The X5670 and i3-540 are both four-issue processors with 16-stage pipelines. The Opteron 61QS is a three-issue processor with 12 pipeline stages. Wikipedia has a good amount of information about the CPUs' microarchitecture- the X5670 and i3-540 both use the "Nehalem" microarchitecture, and the Opteron 61QS uses the "Stars" (also called "K10") microarchitecture.