AMD Launches Five New Six-core Opterons

Three of AMD's new Opterons are energy misers.

AMD today rolled out three new six-core Opteron HE processors family that are designed for those who are energy conscious.

All three new chips are manufactured on a 45-nm process and consume 55W – marked improvement over 75W and 105W of other Opteron models. HP is now shipping 2-, 4- and 8-processor systems.

AMD said that the new six-core Opteron HE processor offers up to 18 percent lower platform-level power consumption over the standard wattage version and up to 18 percent better performance-per-watt compared to the quad-core version. AMD says that it will unveil processors with even greater energy efficiency later this year.

The new chips run at 2 GHz and 2.1 GHz and are priced from US$455 to $1,514 each in 1,000-unit quantities.

For those looking for more performance (at the expense of power efficiency), AMD is also unveiling two new, full-featured Six-Core AMD Opteron SE processors at 2.8 GHz for systems with up to 8 processors.