Since it will not be out until the end of next year. AMD is revising their processor roadmap yet again, having the Barton appear at the end of Q1, the Opteron appear at the end of Q2, and the Clawhammer appearing in Q4 sometime (possibly in time for Christmas 2003). Stories on this are being reported at
www.amdzone.com ,
www.amdmb.com , and
www.overclockers.com .
I don't know about you, but I've been waiting for a hammer since 2001, and I'm about mad enough to firebomb AMD collective @ss. Speculation leads me to believe it will be the 1-8 way MP version of the Opteron, rather than the 1-2 way MP that will be released at the end of the first half of 03. Unfortunately, the pinset (socket) is different between the 1-8 way Opteron and the 1-2 way Opteron (clawhammer) which means that any hardware released for it will be geared toward server use (in other words, good luck finding an OC board for those bastards, or a board geared toward the desktop for that matter).
I don't know about you, but I'd be hard pressed to buy a server Opteron with a DDR controller onboard when dual channel DDR/DDR-II would be coming out in the months following. Further, since the Clawhammer is initially being released with a DDR controller in Q4 (!!!) it will be obsolete before it hits the shelf. I don't know about you, but I think that the Hammer platform has just died, and that we'll be using Bartons until Intel steals us all when AMD closes its doors. I was so looking forward to picking up a Clawhammer in april or may ... now it looks like I'll probably be looking at Intel for my next upgrade.