On the same day that AMD released its Opteron chip the PR department at Intel tried to steal a bit of thunder for itself.

Intel surprised Wall Street by saying that it will make more than $200 million more than expected. It is saying that it will have sales of $9.4 billion to $9.8 billion in the current quarter. That compares with the previous forecast of $9.0 billion to $9.6 billion.

However the figures are announced as part of a 'mid-quarter' proclamation by Intel which is something that the company does not do .

Intel claimed it was because there was a higher demand for its microprocessors worldwide for the upgraded forecast. However cynics say that it was a cheap shot at trying to steal some of the momentum surrounding the launch of AMD's Opteron.

If it was, then Intel made a bit of a mistake. The sort of person interested in buying a new chip is not likely to care about financial news. USA Today fell for it.

More here.