Today Intel released a slew of new processors that take advantage of a new more-efficient 45nm manufacturing process. The specs for these chips are pretty impressive. The 45nm process along with increased level 2 cache, new SSE4 instructions (instructions for operating on multiple items of data at the same time), and faster front side bus (among other improvements over previous chips) will make for some substantial performance gains over current 65nm chips (less power usage and cooler operation are also important).

Virtualization is one area where these chips should really be beneficial:

One of the key goals of Penryn was to improve virtual machine transition times—that is, the time it takes to enter and exit a VM. The net result is a 25-75% improvement in entry/exit times. This is all completely transparent, and requires no change in the VM software itself.

Penryn Arrives: Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Review

Intel is making some great chips lately...it will be difficult for AMD to stay competitive unless they respond quickly.