"Perhaps the most hotly-anticipated launch in 2011, AMD’s FX processor line-up is finally ready for prime time. Does the company’s new Bulldozer architecture have what it takes to face Intel’s Sandy Bridge and usher in a new era of competition?"

"A Czech bloke has managed to get hold of a Bulldozer engineering sample and run it through its paces. He ran a couple of tests and pushed the 3.8GHz FX-8130P to 5.1GHz, on air and with at a core voltage of 1.524V."

"Five years in the making, AMD's Bulldozer has gone through a slew of changes in schedule. According to the last report, Bulldozer's shipping date was suggested as June 20th. Now, DonanimHaber is introducing a new date - June 11th. AMD's 9-series motherboards will release in May, presumably during Computex 2011 time. Around this time, AMD's FX series is expected to be officially announced and dated."

"Bulldozer sample chips have been around for quite some time, but this time around AMD has decided not to show the new parts at Cebit 2011. Our sources pinned the blan on the chipset, which apparently has some teething issues, but they should be resolved in time for launch. The official story at AMD's booth was that this year the company wanted to focus on Fusion more than anything else."

"However, initial test scores that slipped to a hands of industry source are suggesting that Bulldozer should come really close to new Core i7 six-core CPUs. Bulldozer has both six and eight cores in the pipeline and they should be launching before the end of Q2 2011, at least that is the current schedule... The performance of Bulldozer should come really close to Core i7, but we don't know if this might be enough to take Intel's high end market dominance.

Advanced Micro Devices, the world's second largest supplier of microprocessors, said that it had taped out the first central processing units (CPUs) based on the code-named Bulldozer core. The company hopes to begin sampling of the chips with customers shortly and initiate mass production sometimes in 2011.