AMD flaw causes slowdowns

If you have been looking for one of AMD's quad core "Barcelona" Opterons, you have probably noticed they have been hard to find. They came out a couple months ago but after searching newegg, I couldn't find any

It turns out that they suffer from errata, which is chip-level problems. Errata is not uncommon, however the severity level can be minor to major. In this case it appears to be major. This issue first came to light with the delay of AMD's 2.4GHz version of its Phenom desktop processor. It's so sever that AMD has issued a "stop-ship" for the Barcelona.

AMD is issuing a BIOS fix. According to an AMD spokesperson, the BIOS fix will impact performance 10-20%. While the test units sent out earlier to the press did not have the fix. I'd wager that the performance decrease is closer to %20 seeing how this information is comming from AMD's own spokesperson.

For more detail about this, you can head on over to techreport.com for an in depth article.