lammert - 9:37 am on Mar 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

triple cores are effectively quad with one broken core that is disabled

This practice is not unheard of in the processor industry. IBM produces the Cell processor where the processors with one failing mathematical core are used in the Sony Playstation 3.

It has been a long time since AMD was able to produce chips that could compete with Intel's high-end processor line. I am not sure if releasing three new processors will get them back in the race.