amd has a share of about 30% of the cores sold (and intel says anything with ecc is a server so its not really a good representation, like the graphics sales numbers), they are the only pick for VM farms and the BD killed the last to quarters since there is no reason to buy an upgrade until BD is out for a vm farm so alot of companies and data centers were waiting. amd also was supposed to have the entire 1st few batches already sold.

on the speed comment, most chips are stable around 2-2.5ghz now with the 1st batch of silicon, but when u go up to 3ghz+ then u run into problem with to much or not enough leakage and the way the cashe and fixed clock parts interact with the cores. so when your part is based for mid TDP servers and your side market is the desktop enthusiast that wants something clocked higher and not what the chip was primarily designed to do, your going to make sure that every thing is nice for the clock ranges it need to be 100% then u work a second rev into the more clock and voltage demanding market.