AMD is going to fire back at Intel today in the enthusiast PC market. The Sunnyvale company will unveil a new socket for high-end computers today that will allow it to put two dual-core microprocessors side by side in a PC. The new 4x4 socket will help it compete for the speed crown with Intel, which is poised to launch its new Conroe desktop microprocessors in July.

While Intel's Conroe chips will allegedly take the performance crown from AMD's own dual-core FX series of microprocessors, AMD can claim leadership in terms of putting four cores into a single PC, allowing for more tasks to be done in parallel. Patrick Moorhead, vice president of global channel marketing, said the new socket would ship in the second half of 2006 and target the high-end gamer segment, which usually means high-priced.

AMD's Barry said that machines with the new sockets will be to run multithreaded games at better performance levels than Intel-based machines. He said that more game companies have begun to adapt their games to exploit multiple threads in a PC, allowing them to handle more tasks at the same time and thereby run much games faster and prettier for gamers.