The weakness of Phenoms can be one of the main reasons for processor retention.
Referring to motherboard manufacturers, DigiTimes reported that Intel could postpone its debut of the large quad-core Penryn, originally scheduled for January, like the X48 chipset, by a month or two. Although the rumor about the postponement came out almost simultaneously with the rumors about the chipset, that is not the reason for the release of the Q9000 CPUs in February-March.
Rather, the performance downside of AMD’s Phenom processors, i.e. a January launch, is currently worth less to Intel than delaying it by two months, leaving room for the dignified runtime of the currently available 65nm series. So the Q9300, 9400 and 9500 procic looks like more to look forward to, but the first quarter 2008 release is still guaranteed.
