Snip: If you follow server and workstation processors at all, you probably have a sense that Intel's Xeon has been having some trouble competing with AMD's Opteron. Intel is looking to reverse its fortunes in the server and workstation markets with a series of new products designed to take on the Opteron and win. The first wave of those products is being introduced today in the form of a new server platform, code-named Bensley. This platform consists primarily of a new chipset that will be mated with a trio of new Xeon processors, also scheduled to arrive in stages.

The star of that lineup, once it arrives, will be the Woodcrest microprocessor based on Intel's new Core microarchitecture, which promises higher performance and lower power consumption than current Netburst-derived Xeons. I recently attended a reviewer's workshop in Portland, Oregon where I got to spend some quality time with a pair of Woodcrest processors on the Bensley platform, and I came away impressed. More importantly, I came away with some benchmark scores we can compare directly to AMD's Opteron 285.

Full review @ Tech Report