Duel of the Titans: Opteron vs. Xeon

Details On The Opteron Core: An Enhanced Athlon

View of the CPU core of the long-awaited Opteron: the 1 MB L2 Cache takes up the largest portion of the surface area (over 50%).

On closer inspection the attentive observer might notice that the AMD Opteron's physical foundations look identical to the old Athlon core in many of its details. One of the innovative features of Opteron is the integrated memory controller, for which space was made where the L2 cache normally sits on the Palomino and the Thoroughbred.

The SledgeHammer has over 940 pins, thus taking the record in the x86 world.

A side view of the Opteron - finally with a heat spreader! This feature was long been overdue on the Athlon, explained by the ever-present argument of cost, cost, cost.