Advanced Micro Devices' latest Phenom processors are hidden by a complete veil of mystery in a game that it's not funny anymore. Rumors about extended delays knock heads with other pieces of news claiming that the processors are ready to roll on the market even earlier than scheduled. Although this is quite impossible, given the fact that AMD's latest CPUs are almost six months late.
The Phenom processors built on the B1 and B2 silicon stepping were affected by a Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB)-related erratum that would crash the system when the processor reaches full load. The erratum especially occurs when the processor is working in virtualized environments or when it is using nested memory pages.
The chip manufacturer changed once again the announced date for launching its high-power Phenom processors. According to some sources (yes, the eternal snitches), the high-performance processors in the Phenom family will be launched in April this year.
The Phenom processor models 9550 (2.20GHz), 9650 (2.30GHz) and 9750 (2.40GHz) will kick in sometime in April, at an undisclosed date. All the chips will be built on the B3 stepping silicon and will be free of the Translation Lookaside Buffer errata issues. However, the future of the Phenom 9950 is still uncertain and the company won't speak about it.
The top-level AMD Phenom 9700 and 9900 at 2.40GHz and 2.60GHz, respectively, were announced to hit the market during the first quarter of the year, but it was delayed too many times, which pushed its release date to late Q2 or even Q3. Moreover, miscellaneous reports coming from the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers claim that B3-based AMD Phenoms will arrive in May or June, while AMD Phenom 9950 at 2.60GHz was supposed to kick in during the third quarter.
It's high time for AMD to cease its hide-and-seek game with the more and more angry customers. It's fancy to be late, but the company could ultimately end up being dumped for the prompter Intel competitor.
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