Intel Itanium outsells AMD Opteron

[duploxxx]

Yeah but that's exactly what happened and it does make sense. The Nehalems might still be called Xeon but we're talking about a totally different chip here. A chip that was specially designed for the server market with only one goal in mind: to destroy the Opteron. And quite frankly it has succeeded in doing that. There's no need to be indirect here, we all know how Intel thinks as a company. The Opteron had some key advantages over the old Xeon chips, which made it successful, especially in multiprocessor configurations. Namely the HyperTransport link, a faster integrated memory controller and you could argue that it also could have a higher CPU count per socket as the 6 core versions were more accessible and a bit more widespread than the Intel equivalent. The Nehalem architecture negated all these advantages, not only that but it surpassed it in all these aspects with the QuickPath Interconnect, integrated triple channel DDR3 controller and Hyper-Threading Technology. That's the truth really and that's why Nehalem is spreading like crazy on the server market while the Opteron, at best, stagnates.

are you actually active in the server world? Nehalem didn't destroy the opteron at all, yes Intel gained some market share against opteron due to the performance lack in some SW parts previous xeon versions had and nehalem no longer, but the response with istanbul stagered that again in many areas. Lots of sales on AMD is now waiting for the new platform launch, which Intel is quite affraid off, since they are changing roadmaps all the time with gainestown to counter that launch. Don't forget AMD doubled the amount cores and 4 channel ddr3 MC in a 2s box that is for example a lot of virtualization performance.

Not everyone buys the top bin you know, and AMD systems are way cheaper with OEM discount then Intel.