Conclusion

The end is finally in sight. AMD will launch the Barcelona in the form of Socket F Opteron processors next month. But will they be out in time to claim the title of being the first to deliver an 8-core platform, or will Intel beat them to the finish line with their V8 platform? We will see soon enough.

At this moment, AMD is gearing up its marketing muscle to reach out to potential customers about the advantages of waiting for these new quad-core Opteron processors. Not only will these Barcelona-based processor come with four processing cores, they bring with them a whole slew of improved hardware features, some of which will be more advanced than Intel's vaunted Core 2 processors.

In the coming weeks, you will see AMD harping about the superiority of Barcelona's true quad-core design and its new three-tier cache structure. They will also be eager to tell you about AMD's superior virtualization technology and power management capabilities. In short, they are telling you "Don't buy your Xeons and Core 2 processors yet! Wait for the Barcelona!"

We can't tell you if the Barcelona will be worth waiting for. We wished we could tell you, but barring an actual test of the processor, it's hard to know for sure if the Barcelona will truly trash Intel's Core 2 processors as AMD asserts it will.

But one thing is for sure. Current AMD users will be eagerly waiting for the Barcelona, if only because AMD promises a seamless upgrade from the current platform. All you need to do is just update the BIOS and plop in the new processor. You don't even need to change the cooler because AMD promises the new quad-core processor will only be as hot as your current dual-core Opteron processor.

Even though the August launch of the Barcelona will be in the form of the Socket F Opteron processor, desktop users will be eagerly awaiting news of its performance. The server processor will show us the potential of AMD's Barcelona architecture and give us a good idea about the performance of AMD's upcoming Phenom X4 and Phenom X2 desktop processors. For more information on the AMD Phenom desktop processors, watch out for our article here!

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