The Inquirer is reporting that a rig equipped with a K-10 Agena and two 2900Xts broks 30k in 3D Mark06 when the 2.4Ghz chip was OCed to 3.0 GHz and the 2900s were closked at 830/900. Article is here http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=41970 . If this is true then the Agena will be a Core 2 beater, by a long stretch.

Now, there is no word on if this is a "special chip" or if 3.0 is as easy to get to as it is on any Core 2, even the lowly 4300, but even if it is this is pretty huge. To put this in perspective, the 3D06 Hall of Fame rig scored a 27,039. That rig was comprosed of the following:

Intel QX6850 Dragonpot cooled, ASUS Blitz Extreme, Mushkin DDR3 1333 ES ~1500MHz 5-7-5-15 1T, ASUS 2900XT Crossfire 1200/1000MHz Mousepot rev4 cooled. Special thanks to Saki Hoffmann, Markus and Brian Flood at Mushkin! Thomas at Intel Sweden. Mikael and Anders at ASUS Nordic.

Dragonpot cooling on the QX6850 is LN2 and mousepot (dry ice) on the cards. The K10 and 2900Xts were on air and beat the above supercooled rig like a rented mule. Core 2 vs. AMD 64 comes to mind here.

This would be great news if it is true. Only time will tell but I really hope the chip is a monster. About 6 months+ away so i'll be ready to upgrade .

Pretty exciting stuff. Typically I would take this sort of news with a grain of salt the size of cow lick, but the Inquirer is a reputable source.

You know it has to be good if Merc uses exclamation marks and "Crossfire" in the same post.

The Inquirer isn't the most reliable sourse and the rig was set up by AMD so grain of salt is probably in order but we all had the same thoughts when Conroe was leaked so why not again.

Oh, my bad: I thought you said The Inquirer . . . not the Enquirer. Yes, I think the piece followed the bit on Tom Cruise's children being sent off to Scientology boot camp.

FOR SALE: 1x e6660, 1x e6850, 1x Asus P5K deluxe mobo... hardly used..

Good news if true...

Im with Paul....I would go back to AMD in a second if they had something that could keep up

I was starting to think that the AMD/ATI merger had really killed two excellent companies.
Without the competition of AMD/ATI, Intel and Nvidia dont really have proper motivation.
Competition is good for the consumer as it inspires them to out do one another.
More bang for less bucks is always good. So I hope this is true.

I certainly hope this is a true story. I'm tiring very quickly of Intel chips on 680 chipsets. It's just not a reliable combination.

That said, I don't think AMD has 6 months to release it. At that point, Intel will have the 45 nm process in production and all bets are off.

Arlie.. The 45nm Penryn is just a revision so dont expect much in the way of architectural changes from the Core2 platform.. IMO the new Nehalem architecture is where Intel will pound AMD again.. But I hope AMD's new native quad delivers the goods, in the interest of competition. Intel monopoly in the CPU market spells disaster for the budget conscious.

I just got the p35 mobo from cool_case. Hmm, maybe I should hold off on this upgrade and wait for the numbers to start coming out.

Paulzig:

It's not that I expect an immediate leap to 5 Ghz from the 45 nm process. The fact that Intel can get it into production before AMD can get its act together on the 65 nm process is ominous. Something is seriously stalled at AMD and they need to remove the road block....fast.

12 days to go until AMD agena benchmarks surface, thats when the NDA passes If I was a betting man, I'd say "Merc, go ahead with that 6850.".. I have a feeling I might be like this: when the official benches come tho, its just the feeling I have. I'm expecting the worst so that if it turns out good i get a BIG surprise.

Arlie.. Blah@ 5ghz, the e6850 will do that (trying to encourage Merc to buy one) on just chilled water..