1) Good news at last for AMD

2) Why the hell didn't they have such a lead engineer before?

Go AMD! Go AMD!

This had better not be more hot air. Brisk video card sales aren't going to cover the collective financial butt in the next two years.

So if the 20% assumption is true, a 3 GHz Shanghai will do the same as a 3.6 GHz Barcelona (!), which means it's pretty rapid already, and you're likely to be able to overclock it to 3.6 GHz yourself, yielding even more.

This probably doesn't sound too astonishing in light of what intel is doing, but considering that my 3 GHz Barcelona feels dead fast to me for my personal needs, I doubt many a customer would complain about a 3 GHz Shanghai.

They surprised us with hd48xx series GPUs, hopefully the can do it again with their CPUs.

Remember, the tables turn every few years.

I'd rather wait for reviews and valid benchmark. I've been disappointed by AMD way too many times to care what the lead engineer has to say.

It's just a die shrink, stop hyping this already.

[...] a lead engineer oversees the Shanghai project and sets goals [...]
setting goals and meeting them, are two entirely different things.
engineers who explain to the managenent what troubles there are and might come-up are unpopular.
The managers are known to lie to their superiors and the engineers are expected to do so or think they will not be promoted if they talk to much.
The management expects reports but doesn't want to hear about the problems but only to see nice slides with pictures.
so every night befor the meeting you have to come up with a picture showing the same thing from a different angle.
setting goals is a waste of time IF the direction is clear.

This is going to be a good release for consumers. Take advantage of it while it lasts, which may not be terribly long.

Intel has battered AMD so badly, when the chip is released AMD needs to sell massive amounts of them to even break even.
I see this as "make or break" for AMD.
This may really be the beginning of the end of AMD. Even with a 4GHz clock rate they are well behind Intel.
AMD really NEEDS to make their forecasted numbers with this release. It may very well be their last or next to last one.

I'm also interested in the outlook of performance/watt. A Core 2 Quad creams a Phenom in that dept, having both lower wattage and identical or better performance.

Good news. I sincerely hope that they are indeed 20% faster clock for clock. That may be enough to get me interested if the price is right.

I really can't see that it will have a 20% IPC boost. Still the better clock speeds will be very welcome. Definatly wait for benchmarks before passing judgment.

Sounds good. I have a Socket AM2+ system right now, and plan to upgrade round Christmas time. One of these should be solid improvement over my Athlon 64 x2 4000+.