AMD has launched its much anticipated 45nm Quad Core Opterons. These new CPUs have been in the news quite a bit lately with the launch of Intel's Nehalem and will be in the tech media's sights to see if AMD's performance claims will meet with reality.

After the botched launch of Barcelona, Shanghai needs to be a winner out of the gate to regain market confidence. AMD has put a considerable amount of pre-launch effort into this (more than their usual Xenophobic tactics allow) and are touting some high performance and efficiency numbers.

Read the release here

November 13, 2008 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced widespread availability of its 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor, delivering up to 35 percent more performance with up to a 35 percent decrease in power consumption at idle.2 With IT decision-makers looking to do more with less, the newest Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor can help drive data center efficiencies and reduce complexities with innovations that offer superior virtualization performance and increased performance-per-watt. Global OEMs are expected to immediately offer enterprise and SMB customers more than 25 systems, available between launch today and the end of the year, based on the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, codenamed "Shanghai."

"Flawless execution in bringing the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor to market early results in new performance leadership on x86 servers," said Randy Allen, senior vice president, Computing Solutions Group, AMD. "In concert with our OEM and solution provider partners, AMD is addressing the need for enterprises to focus on their bottom line while giving them the innovations they need to build for the future. This enhanced AMD Opteron processor represents the most dramatic performance and performance-per-watt increases for AMD products since the introduction of the world's first x86 dual-core processors by AMD nearly four years ago. Simply put, the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor is the right technology at the right time."