Intel has raised its third quarter revenue and gross margin expectations, citing stronger-than-expected global demand for its microprocessors. The chip maker added $200 million to the top of its financial outlook, saying it now expects revenue for the third quarter to be in the range of $9.4 billion to $9.8 billion compared with an earlier estimate for between $9 billion and $9.6 billion.

The announcement came on the same day rival AMD launched its long-awaited server chip Barcelona, in a move probably intended to slow some of the momentum surrounding the launch of AMD's newest processor. However, higher microprocessor demand worldwide will likely benefit AMD as well.

AMD's share of the worldwide server market slipped from its peak of about 25 percent last year to about 13 percent this year, according to Mercury Research. AMD hopes its new product and the upcoming Phenom CPUs can help it regain some of the ground it has lost to Intel.