AMD executives said this week that they will promote its "4x4" enthusiast platform to counter the Core 2 Duo (C2D). AMD also plans to push a sort of "performance number" into the market to redefine how consumers should think about power. The The 4x4 platform will place two physical sockets on a motherboard, connected by AMD's Direct Connect architecture. Mounted on each socket will be an AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor, for a total of four cores. An eight-core "8X8" program will roll out in 2007.

PCMag.com