<p><span style="font-size: small;"> This one may be a bit too subtle for most, but bear with me here. &nbsp;AMD's latest Opteron has a lot of cores, 12 per chip to be exact. &nbsp;It's got so many cores that AMD's codename for the chip is Magny-Cours. &nbsp;Did I mention that AMD likes naming things after Formula 1 courses? &nbsp;Gotta get the most out of that Ferrari sponsorship.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"> The target? &nbsp;Intel's new 32nm 6-core Xeon processors, introduced just </span>t<span style="font-size: small;">wo weeks ago</span><span style="font-size: small;">.&nbsp;AMD is roughly a year away from shipping 32nm CPUs in volume, and the same distance away from its brand new Bulldozer architecture, so AMD had to do something more drastic to compete.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">AMD sent us a test platform with a pair of 12-core Opteron 6174s. &nbsp;We're talking about a 692mm² die, 19.6MB of cache and 12 Opteron cores on a single package. &nbsp;And we've got two of them. &nbsp;Is that enough to beat Intel's 6-core Xeons? &nbsp;Let's find out.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/2978/amd-s-12-core-magny-cours-opteron-6174-vs-intel-s-6-core-xeon">Read more...</a><br /> </span></p>