Just when we thought AMD would give in to internal problems and let Intel takeover the entire CPU market, the Sunnyvale company pops up with all kinds of mouth-watering details on their soon-to-be released products.

At a demo show held in Monterey, CA, AMD displayed an interesting system powered by the latest Agena FX quad-core processors that ran in tandem with HD 2900XT graphics cards and DDR2-1066 memory modules. Agena FX is supposed to be the desktop variant of AMD's "Barcelona" Opteron quad-core processors and the company still expects these desktop CPUs to hit the market some time after a mid-2007 introduction for the server-oriented lineup.

AMD showcased a single-socket quad-core Agena FX system as well as a dual-socket eight-core system. Although we found out about the 2.8 GHz official clocks a week ago, rumors concerning a 2.9 GHz version managed to reach our ears. However, AMD refused to comment on such information, and to keep the fans on their toes it resolved in disclosing no performance numbers on the showcased systems. While AMD kept quiet, fans were still able to observe the eight-core system in action, converting 720p video content in real time as all eight cores were dealing with the delicate situation.

Another interesting event was the presentation of the future stream processor, which combines CPU functionality with GPU characteristics. The demos for this device so far focused on distributed computing or scientific applications, but AMD pointed out that this technology could be implemented in consumer-oriented hardware and software. The stream processing demos included graphics rendering, movement recognition and physics acceleration in one case and face recognition in a separate session. Although in an early stage of development, this application still proved that the stream processor is optimized for the execution of demanding parallel tasks.

AMD also mentioned that the "Fusion" processor will be released in 2009, delivering CPU/GPU functionality for a more power-efficient notebook of the future.

At the same time, AMD also showcased a fully functional 45nm wafer brought from the Dresden facility. In this respect, AMD mentioned that the 45nm will hit the market in mid 2008. As we can see, AMD is holding on and promises to make a comeback.