AMD 4X4 Enthusiast Systems AMD is pushing a new design for machines aimed at gamers and other speed freaks: Its 4X4 design allows for two Athlon processors on one motherboard--for a total of four CPU cores with existing dual-core processors, and a total of eight with the quad-core chips the company will be releasing next year. 4X4 motherboards will be available later this year.

AMD's Torrenza AMD is working on a new technology (code-named Torrenza) to connect its processors to coprocessor devices that handle tasks such as processing video, or modeling physics for more realistic games. The new coprocessors will be able to talk directly to the processor at high speed. The technology will appear on high-end systems (such as servers) first, but it could work its way down to desktops.

and a little piece on factory overclocking:

More Factory Overclocking An increasing number of desktop PCs that come to us for testing are overclocked, where the processor is set to run faster than the manufacturer's speed rating. This used to be a tweak that only hard-core geeks would make, but vendors such as ABS and Velocity Micro are using the technique to squeeze more performance out of processors.

PC world.com