Trust me, there is no comparison between the MPs and the opterons. Period. The speed of memory access on those things are sick, there is much better scaling, and they end up doing the SMP job that you want much better. While there is a decent penalty from using SMP on most platforms when running single processor apps (due to overhead and architecture), this is nearly eliminated on the Opteron platform (less that 5% in most test). At this point unless you are in dire cash needs (in which case why are you buying a dually?), there is no rational reason not to go for the opteron ... even if you are getting the low speed ones.
On a similar note, they kill the xeons as well in bang-for-your-buck in damn near every category, and they win in sheer performance as well, meaning that going with a xeon, unless you have special needs in one of the few areas they still have a slight advantage in, is also a foolhardy thing. Note that every one of my observations has been using the opteron as a strictly 32 bit chip ... if you ran your OS and apps in 64 bit (linux now or windows later) the speed advantage would be even more substantial, giving you another 10-20% shot in the arm.
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#!/bin/sh {who;} {last;} {pause;} {grep;} {touch;} {unzip;} mount /dev/girl -t {wet;} {fsck;} {fsck;} {fsck;} {fsck;} echo yes yes yes {yes;} umount {/dev/girl;zip;} rm -rf {wet.spot;} {sleep;} finger: permission denied
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