According to AMD's internal plans, Deneb K10.5 CPU has been sampled in October and production has started in December.

AMD wants to meet its early Q1 launch plans and it takes some time to produce enough CPUs. This is AMD's first 45nm desktop CPU and probably they are trying to get the yields and speeds up. The first Deneb to launch is Phenom II 9x0 series that will fit in AM2+ boards, while the AM3 ones will follow later in Q1 2009.

Deneb looks good and it is finally a product that can compete nicely against Core 2 Quad and even against Nehalem, especially as it will end up cheaper and the transition from Phenom or Athlon X2 won't be that expensive, as you won't have to change your motherboard of memory, while in case you're transitioning to Nehalem you need to change everything, but you will be rewarded by a nice performance boost.