AMD has announced three new models in its dual-core Opteron family which it claims deliver the world's highest performance for one-way to eight-way x86 servers and workstations. The Opteron 880 is designed for eight-way, 16-core enterprise-class servers, and the Opteron 280 for high performance dual-processor workstations. Both are available immediately. The Opteron 80 for single-processor, dual-core servers and workstations will be available within 30 days. AMD also reminded Intel of its challenge to a 'dual-core duel' to evaluate workloads and power consumption, a request Intel has so far declined. The 'duel' would be a live public performance evaluation between server platforms based on the highest-performing dual-core AMD Opteron 800 or 200 series processors, and the corresponding Intel x86 server processors that are commercially available in volume. AMD maintains that dual-core Opterons offer significant performance gains while operating in the same power and cooling infrastructure as single-core processors. This can allow fewer servers to do the job of many, helping to lower operating costs, according to the vendor. The announcement was made as Intel launched its final range of single-core Xeon processors on Monday. Source: VNUNet
