There will be more head scratching at Intel today when benchmarketeers read today that Microsoft, which uses an MMB2 benchmark to measure figures, compares the Opteron processor against Intel Xeons with hyperthreading and finds them wanting.
According to Microsoft, MMB2 is a benchmark for incresed workloads and compares "increased message sizes and more frequent and diverse workload actions compared to MMB". The Vole rates the RackSaver Quatrex64, which uses four Opterons at 1800MHz frequencies as scoring 15,520, compared to an IBM Eswerver which uses four Xeon MP chips with hypethreading enabled to score 13,200.
Meanwhile the Dell Powerwedge Xeon MP which also has four Intel chips at 2000MHz scores 13,000 MMB2s.As Xeon MPs are very pricey items, this may be music to Jerry Sanders III"s ears, but will likely incense Chipzilla.