For instance, according to pricewatch.com, Pentium 4 2.8GHz is already selling in three American stores for the price ranging between $578 and $588. At the same time the official price of the newcomer should make $508 at launch, so the currently selling CPUs are purely speculative buys.

Nevertheless, the fact that Pentium 4 2.8GHz are already available in American stores once again proves that the faster Pentium 4 models will start selling in mass right after the launch. It means that Intel has no production problems and the currently used manufacturing technology allows easily increasing the Pentium 4 core clock frequencies.

Unfortunately, I cannot say anything like that about AMD CPUs. Although new Athlon XP 2600+ and 2400+ will be announced a bit earlier, on August 21, you cannot find them in stores yet. Moreover, according to the available info, AMD will start shipping them only to key partners after the launch. And the mass supplies of Athlon XP 2600+ and 2400+ are expected only in mid September. This way, AMD to our disappointment is still experiencing some production problems, which prevent the company from attacking the desktop CPU market as aggressively as Intel does.