AMD Launches Five New Six-core Opterons
Three of AMD's new Opterons are energy misers.
AMD today rolled out three new six-core Opteron HE processors family that are designed for those who are energy conscious.
All three new chips are manufactured on a 45-nm process and consume 55W – marked improvement over 75W and 105W of other Opteron models. HP is now shipping 2-, 4- and 8-processor systems.
AMD said that the new six-core Opteron HE processor offers up to 18 percent lower platform-level power consumption over the standard wattage version and up to 18 percent better performance-per-watt compared to the quad-core version. AMD says that it will unveil processors with even greater energy efficiency later this year.
The new chips run at 2 GHz and 2.1 GHz and are priced from US$455 to $1,514 each in 1,000-unit quantities.
For those looking for more performance (at the expense of power efficiency), AMD is also unveiling two new, full-featured Six-Core AMD Opteron SE processors at 2.8 GHz for systems with up to 8 processors.

Because unlike your laptop, a server receives greater benefit from more cores than clock speed. Add to that the savings in electricity both from the chip itself and in cooling and these are very nice CPUs.
55W for six cores...that's amazing.
I can't wait for the 12 core cpu's to come out.
Because unlike your laptop, a server receives greater benefit from more cores than clock speed. Add to that the savings in electricity both from the chip itself and in cooling and these are very nice CPUs.
A 2.4ghz athlon would pwn a hot, noisy 3.8ghz p4! (or something like that, not sure on exact comparisons).
so for those who forgot or weren't around: clock speed is MEANINGLESS when comparing different architectures, it is ONLY useful for comparing cpus in THE SAME LINE where higher clocks mean more power, in more ways than one.
seeing as I am not currently in the market for 1000 $1.5k processors, i can only hope the desktop equivalents are on there way?
I meant compared to the Xeon, the opteron is slow and Xeons also come in 4 cores at 2.6 ghz
>>off-topic
I doubt even Intel can match that.
what part of "different architectures" you didn`t got ? Xeons and Opterons even thow they are designed for servers they are still different and don`t have the same computing power at the same frequency.
What's the possibility that dual and quad socket motherboards will ever hit mainstream? Even the Skulltrail rig is still designed to be a workstation.
100MHz for $1,000?
Am I the only one that's impressed AMD managed to get 6 cores to run on 55W but can't produce a mobile chip that runs below 31w or goes above 2.4GHz? Turion ZM-86 (dual core) runs at 2.4GHz but consumes 35w while C2E QX9300 (quad core) only needs 45w to run at 2.53GHz.
The fact is, Intel still leads over AMD and until AMD decided to charge more for their chip so they’ll have the R&D money, Intel will continue to lead and AMD will continue to get 2nd hand IBM technology.
@Pei-chen, but $1000 mobile chip for something that will get stomped by a desktop Q9550S at 65 Watts, 2.83 Ghz, and $350 is kinda pricey.
This is impressive for AMD, however, like Pei Chen pointed out, if AMD is so good at making power efficient chips, why does their mobile line-up completely suck?
I never really looked at how server CPU's perform in gaming, and video encoding environments
I know they most likely are not meant to game but still, perhaps a $450 CPU could give me more fps compared to a Phenom2?
100MHz for $1,000? Yes. That is the cost of going 8-way. Just getting the wife to go with a 3-way is costly enough.
And about the pricing, why is that such a surprise? Just look at the i7s.