Often companies don't do this because they want to avoid the "
Osborne effect" This is when the hype for future products causes demand for current products to drop off. When this happens, you have to slash the prices on your current products just to sell them.
However, if your new product doesn't really compete with your current products but does compete with your competitor's product, you want to talk it up a lot.
I think AMD is in both situations now with rev. H. On one hand, they want to hype up Barcelona because they currently have nothing to compete in the quad-core space, and they want to make potential quad-core customers delay purchasing decisions until rev. H is released.
On the other hand, if they hype it up too much they risk hurting their current dual core sales. Eventually their dual core prices will be so low anyway that the Osborne effect can be expected to be small.
With every X2 price drop, they get closer to the point at which it makes sense to start hyping rev H. I think they're close to that point already. I find it interesting that the most recent dual-core price cuts are rurmored to take place on February 12th. On the same date, AMD will be giving
a talk at ISSCC about Barcelona. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but that would seem like a good time to release the first benchmarks.
I do find it suspicious that recently they seem to be trying to hype rev. H with no real data to back it up. The longer they keep this up, the worse it looks for rev. H.