Demo of AMD's Barcelona points the way downhill

If you want to play devil's advocate, Intel showed Tigertown running at speed over a month ago. This is a patently unfair comparison because Tigertown is a Conroe x 2 with a new chipset, a very different proposition from a new CPU. Still, that chip is what AMD will be up against in the market so it may not be technically correct, but you don't buy tech, you buy products. Intel let a bunch of hyperactive monkeys that masquerade as press beat a system at will vs running task manager with a stick wielding goon ready to break fingers should you touch. Again, patently unfair but still, that's the way the Chipzilla cookie crumbles.

What it boils down to is that AMD had an internal time table that it planned to meet. You can be pretty sure that AMD was not planning six months out to run task manager in order to awe a group of industry analysts. It was planning on being far ahead of where it is now, and possibly running Solitaire or something else useful.