Well, AMD is not hugely lacking in performance..They just don't have a high end dhip out yet. The Current Phenoms hold their own at their price. It is just right now AMD has a lil less edge in the market they are in. Just like Intel did a few years back. AMD stated back a few months ago ( I will try to find the source...) that they did not intend on stealing the performance crown yet, and will focus on the low and midrange in the desktop CPU side. There quad cores do well in the Multi server market, and shanghi will extend the performance quite well. They are focusing on servers where it is more profitable for them. The desktop side will just see a nice boost which is a plus for us AM2/AM2+ owners. And who knows, we might see a nice surprise with Deneb...they said they had better then expected results in the revisions made to the 45nm chips.