Guerilla Marketing? . . .

Here’s a post from the Xtremesystem’s forum detailing someone getting a quad-core Kentsfield up to 4.75GHz.

Granted, this was with LN2 and all that, so this isn’t something that’s going to have a direct bearing on you.

But have you noticed that some of the folks who post at Xtremesystems have had little difficulty obtaining Conroes and Kentsfield well in advance? Have you noticed that their efforts have generated a lot of positive publicity in enthusiast circles for Intel?

Now please, I’m not knocking this at all. More power to those doing it and please keep it up!

I very much doubt Intel is directly supplying processors; it’s probably more like benign neglect or a tiny little nudge like a couple extra ESs for “testing.”

But whether Intel is involved or not; whether this is deliberate or not, hasn’t this proved to be great guerilla marketing; some pretty good advance bang for minimal buck?

I think so, and if that’s the case, shouldn’t AMD be doing the same thing? Even if there’s no Intel “conspiracy,” wouldn’t it benefit AMD to start their own?

After all, there ought to be some AMD 65nm CPUs floating around by now, and eventually, some K8Ls. If they’re good, AMD could stop a lot of enthusiastic Conroe sales just making sure, wink, wink, nudge, nudge letting a few get into the “wrong” hands.

And if not, why not? What’s the downside? Some control freak will freak out if a few samples slip out of his/her/their control? Give them a week’s worth of Xanax if you have to, and let the product speak for itself. If it’s good, it will speak for itself, loudly.

Of course, if it isn’t, that will say something, too.

It’s a good question to ask, and maybe somebody someplace can give an answer.

Ed