AMD Opteron and Phenom quad-core processors CPUs have been suffering from the dreaded TLB bug - identified as erratum 298 - that affects the CPUs' L2/ L3 cache.

AMD has posted general workarounds for negating the potential, and highly unlikely, stalling of the CPU, but such an approach, under Microsoft operating systems at least, can result in a performance-drop of up-to 40 per cent.

Now, though, AMD is sampling its first-tier enterprise customers with the revised B3 stepping Barcelona core that hardware-fixes the bug and, just as importantly, promises higher clockspeed to compete against Intel's Penryn-based, 45nm Xeon processors.

AMD will need to frequency-scale its desktop-based quad-core processors in a hurry, too, as the 2.3GHz-clocked Phenom 9600 just doesn't cut it.

No word on when PIB models will feature the B3 stepping, however.