This is the part that really sticks out for me:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3153&p=3

AMD knew it wouldn't be able to trounce Core 2 with Phenom, especially not at 2.3GHz, so it wanted to control the benchmarking that was done on Phenom. For the first time in as far as I can remember, AMD wanted all benchmarking on Phenom to be done at a location in Tahoe, of course on AMD's dime. AMD would fly us out there, we would spend a couple of days with a pre-configured system and we'd head home to write our stories.
Validates this story:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...-spider-launch