[Joe]

well the Merced was not THAT Delayed. The Mckinley was a bit delayed, but you forget, the Merced was Intels design and the McKinley was HP's design. And I think HP also has some 64bit EPIC chips working well.

Also AMD has a nice brain trust of people who worked on one of the best 64 BIT cpu's of all time.. the AXP core. Also you forgetting that AMD's CPU's run on a bus that was originally designed for the AXP core? and the Hypertransport is just the full comming to light of the DEC started EV8 bus I believe? AMD has a ton of 64 bit knowledge in their company from the DEC collapse and IP that AMD was able to aquire soon after that through deals with API and Compaq.

And yes the GFFX is a flop. if Drivers can improve its performance enough to out pace the boards out now and the boards that are soon to come from ATi, I will be DAMN impressed... but I am not all about that Dustbuster.

Barton isnt slow... but it isnt fast either for the money. you are paying just a hair under 3.06 prices and getting performance thats not above what you pay for. This is a problem, since the real only reason to buy an AMD is for price... ( cummon admidt it... the shitty VIA chipsets arent a reason!) hehehe If AMD isnt drasticly cheaper than Intel at the same "theoretical" speed... I dont think they have a chance.

SSE2 is nice, but I dont miss it on my current AMD stock.