The Barcelona-bound X06 rumor train carries word that Alan Wake is now fully playable. As the release is slated sometime in January 2007 already, we can actually believe as much as the rumors claim. Fortunately for all of us psycho-thriller fans, an unrelated event this morning unwittingly backs up the reports.

semiconductor company">Intel unveils the processor with codename "Kentsfield" today and name it Core 2 Quad. The California-based semiconductor company announces, "This Kentsfield, the Q6700, had been overclocked up to 3.73GHz, a 1GHz clock, with no issues." And to further demonstrate the new processor's power, they ran a demo of Remedy's unreleased follow-up to Max Payne.

According to Markus Maki, the developer's representative at the forum, "Remedy has coded the engine to take advantage of quad-core processors - the engine scales as you move from single to dual to quad." He also added that one whole core is used for physics calculations alone. This images taken from that very forum show environmental effects that are to say the least, stunning. We wonder if we would be soon hearing questions like, "What Unreal engine?"

  

Intel's quad-core (4 full execution cores) processors known as 'Kentsfield' and 'Clovertown' could ship before the end of the year instead of the first quarter of 2007. After a disappointing Q2 FY2006 results, Intel said it was pushing the launch of its first quad-core processors for high-end desktops and server earlier into the fourth quarter of 2006.

Mansfield is expected to ship in a multi-chip package in order to avoid low yields due to huge die sizes. Clovertown, the server version of the quad-core, is expected to be pin-compatible with the 'Woodcrest' dual-core Xeon DP 5100 family of server chip the company launched earlier. Clovertown is believed to have a TDP of 120W. Official specs of the quad-core CPUs have not been released by the Intel.

The company also said its upcoming Xeon MP 7100 series server processor, Tulsa, was already shipping to server vendors in preparation for its launch.