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AMD has grown tired of hearing about Intel's four-core Xeon wonders and so countered today with some faster Opterons and some lower-voltage ones. If you can't beat them with cores, beat them with variety.

The little chip maker that could has ratcheted up the top speeds of its high-end, standard power Opteron chips from 2.4GHz to 2.8GHz. And that speed bump comes at no extra cost to the customer. Hooray.

In addition, AMD popped out a new fleet of low-power chips.

"AMD has expanded the breadth of its low-power solutions with AMD Opteron processor Models 1218 HE, 2218 HE and 8218 HE," the company tells us. "Designed to offer industry-leading performance-per-watt at only 68 watt maximum thermal design power, these processors are ideal for energy-conscious customers looking to reduce power and cooling bills and to achieve greater density in the datacenter.

"AMD Opteron HE processor models now include three 1000 Series models, bringing reduced thermal benefits over previous AMD Opteron 1000 series processors to entry-level server customers while preserving the enterprise reliability they value."

With the release of these new chips, AMD wanted to stress two things – it beats Intel on numerous benchmarks and it "has the industry's most stable roadmap."

We'll grant some excitement for the former but withhold our zest on the latter.

Intel sure throws all kinds of roadmap humps, swerves and drunken drivers at customers, but it has adapted after a beating and deserves some credit for that. One doesn't want to be too stable in the chip game.

You'll find AMD's new pricing here. ®

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