In a bid to capture as much of the blade market as possible AMD hard launched the Opteron EE 2400 series. This energy-efficient CPU eats up only 40W under AMD's ACP measurement [PDF download: AMD Average CPU Power introduction document].
The AMD press release claims that the Opteron EE processors come with 31% higher performance-per-watt than the regular quad-core Opterons – and if you're competing against somewhat inefficient architecture such as the sexa-core Xeon [Dunnington, based on Core 2 microarchitecture]. This should bring Opteron EE into a prime position for blade systems, clearly targeting web hosting services and similar high-density power-sensitive customers.
The company did not release the clock speed of the processors, which we find somewhat odd, given the previous quad-core Opteron EE processors, 55W ACP processors at 2.1 and 2.3 GHz.
If you wonder what the power consumption of the Opteron EE compared to the regular quad- and sexa-core Opterons and competing Intel Xeons, that is an answer you'll have to ask a server vendor.
The sad fact is that AMD does not want independent media outlets to test their Opterons outside of pre-approved AMD systems. This makes a stark contrast to Intel, for instance - who will gladly send their own Xeon processors without fears that "inadequate" testers might come up with scores that the company could dislike.
We'll leave you to draw up the conclusion yourself.
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