The rest of the specifications include 3+1 phase VRM for AM2+ with MSI's APS (active phase switching) feature, two DIMM slots for DDR2 memory, six SATA and one IDE port, single PCI-Express x16 slot, two plain PCI and one PCI-Express x1 slot. The VRM supports up to 125W TDP CPUs. The back panel includes PS/2 ports, D-Sub and DVI outputs, four USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet port and audio jacks for integrated 7.1-channel audio.

This is the highest clocked quad-core so far. It is 200MHz faster than the Phenom II 955 and 400MHz faster than Intel's Q9650. Intel's Core i7 975 EE runs at 3.33GHz, and it will still offer superior performance, but it's about four times pricier than the new Phenom II.

AMD in June rolled out its six-core “Istanbul” Opteron chip, which can run on servers with two or more sockets. Both AMD and Intel boasted of improved performance and energy efficiency in their new processors, as well as enhanced virtualization capabilities.

AMD appears to be making some gains. Intel still holds a huge majority of the global microprocessor market, but AMD in the first quarter of this year gained a bit of ground, according to research firm iSuppli. In that quarter, Intel’s market share dropped 2.5 points, to 79.1 percent. AMD’s market share rose 2.3 points, to 12.8 percent.

For those in the channel who are in the market for an upgrade, the choice would appear to be tipped in AMD's favour. After all, why buy a socket 775 Core 2 Duo when you can just go with an AM3 that is backwards and forwards compatible with AMD's current roadmap? That would appear to make more sense as it gives users a chance to upgrade at a later stage, if they feel the urge to bung a little more oomph into their machines.

First contact with AMD's new DX10.1 chipset species is set to occur sometime in the last week of August, when they finally hatch. It's noteworthy that, as AMD shoves DX10.1 out to all of its platforms and readies itself for the big push on DX11, Nvidia is still somewhat struggling to even hit the DX10.1 spec.

What the Voltage Tweak HD 4890 from ASUS does is let us expand upon our overclocking abilities. For years the only way you could adjust the voltage on the card was by soldering little bits and pieces to your card, which not only is hard for most people but also voids the warranty.

AMD's Gary Silcott told the INQ "they [Nvidia] would intentionally damage performance to make Nvidia GPUs run the same app better." Then, perhaps thinking better of accusing Nvidia of hypothetical, yet outright, sabotage, Silcott added "Even if it wasn't intentional, it would not be optimized for our instruction set architecture like our own SDK."

That's okay though, since Nvidia has no intention of adapting its GPUs for AMDs technology either. "No, I don't see us supporting Steam..." said Nvidia's Derek Perez acidly when we asked him for his response.

The HP xw9400 workstation, announced July 1, is aimed at such high-end applications as engineering, 3-D digital content creation, oil and gas, and science, according to company officials. AMD’s Istanbul Opterons are designed to drive up performance while reducing power, cooling and management costs. The HP xw9400 workstation can hold up to two of the chips—for 12 cores in all—and each chip offers up to 34 percent more performance per watt over AMD’s previous quad-core processors.