Opteron Vs. Athlon 64??

[aidanjm]

Why do Opterons cost so much more than Athlon 64s for a given Ghz?

Is the Opteron faster than Athlon 64 at the same Ghz?

 

[lobadobadingdong]

smp validation.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: aidanjm
Why do Opterons cost so much more than Athlon 64s for a given Ghz?

Is the Opteron faster than Athlon 64 at the same Ghz?

No it isn't faster. Due to the need for validation, use of registered memory, etc, it's likely that an Opteron would be (imperceptibly) slower than an A64 at the same clock speed. Xeons stayed on 533fsb for a long time, and were considerably slower than their P4 brethren.

Validation, especially for SMP chips, is what is worth money to companies purchasing systems for business- and even mission-critical applications. If D3 crashes on your A64, you swear at it. If a bank database crashes on Opteron or Xeon, the cost could be millions of dollars, and AMD (or Intel, or the chipset maker, or someone) is going to hear about it! Thus they provide systems they are willing to certify for this sort of operation, but the buyer pays the cost of this. In reality, a few thousand dollars is nothing compared to the potential cost of some hardware crashes.

It's one of the reasons AMD has always had trouble getting into professional markets; competing on price isn't enough because price isn't hte most important factor.