Perhaps more important from an AMD point of view is that Intel will FINALLY (my god it is f&*king time) get rid of the Netburst based chips for 4 sockets and up.
The 8xxx series Opterons are AMD's best cash cow, they still go for well over $1000 a pop, because the combination of Hypertransport and the fact that netburst utterly sucks means that in 4s/8 cores and up, Intel is currently getting destroyed.
4 Woodcrest/Clovertowns on a 4 socket/4 FSB board + 64 meg snoop filter, while certainly in no danger whatsoever of winning a beauty prize for technical elegance, will at least be back in the game, perhaps even marginally ahead, performance wise.
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Due in Q3 of this year is also Intel’s Caneland platform with Tigerton dual- and quad-core processors. The CPUs will replace the aging Xeon MP 7100 series and will not only complement Intel’s 65 nm Core architecture deployment, but also allow Intel to regain market shares it has lost to AMD in the lucrative MP server segment.
By the end of the year, Intel will also be offering a dual-socket consumer PC platform. Depending on your view, this could either be seen as a reaction to AMD’s dual-socket QuadFX (4x4) platform or as a logical step to offer what some enthusiasts have been doing for some time - to take a Xeon server board and use Woodcrest or Clovertown processors to build a system with two dual- or quad-core processors. Intel calls this project “Skulltrail,” which will support two Core processors with up to eight cores. The platform will also run up to four graphics cards.