Intel’s desktop and laptop processor lineup has been kicking AMD’s butt for past two to three years, but on the server-side AMD has been holding it own against the Xeon processors from Intel. However, Intel recently introduced their new Nehalem based Xeon processors claiming that the slowest new Xeon processor is faster than the fastest AMD Opteron processor.  AMD on the other hand says that it still has better performance-per-dollar value. AMD also claimed that they have the world’s most power efficient server chips.

Daily Tech has posted an article comparing the two server processor lineups from Intel and AMD. Intel’s claim that its slowest processor is faster than the fastest AMD Opteron processor hold true. Intel’s 2GHz quad core Xeon E5504 processor is faster than AMD’s top of the line 2.7GHz quad core Opteron 2384 processor in all SPEC benchmarks (SPECint, SPECfp and SPECweb). Also Intel’s Xeon processors are more energy efficient in both idle and peak states. And, as for the claim of better performance-per-dollar by AMD, a HP server DL380 G6 with dual 2.26GHz Intel E5520 processor, which is priced $3,448, will easily outperform HP server DL385 G5p based on dual 2.7GHz AMD 2384 processors priced $4,039.

Daily Tech has compared various processors in both Xeon and Opteron lineup, but the bottom line is, Intel is now the king of server processor performance also, along with desktop and laptop processors.