leadership and Intel keeps the sales.

intel fanboys still compare phenom ii with core 2 quad, phenom II is better than core 2 quad , the intel architecture is very old and soon is going to be end of life, with discontinued socket, then why intel fanboys are still clinging to core 2? move on

The Phenom II s not meant to beat the i7 or anything. Its what the Phenom should have been. At the moment, no matter what AMD says (and AMD is silent on this point)- Am3 seems to have only about a year's life more than LGA775. But life of a socket is longer than people suggest. Most mobo makes will keep making high end chipset mobos for LGA775 for at least 2 years, there are simply too many C2D's out there to ignore. And the C2D lags to the i7 in IPC and SMT, which no amount of clock speed can compensate. Most of the P-II and the C2D/Q lineup is sufficiently armed for the majority of users.
Also, those who crib about AMD taking 3 years to get competitive, even Intel took 3 years (2003-06) to bring out the C2D. Doesn't matter about tick-tock or whatever, Cos scrape and survive till they find a better architecture.Via's business died as they let it die.
The Phenom II's achievement is that its captured the market's and the users' fancy, which is much more important than simply having a top notch $1000 product. It will enable AMD to give a much more balanced platform (unlike Phenom where the CPUs were weak, and Intel, where the IGp is weak). This ensures that a better flow of revenue is assured and AMD can comfortably fund its R&D and expansion.
Both Intel and AMD have good and bad days. Users catch the bus and lose it (in the architecture development cycle). Ultimately, a significant leap comes in 2-3 years, when we all are ready to change our old PCs. So stop looking in between.

Snakeoil I think you have it backwards. Are they suppose to compare Ph II with i7 we know the result of that!

And the reason I see people hanging on to Core 2 is because of overclocking and cost. While most of us tech guys care about a 10-20% in performance the average best buy shopper will be fine with the slowest Quad out they just don't care about the differences.

For them its Cost > Performance.

Xtreview has had several news posts about the Phenom II 965. The latest one said it will be the same price as the 955.

They've cut prices on Phenom IIs and are apparently doing away with a few models, so it only makes sense.

Also you look that, It seems Amd is releasing a new triple core too,
http://www.asrock.com/support/cpu.asp?s=AM3

Good things must be happening with yields. I have to say I'm surprised by this, I thought the x4-955 was going to be AMD's top dog for a while.

As for price, AMD needs to take notice of the fact that I can jump over to Newegg's website and grab up a Q9550 for $220. The x4-955 needs to come down real close to that price, IMO.

What would be equally exciting is if AMD put out a 95 watt x4-955.

The linked articles say it will sample this week, not launch. Could you correct the article?