At the same time, the recent price cuts reported on the INQUIRER also mean some changes to the AMD server line up.

The Athlon MP 2200 and 2400 are now discontinued, while the only chips to be had are the 2600 and the 2800.

System integrators are also a little miffed that AMD's Opteron 84X series are still only available in a tray version with one year warranty, and it's impossible to get boxed three year warranty parts.

AMD is performing a neat little trick to produce low power Opteron chips, we also learn. The firm grades 248 Opterons and test them for power consumption. The best of the bunch are downclocked to 1.4GHz and sold as low power 30W units, but at 248 prices, while the 1.4GHz category means they're really equivalent to Opteron 240s. The next best of the bunch are clocked to 1.6GHz and sold as 55 watt parts, although they're really equivalent to 242 parts.

We learned during the week at Barcelona that it's still going to be a while before we'll see 90 nanometre Opterons in any quantity. One source close to AMD said it is doing just as well moving to 90 nanometre processes as Intel. That implies Intel isn't doing quite as well as it could be. Or maybe it implies Intel is doing very well at 90 nanometres, and so it is too.

Meanwhile, the popular Tyan four way motherboard is being sold at an OEM cost of $1,500. µ