Dual-Core Opterons Reviewed on the Linux Front

Dual-core CPUs have finally arrived to the server/workstation market with today's announcement of AMD's dual-core Opteron processors. This is something that has been talked about for a while now and today we finally get our first crack at putting them through our gamut of tests. Although this is similar to what Intel announced a couple of weeks back, AMD's implementation is very different and, while Intel's launch was targeted at the desktop, AMD went for the high-end server and workstation market. So what will these new processors mean for workstations and how do they work with Linux? We've got some brand new Opteron 875s in the shop to show you. We'll be putting these new processors against Intel's latest “Irwindale” Xeons which run at 3.6GHz and feature 2MB of L2 cache and throw in AMD's fastest Opteron 252s for good measure.