For the gaming crowd, this does not mean a whole lot, as like AMD's Athlon64 and Opteron, it will be a long while before game developers harness 64 bit computing potential. As for ill-broadcasted noise that Intel had backtracked by announcing 64 bit, x86 extensions, Intel did in fact backtrack by extending x86 to 64 bit computing, instead of leap-frogging to new 64 bit architectures. This is what Intel has already tried and failed do to during the last decade with its 64 bit Itanium server processor it developed with HP. Not to use a pun, but AMD has "hammered" away for years at the 64 bit Itanium lack of backward compatibility with 32 bit server applications. Now, Intel has conceded defeat to the server crowd, the resellers and the IT guys you yell at when your desktop crashes: Itanium is no longer the next generation 64 bit server processor, like Intel once claimed, but has been relegated to the status of a "database processor." In the small server space, this means really that x86 processing has won a long-term battle and will be a mainstay in server applications for years to come.

To apologize to AMD lovers, who, and rightly so, point to the processor's consistent performance spec ratings and price/quality benchmarks, which more often than not beat Intel processors, Intel has also conceded that its Itanium 64 bit is no way to go for small server applications.

Meanwhile, Opteron's 64 bit, x86 compatibility with existing 32 bit server applications is what users want, at least according to unit sales statistics. This is after Intel has poured millions into marketing campaigns to tout Itanium as the next generation 64 bit server processor until this week when Intel officially and finally pulled the plug and stopped the hemorrhaging, by relegating the Itanium to the status of a "database processor."

Intel eventually had to step up and embrace 64 bit computing, only now its 64 bit processing will continue to have an x86 legacy and it will never have a lot to do with the Itanium.