Athlon 64 Pushed Back to September

Orion writes "AMD confirmed today that their new Athlon 64 will indeed be pushed back to September. Originally planned to be released in April or May, AMD has decided to put all of its brainpower into the launch of the 64-bit Opteron, which is still scheduled to be released on April 22. This article explains that AMD is still going to try to get a few more Athlon XP processors out before the Athlon 64 hits stores. The 3000+ has a planned February 10 release date, and the 3200+ should be out by the middle of the year according to the article."

Comments

So?

[Salden]

The server market needs the 64bit cpus before consumers do anyway. I am looking forward to the barton cores with their better cache performance. It's still impressive to see what their doing with a look less cycles than Intel. I hope they get a good share in the server market with the Opteron as it will build confidence in AMD across the board.

Tactically wise

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

AMD's decision to delay it's Athlon64 CPU series release date until September (possibly timed to the release of a 64bit version of Windows) is pretty smart, actually. By delaying, AMD loses in the highend desktop arena, but is now able to spend those resources on the potentially far more lucrative Opteron systems. Why release a fast, inexpensive processor for the desktop market when you can release a slightly slower one, for a different market, for much, much more? By concentrating on the big iron of Opteron, AMD might be able to halt their financial bloodletting, and get back in the black in time for Athlon64...

Re:AMD is waiting for Microsoft

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

C't, the German technical magazine, got hold of a 1.2GHz Hammer recently. They ran various 32-bit benchmarks on it against a 1.2GHz Athlon XP and a 2.2GHz P4s.
The Hammer blew the Athlon out of the water and was only slightly slower that the P4 on most tests. For example, the Linux 2.4 kernel compile times were: 161s (Hammer) 222s (Athlon) and 166s (P4) [yup, I know the Hammer won that one].
Two weeks later, they posted more benchmarks with software optimised for the P4. The Hammer benefitted more from the optimisations than the P4 did.
Bottom line is, everything benefits with this processor. 64-Bit applications benefit even more. I bought shares in that company this week on the back of those results and wish they would release that baby as soon as possible to anyone who wants it.