AMD Rumored to Delay High-Performance Phenom CPUs to Q3 - The company dismissed the allegations, but it won't give further details

AMD has been rumored to have rescheduled the release dates of its quad-core AMD Phenom CPUs with increased computing power. According to some Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, the company will delay the quad-core Phenom 9700 and 9900 parts to the end of the third quarter of 2008.

The delay is caused by a buffer-related glitch in the original design that forced AMD to practically "cancel" the chips in order to re-introduce the repaired versions during the third quarter. The 9750 and 9950 chips are meant to "improve consumer confidence", although the best method for doing that is actually releasing the products as long as there is interest in them.

Advanced Micro Devices will have to rely on its entry-level and mainstream chips in the whole first half of 2008, which is extremely uncomfortable for world's second largest x86 processor manufacturer. The sources say that quad-core AMD Phenom 9700 (2.40GHz) and 9900 (2.60GHz) microprocessors have been canceled and will not be released anytime soon, but AMD will release the Phenom 9750 (2.40GHz) in May or June, while the Phenom 9950 (2.60GHz) will come out sometime during the third quarter.

Moreover, the delay of its quad-core microprocessors based on the B3 stepping is half of the bad news. The chip manufacturer will also postpone its triple-core AMD Phenom 8450, 8650 and 8750 to May or June at least, but the 8400 and 8600 models, based on the B2 silicon stepping will be released in March.

AMD however denies all these rumors and company representatives claimed that they are ahead of schedule on the B3 Phenom silicon. The chip manufacturer claims that all the known bugs have been fixed and the new silicon works just fine, so there will be no further delays on technological grounds.

The company also denies the fact that its chips would feature any buffer-related glitch. The new silicon will be able to work flawlessly without requiring a BIOS update or any software patches (as required by the previous B2 stepping). However, the manufacturer refused to disclose further details, such as model numbers or clock speeds.

The actual launch date is still a mystery, but AMD still claims that it is on track with a Q2 release. However, there's a long way ahead until the last day of Q2, and AMD might as well pick it as the release date.