But by the time it emerges for the enthusiast market, AMD will probably have to contend with Ivy Bridge, armed with advancements of its own. This isn’t a good thing. I want to see competition—a battle that keeps both Intel and AMD innovating. Does today’s FX invoke the Athlon 64 FX-51 that compelled Intel to rebadge a Xeon and come up with the Extreme Edition moniker back in 2003 just to compete? Not really, no. In fact, the chip giant didn’t have to do anything at all. Its nearly year-old 95 W parts fend for themselves without even a price adjustment.

Although I’m counting on Valencia and Interlagos to fare better against Xeon in the server space, where threaded workloads are the rule, it’s disappointing to see Zambezi suck down the power of Intel’s highest-end processors under load, perform like its competitor’s year-old mainstream chips, and wear the branding of a family that, eight years ago, actually made Intel squirm.