Barcelona is just around the corner – or so AMD claims – and many are looking forward to this long-anticipated release. However, AMD isn't quite ready for it yet, and so to appease some customers has given the existing Opterons a bit of a boost with a clock speed upgrade and a pricing refresh.

The dual-core Opterons will now go as high as 3.2GHz, including the 8224 SE and 2224 SE. There are other interesting changes in the Opteron lineup, though really it is hard to be excited about a server processor using the older technology when Barcelona is so near:

AMD is still sticking to Barcelona's August release date for customers and a September landing for server makers. When the tardy chip finally arrives, it will come in 2.0GHz SE standard and 1.9GHz HE low-power versions.
Perhaps they will appease some enterprise customers wanting “slightly” faster Opterons at their disposal, but we all know that the world is waiting for AMD to surprise us all.