There's very little in life that we like more than new product launches drawing near. We love the hype, testing new hardware, and reporting all of our findings to you. Of course there are launches, and there are dreaded paper launches.
AMD still hasn't officially launched their K10 line of CPUs, but it looks like the official launch date is looming, as it is being reported that AMD has now shipped K10 based Opterons to system builders. This means that the K10 launch will be a real launch, at least for Opterons. Hopefully CPUs for other sockets are ready to ship as well.
“Although the frequencies of the CPUs haven't been announced, they should be set to a maximum of 2.0 GHz with faster chips set to arrive as soon as this month. The Barcelona is the first 'native' quad-core chip from AMD and the first K10 CPU to make it to market, with the desktop version, named Phenom planned for a late Q4 release. And the ring signals the start of a new round.“
As soon as AMD gives the word, we'll bring you a complete review of the upcoming CPUs. If you have any questions, now would be the perfect time to ask them in our comments section, and we'll do our best to answer as many of them as we can once the official review comes out.