AMD Spider Takes On Mighty Intel

AMD sure took a whole lot of criticism after delaying the launch of their Barcelona and Agena processors over and over again, ad nauseam. It has gotten to the point that many people started ignoring their "scheduled" launch dates and began comparing them to the processor equivalents of Duke Nukem Forever.

With the AMD Quad-Core Opteron (Barcelona) processor finally launched on September 10, 2007, everyone expected the AMD Phenom desktop processors to be launched soon after. However, that was not to be. AMD announced that the Phenoms will only be launched in December, with some pundits betting that AMD will miss the new deadline yet again and launch Phenoms only in Q1, 2008.

However, AMD is set to prove everyone wrong this time. From what we gather, AMD is preparing to launch the Phenom Phenom X4 processor on November 22, 2007. At least, that is the launch date over here in Asia.

It's possible that the processors will be launched in the US/Europe on November 21, or as some sources claim, as early as November 19. No matter what the actual launch date is, AMD finally beat a deadline they set. We think that is a pretty Phenom-enal achievement, pun fully intended.

It is expected that AMD will announce AMD Phenom X4 processors running at 2.20GHz and 2.30GHz at the launch, with a faster 2.30GHz version launching only in December, 2007 and the AMD Phenom FX processors only launching in Q1, 2008.

The two Phenom X4 processors will actually be launched simultaneously with the AMD 7-series chipsets as well as the ATI Radeon HD 3870/3850 graphics cards as part of the new AMD Spider platform. Never heard of it before? Well, think of it as AMD's desktop gaming equivalent of the Intel Centrino platform.

What the new AMD Spider platform is all about is high-performance desktop gaming. The actual term that AMD is bandying about these days is gaming super-computing. AMD claims that Spider is the first-ever desktop gaming platform that will not only offer affordable HD gaming performance but is also highly-scalable.

Like the Intel Centrino platform, PCs that want to qualify for the AMD Spider brand will need to meet some hardware requirements. For now, the AMD Spider platform requires the PC to have :

• an AMD Phenom processor,
• a motherboard using an AMD 7-series chipset (e.g. 790FX) and,
• an ATI Radeon HD 3800-series graphics card.

More details to follow soon!

Right now, it's hard to say for sure how well AMD's new marketing scheme will work out. The Centrino branding programme sure was a tremendous success for Intel. But then Intel has always been strong in marketing and very proactive in reaching out to the media and masses. Will AMD be able to replicate Intel's success in what's really virgin ground for them?

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