Intel have issues as well and this is a great cover up?

Its probably more down to the fact that they can't make the chips fast enough.

In the server market, they can't supply demand for the new 45 nanometer Quad Core chips, and won't be able to flood the market until late Q1 (all tier 1 vendors are suffering major supply shortages right now!), having a knock on effect on their desktop production line, no doubt.

...when has intel (or amd, or anyone for that matter) turned down an opportunity to embarass the opposition. Either it's a great excuse to gloss over the Penryns being slightly later than hoped, or Intel feels that the PR gains are outweighed by the financial benefits of being able to sell 'existing inventory' at a higher premium than anticipated. One thing to bear in mind is that the new chips will command considerable premium- two months 'not' selling pricy Penryn chips has to be a sizable hit on projections? If Jan was the projection in the first place?

Back to the 1990s for the x86 market sadly. Once again Intel have AMD by the balls and once again we see them sitting on new cpus rather than releasing them. Can't blame them as it keeps their gross margins VERY high but not good news for end-users....

Which is, of course, exactly why we need a healthy AMD to keep Intel trying... Without AMD we'll be back in the overpriced marginal upgrade cycle that Intel dictates like the Pentium I era...

"Which is, of course, exactly why we need a healthy AMD to keep Intel trying..."

At least AMD do have a use then :-)

It would seem to me that intel is holding it's aces because it fears what amd will come upwith/not feeling sorry for amd.

Intel is built to make money, and it does this however it is necessary. It goes the cheapest rout on it chips if that will save them a penny i.e. putting two cores together rather than the expensive way all on one core.

They have a great advertising system and they have the money to make it go. As the old addage from the 50s How goes General Motors so goes the country.

Does this mean they are technologically impaired, by no means they have all the engineers they need and well qualified ones. But still their makeup makes them go on the cheap.

Amd on the other hand was a bunch of geeks playing in research and development. And of course their goal was good not cheap, and i believe if amd survives the assault intel has made using the soothsayers of the stock market they will again bury intel.

With production of 45nm chips being limited, they're selling them as more expensive Xeons and QX (extreme) packages.

Intel has always been very canny at making the most money they can.

When production ramps up significantly and the demand for upgraded servers moderates, they will release the lower cost desktop chips.

...Intel is just not under enough pressure to be releasing product before it is properly tested and ready.

The bigger issue for Intel is unsold inventory in the channel (such as X38/P35-based motherboard inventory). Besides, so far, Phenom is, quite literally, no threat even to Kentsfield (existing Q6600/Q6700), flaw or no flaw. Intel doesn't even need *Wolfdale*, let alone Yorkfield (dual-die Wolfdale) if it really wanted to plow AMD under: all it would have to do is take the Kentsfield strategy even further downstream by taking the current E6x40 Conroes and making cheap Kentsfields (Q6440 anyone?) out of them. (Sub-$300USD Kentsfield is a problem for AMD right now; how much worse would a sub-$200 Kentsfield be?) Intel is, quite literally, sitting pretty: AMD is having problems digesting ATI, has Phenom problems,