Anandtech's Johan De Gelas, an expert server reviewer takes a closer look at the current 2P and 4P landscape in this excelent review on Anandtech. A good look at core and socket scaling on today's platforms.

Do you get a few quad socket machines or (slightly less than) twice as many dual socket servers? It is not as clear cut a decision as it used to be. This article will compare the power and performance of the current AMD and Intel quad and dual platforms, giving you some of the information you need to make a well informed decision. Please share your own experiences with the dual and quad socket question, we are eagerly awaiting them.

Intel is far beyond the limits of the multiple FSB platform and needs to roll out a completely new server platform, a "QuickPath" quad socket platform. AMD has already improved their Quad socket CPU two times in one year, while Intel's updated quad platform will not be available before the beginning of 2010.



The end result is that servers based on a quad hex-core Opteron are about 20% to 50% faster, and at the same time consume 20% less than Intel hex-core. The E7450 has a slightly better performance/watt ratio, but simple mathematics show that no matter which hex-core Xeon you chose, it is going to look bad for the Intel six-core. The X7460 and its brothers are toast.