AMD's anticipated 2.4GHz Phenom 9700 quad-core desktop processor may take a little longer to appear than planned, it has emerged.

Roadmapped to debut mid-December, the 9700 was nonetheless absent from a Phenom demo event hosted by AMD last week ahead of this Monday's product launch. Today, DigiTimes reports that motherboard-maker moles are claiming that the part won't see light of day until early 2008. They claim unspecified issues with AMD's 65nm manufacturing process is to blame.

Last week, AMD Europe executive Dave Everitt admitted "erata" uncovered at the eleventh hour had held up the 9700's release but that a BIOS fix could bypass them - at the cost of a ten per cent reduction in CPU performance.

Enough of a reduction, in other words, to make the 9700 run more slowly than the 9500. The errata were said to affect the 9700 when it's under "heavy load", which is the state of most CPUs in gaming PCs, of course.

Mind you, releasing a CPU mid-December, just ahead of Christmas, isn't going to make for a hugely successful launch. AMD may as well wait for the seasonal malarkey to pass before releasing the 9700.

The 9700 has been said to operate with a maximum power draw of 125W, rather more than the 95W the 9500 and 9600 draw when running flat out - more, interestingly, than the 89W they were recently rumoured to consume.

The upcoming 2.6GHz Phenom 9900 is said to consume 140W. It's due in Q1 2008 as are AMD's already announced series of three-core Phenoms.

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