Adding more cores makes sense as companies look to consolidate servers and run more applications in virtualized environments, he said. Servers equipped with faster chips can execute more tasks compared to slower servers, which could help consolidate servers in data centers.

In anticipation of the first big jump out of quad-core chips, AMD demonstrated the first working units of Istanbul in February. A company representative at the time said servers with eight sockets could include up to 48 cores with Istanbul chips. Intel already ships a six-core chip for servers, known as Dunnington.

In 2010, AMD will double the core count on its processors to twelve with a chip codenamed Magny Cours, which will support the faster DDR3 form of memory. Intel is also continuously adding more cores, and will release new six-core and eight-core chips later this year or early next year.

Unfortunately for both players, the product launches are happening at the backdrop of an economic collapse, McCarron said.

"That will mask the business performance of the product. We're in a different environment," McCarron said.