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The fact that AMD is having problems like this so close to launch is not good.
That's two product lines with issues and possible delays. Too bad AMD can't swallow an R600-type delay on its CPU lines.
I wouldn't worry a whole lot about the tiny pieces of pre-production and engineering-sample hardware that sites like AnandTech have been able to *briefly* touch so far this year. A poster above goes so far as to claim that AnandTech "tested" said hardware, when AT's own comments conclusively debunk that idea completely. "Touched it" is a lot more apt than "tested it," imo. A couple of things to think about:
(1) Prior to AMD shipping Opteron (which they did prior to shipping the desktop A64, remember), there was much despairing commentary also written about Opteron, which was based on early pre-production and engineering-sample looks that various people had. They jumped to several erroneous conclusions about Opteron and Opteron's future, as a result. That's pretty much exactly what we're seeing here, yet again, with respect to Barcelona.
(2) Prior to Intel actually shipping Core 2 to review sites and then the public, and lifting the NDA's for Core 2, general commentary about the upcoming Core 2 was that most of these sites doubted it would be giving Opteron/A64 much in the way of competition. I remember seeing "too little, too late" very often in those days as words used to describe Core 2, words written by people who were not privy to the actual production-grade silicon even though it was obvious by what they wrote that they thought they knew a whole lot more about Core 2 than they actually did. We're seeing the same phenomenon yet again, oh-so-predictably, in relation to Barcelona. Strangely, many of these sites have conveniently forgotten some of the things they opined about relative to Core 2 during those pre-Core 2 days. (Strangely? Nah...
I wouldn't want to admit it, either.)
In this case, too, you've got AnandTech repeating gossip it's heard from gosh knows where about how Barcelona "isn't scaling very well" (I assume they mean in MHz), yet in the same sentence they talk about AMD "being very optimistic" about Barcelona's scaling in MHz--but evidently they decide it's more prudent to listen to the rumors as opposed to the company that will be manufacturing and selling Barcelona. It's sad, but it is predictable. So, they give the rumors credence while implying with some gusto that AMD hasn't a clue about its own upcoming cpus...
I think the record is clear that with Opteron/A64 AMD surely knew best, and so my money's on AMD being right about what they're going to ship this time, too.
My own opinion is that for some reason these sites are miffed about what they perceive as being left out of the loop when it comes to Barcelona, as, after all, they think, they
are "the loop," so to speak...
So then they reason that since they are so important in the scheme of things that the fact that they've been left out thus far means that AMD is just trying to hide some things--like Barcelona's scalability in Mhz--ahem, even though what AMD has officially told sites like AT is that AMD isn't worried at all about Barcelona's ability to scale.
Last, I want to comment very briefly on R600: while the pessimists and naysayers are already counting R600 down and out, I believe the fact is that the R600 saga is only just beginning. My own opinion is that AMD has a lot more knowledge of its own products than it is being given credit for by some sites, and that very possibly we should be paying more attention to AMD here than to sites like AT, which are, after all, pontificating on the future of products they have no input in with respect to either manufacturing or marketing.
