ONE THING that should have been shouted from the rooftops at the AMD Athlon 64 launch was a simple thing about the FX line of chips, unlocking. There was precious little hard info about the chips given out at the launch, it was more of a "happy, feel good session", I was happy, and people there felt good. The hard info was available if you asked, but the audience dictated that shiny things were the order of the day.
Back to the FX line, it is targeted squarely at gamers and enthusiasts, a market that AMD has been losing of late. The message that locked chips, and outdated PR ratings don"t cut it anymore seems to have been heard loud and clear at AMD Sunnyvale. These chips will be completely unlocked, but you will pay a premium. Nothing is free anymore.
Well, one thing still is, games. When you buy an FX line processor, and register it with AMD, they announced you get free games. While I am not expecting a boxed copy of Half Life 2 in the mail (From AMD that is, I am perfectly willing to accept one if anyone from Valve is reading this. Purely for educational purposes of course), the games from manufacturers who target gamers tend to be pretty decent. Add in the fact that they may include a 64-bit optimized, or at least a recompiled version, then getting on those mailing lists may not be a completely bad thing. µ