The DDR2 version of AMD's Deneb desktop CPU is at some secret labs in Taiwan and AMD actually does have more than a handfull of these samples.

AMD partners are evaluating these CPUs and these samples work at low frequencies, but we couldn’t find the exact number at press time.

This is progress, since a month ago no one in Taiwan had samples of these CPUs; and now the manufacturers can make the bios adjustments and evaluate these CPUs.

AMD should be shipping some of the DDR2-based, Deneb-based, AM2-based CPUs by the end of the Q4 2008, but it looks that we will be happy if we see 3.0GHz this year. Even if AMD manages to ship 3.0GHz it will clearly lose to 3.2GHz Nehalem and probably even to 2.93GHz Core i7 940 SKU.