Trust No One
©X-Files

Sometimes reports from unofficial sources appear to be right, sometimes they appear to be more than correct and sometimes they are wrong and misleading. The main problem with unofficial information is basically not in the fact that it is wrong from the very beginning, but in the fact that all plans and roadmaps are constantly adjusted in order to reflect a company’s ability to deliver as well as market situation. At some point reports are always correct, at others, they are not. Some things are hard to believe, but they are true.

If I had told you late August last year that the highly-anticipated NV30 graphics processor is only due to be available in February, you would thrown loads of emails to my mailbox in order to tell me who I am. Well, I had not and we all recognized all the peculiarities of the GeForce FX 5800 product launch in November.

I am also not going to tell you in details what a number of Opteron distributors told us in a response to a report about presumable AMD Opteron 246 (2.0GHz) product launch on the 6^th of July (see this news-story). They all said that either AMD would not launch such processor on the 6^th at all, or this would be a paper launch. They all thought the processor would really be available in September, though, The Inquirer and ExtremeTech web-sites now report that the product launch is to happen on the 4^th of August. They both say that they had received email from AMD claiming that there would be AMD Athlon 64 logo introduction on the 28^th of July and AMD Opteron 246 product launch on the 4^th of August.

Based on our sources, I suggest that the 2.0GHz AMD64 server processor product launch will be basically only on paper with products in commercial quantities appearing a month or so later. On the other hand, I have to warn you that everything comes without official confirmation from AMD, hence, is subject to change without notice. For instance, AMD may supply a very limited number of AMD Opteron 246 processors to some of its clients, whereas all the others will have to wait the delivery for weeks. Or Sunnyvale, California-based semiconductor company may set such a price on the CPU that no one will be interesting in purchasing the chips. Formally, both cases will mean that the chips have been launched into the market, but in reality no one will be able to get them.

In short, neither on the 6^th, nor on the 7^th there is planned AMD Opteron 246 official release despite of the fact that a number of online stores already offer to pre-order such CPUs.