It's very sad when you find yourself writing somethingnegative yet again about a company you once loved and respected greatly. Butnow the news has leaked out that AMD is likely to disappoint us even more thanwas expected with its Phenom,which will be arriving in the next couple of weeks.

Previous rumours had Phenom possibly launching at 2.8GHz oreven 3GHz - but at least at 2.6GHz. The news now, though, is that Phenom will debutat 2.4GHz only. A 2.6GHz version might just make it out in time for Christmas,but don't hold your breath - you might suffocate.

Behind the clocktimes

Intel has comfortably hit 3GHz with its last two Core 2Extreme processors, and the move to 45nm means it now has many more megahertzin the bank. A 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme is already rumoured for early 2008.So AMD is clearly not going to be winning back its Athlon 64 performance crownanytime soon.

We had hoped that AMD would narrow the gap with Phenom. Sadly,at 2.4GHz, Phenom just won't have the grunt to get anywhere near anything butIntel's entry-level Core 2 Quad Q6600, which runs at the same frequency. Andeven that looks unlikely. Despite the Phenom's clever native quad-core architecture withshared Level 3 cache, each Phenom core is not radically different from those inan Athlon 64 X2.

Considering that the top Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Black Editionrunning at 3.2GHz is outclassed in most benchmarks by Intel's Core 2 Duo E6750running at just 2.66GHz, AMD will have to unleash some serious voodoo forPhenom to compete even at the entry level - or dump the price badly.

Yield or face theconsequences

AMD is clearly having significant yield issues. It justcan't get enough of its new processors to run reliably at high frequencies usingits current manufacturing process. Unlike Intel, AMD remains on 65nm, and ituses a different manufacturing technique to Intel called Silicon on Insulator(SOI).

There's nothing wrong with SOI - IBM uses it too. If youhave a Playstation 3 or Xbox360, the CPU inside will have been made using thistechnology. But AMD clearly hasn't perfected its use with the new native quad-core Barcelona design.

The Opteron version of Barcelona launched at just 2GHz, with a few elusive 2.5GHz models floating around. Nevertheless,we still hoped this was just conservative clock rating for thereliability-conscious server and workstation market.

Unfortunately, it's becoming clearer and clearer why atriple-core version has become a necessity- at least then there's more chance of cores with a decent clock speed. A weakcore in any quartet can simply be disabled and a triple-core CPU created.

New graphics, newhope

So it is with great sorrow that we have to beat AMD with abig stick yet again, and bemoan the lack of competitiveness in the processorbusiness. It's looking like Intel will have a clear run in 2008, as it has donesince it launched Core 2.

Oh well - at least AMD still has its graphics division tofall back on. That's one area where AMD does have a technological advantage inmanufacturing over its major competitor.