Well maybe they should update their UK website so you can select a Quad Core Opteron as an option

It's only been launched, silly. You don't actually believe you can buy one, do you?!

I'm stillwaiting for my free quad core Barcelona box which should have arrived on Monday as compensation for enduring their Virtualisation workshop...

*** networking ***

in network performance tests, opterons have been shown to outperform core and xeon systems by a large margin.

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.firewalls.pfsense.user/2738/match=opteron+xeon

*** power ***

although at peak, opterons use more power than intel's, at idle they are more efficient, and a single-core opteron *might* be better for your application.

** performance ***

it's also been found that a core2quad can sometimes be slower than a core2duo because of the contention on the front-side bus, so again, if your application is CPU bound with a single thread, you need to consider that an intel might not be ideal!

I remember the days when the AMD K6 whooped Intel and cost a mere fraction of the price. What happened to those heady days of speed and cost saving? :(

"Hmm, new teeth. Where were we? Oh that's right. Barcelona!"