Intel Xeon X7460 (24 cores) or AMD Opteron 8380 (32 cores)

I need to make a recomendation between getting 4 - 6 core intel x7460 (24 total cores) processors or 8 opteron 8380 4 core (32 total cores) processors. i dont know alot about the interworkings of processors the intel xeon's seems to be all around better, and have alot more cache

L1Cache – 384KB
L2 Cache – 9mb
L3 Cache – 16mb

VS

L1Cache: 512KB
L2 Cache: 2MB
L3 Cache: 6MB

but i dont know if they are 8 or more cores worth of better (sorry for my lack of knowledge). this will be running a SQL 2005 Database and thats about it. I've read that cache is pretty important in database server but again is it 8 cores worth of better. Right now i'm leaning heavly towards the intels. if anyone could provide there recommendatoins i would appreciate it.

what is it for? Workstation or Database?
this might help other readers!!

I recommend Opteron for Database. Amd's CPUs has better Architecture and results for data and I/O transfer.

Best wishes

link please?

when I said link, I meant for opteron having better architecture.

Wait for new Nelhalems, maybe even Mangy-Cours.

how fast do you need it? because the magny-cours amd 12 cores come out early next year, and with an 8 socket motherboard you'd have 96 cores, whereas even with an intel nehalem 4P setup, you'd only have 24 cores and 48 threads.

+1 to what cjl said about waiting for the Nehalem 4P systems.

Oh, and BTW, it is not immediately obvious that Magny-Cours will be enough to counter the Nehalems, even though Magny-Cours will indeed have +50% cores. Look at what happened with Nehalem vs Istanbul: they compete quite nicely against each other, and nehalem even edges forward in most cases, as far as I can remember (have to read the reviews again, my memory isn't that good anymore). This boils down to the question, "would you rather have X cores with throughput Y or 1.5X cores with the same throughput?"

I bet most people would choose to have faster but fewer cores than more of a slower core. Makes more sense, and poorly (or not at all) multithreaded software will make use of the faster core immediately.

I would go for the Opterons unless you can wait for the Nehalem or Mangy.

First, Nehalem EX is quad channel, not tri channel. Second, as I said, Nehalem will be available with up to 64C/128T. Where are you getting these random "points" scores, by the way? Neither platform is available yet (and a 24C nehalem would be rather odd, as that would be a tri-socket system. It will have 8 cores per CPU on a native 8 core die, not an MCM). Oh, and finally, Nehalem has significantly more going for it than just the tri channel memory. It beats the Opteron for several reasons in single threaded performance, most of which have far more to do with the core itself than the memory controller (although it does have a superior memory controller compared to the Opterons).