It's FAR, FAR better to resolve design issues before you launch than to sell the crap Intel, Asus, MICROSUCKS and many other companies rush out the door for the gullible sheep to buy up like crack cocaine. Intel still does not have anything but glue blobs for CPUs.

AMD has integrity which the above crowd will never have. Consumers who support unscrupulous companies who constantly ship defective goods deserve exactly what they get or don't. I vote with my wallet and I buy the best products for my company from reputable suppliers.

I hope for his sake the market is as forgiving...
6 month late in the IC world and in this case competing against Intel is suicide.

Given Intel's new tick-tock cycle, AMD can barely afford to be 6 months late.

6 months late may just be too late.

Well I guess we shall se how it performs, but while AMD will be field testing their new chip Intel has tested theirs and is pretty sure they could release chips running as high as 4GHz. It's true that the double core approach has limitations compared to a native quad core design, but it also had the advantage of being easier to manufacture and running at higher clocks stably.

Even if the per clock performance is greater on the AMD side with these new chips it will have to be significantly greater to match Intel's high clocks. From what I understand the chips AMD expects to launch will be clocked well under 3 GHz, and even if AMD gains a little advantage now this isn't the Intel of years past. Intel is working on new technology for new chips instead of sitting on their current architecture like they did with NetBurst. Either way the competition will be good for the consumer. We will just have to see if AMD is going to stick around to keep on competing. I sure hope so since I usually go with AMD.

Craaaaaaap

AMD has delayed the K8 for a few years. Now people criticized AMD delaying again, but this time it is a lot shorter. It best to not to rush instead make a big bang when the product is mature. A quad core is a lot more complex than double core processor. Designing a monolithic processor increases the complexity of the construction phase.

The clock speed of a processor is not a good way to compare one system and then to the next because of the performance factor. Also power consumption is on some users mind's, so the need for speed can be counter productive.

FYI, ATI was bought by AMD and it is not AMD's fault that ATI engineers can not adapt to new surroundings. Sure, there was some layoffs. Though if the funding is not there, projects will be put on hold. This is ok in the graphics industry because it is a slow business.