AMD reveals Opteron 3300 and 4300 processors for the penny-pinching enterprise

As a followup to its flagship Opteron 6300 launch last month, AMD has just released several more Piledriver-based processors meant for the server room. One eight-core and two quad-core models are part of the Opteron 3300 series, while the Opteron 4300 series gets six new CPUs: one quad-core, three six-core and two eight-core designs. With all this new silicon, IT pros may have concerns about compatibility issues -- but fear not, for all of AMD's new gear has sockets that fit in with the 3200 and 4200 series to make upgrading a painless process. Designed for small-to-medium sized businesses and web host servers, the chips are relatively inexpensive with prices ranging from $174 to $501, a far cry from the the $575 to $1,392 price of the higher-end 6300.

Despite the low cost, AMD claims the CPUs have a 24 percent performance per watt increase and 15 percent less power usage than their predecessors. The chip maker will likely still face an uphill battle against Intel's mighty Xeon, but businesses looking to save a little cash might be the Opteron's saving grace. There's more detailed specs on the newly announced processors at the source, and you can get a peek at the pricing table after the break.

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New AMD Opteron 4300 and 3300 Series Processors Deliver Ideal Performance, Power and Price for Cloud Applications

Up to 15 Percent Lower Power consumption and 24 Percent Better Performance per Watt versus Previous Generation AMD Opteron Processors

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -12/4/2012
AMD (NYSE: AMD) today unveiled nine new mid-range and entry-level AMD Opteron™ 4300 Series and 3300 Series server processors increasing performance per watt versus the previous generation to maximize compute capabilities in power-constrained environments1, while delivering outstanding value to cloud providers and web hosts. The AMD Opteron 3300 Series processors provide enterprise-class features in a low power envelope at a desktop processor price, making it ideal for web hosts and small- and medium-sized businesses.

The AMD Opteron 4300 Series processors offer up to 15 percent better performance versus the prior generation, based on SPECint benchmark results2. And SPECpower results show up to a 24 percent improvement in performance per watt. As with the AMD Opteron 6300™ Series processors, these are socket compatible with the previous generation processor, providing an effortless upgrade path for customers.

"The Piledriver core architecture shared by the AMD Opteron 4300 and 3300 Series processors provides optimized performance, power and price for today's customer," said Suresh Gopalakrishnan, general manager, Server Business Unit, AMD. "These new processors are ideal for cloud providers, web hosts and small- and medium-sized businesses who want to address their space and power constraints. With a simple upgrade, existing customers can obtain more performance and improved energy efficiency and new customers will obtain compelling value and ROI."

Extensive Software Support
Deep and broad software ecosystem support is available for the new processors. Several of the key tools include:

Hypervisors: Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, and VMware vSphere;
Operating systems: Microsoft Windows, SUSE Linux Enterprise and Red Hat Enterprise Linux;
Key developer tools: AMD Open64 compilers and AMD Core Math Library, GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), Microsoft Visual Studio 2012, and The Portland Group (PGI) compilers;
Java virtual machine: AMD Aparapi, OpenJDK Project "Sumatra," Oracle JVM and IBM JVM.
Partner Traction
Socket, thermal and chipset consistency with previous generation AMD Opteron™ 4200 and 3200 Series processors allows OEMs to easily carry forward existing server designs and enables end customers to deploy new server hardware within their existing power and cooling infrastructure. Servers based on the new processors are now available from Supermicro as well as the AMD SeaMicro SM15000 platform. Additional server offerings will soon be available from Dell and others.

"AMD Opteron processor solutions have provided excellent investment return for our customers," said Brian Payne, executive director of Server Solutions, Dell. "The new 4300 and 3300 Series processors in the AMD-based Dell PowerEdge servers maintain this history and are ideal for web service providers who strive to maximize revenue from their server infrastructure and also for small- and medium-businesses who carefully invest to enable growth."

"Supermicro has industry-leading server solutions and motherboards in production supporting AMD Opteron 4300 and 3300 Series processors," said Don Clegg, vice president of Marketing and Business Development at Supermicro. "Working closely with AMD, Supermicro is delivering 1U short-depth SuperServers using the AMD Opteron 4300 and 3300 Series processors, as well as a 3U 12-node MicroCloud optimized for the AMD Opteron 3300 Series processor for hosting and cloud providers. With systems using these new processors and the recently launched AMD Opteron 6300 Series CPU, Supermicro's time-to-market delivery provides customers a full range of Opteron-based solutions that cover extremely cost-sensitive web- and cloud-hosting to high-end HPC applications."

Key Facts, Performance and Technical Detail - AMD Opteron 4300 Series Processors
Frequency: Up to 3.4 GHz base frequency and up to 3.8 GHz using AMD Turbo CORE technology for performance boost when applications demand it;
Up to eight cores per socket for scaling on thread-intensive environments;
As little as 35W TDP for power-constrained environments;
AMD-P power management features maximize performance per-watt across workloads while giving IT managers more control over their data center power profiles;
The only x86 processor to support ultra-low voltage 1.25V memory;
AMD Virtualization™ (AMD-V™) technology for near-native performance in virtualized environments and lowest cost per virtual machine (VM);
Two memory channels with up to 1866 MHz memory support;
Supports up to six DIMMs per CPU for up to 192GB memory per processor;
Up to two x16 HyperTransport™ technology (HT3) links at up to 6.4GT/s per link.
Key Facts, Performance and Technical Detail - AMD Opteron 3300 Series Processors
Frequency: Up to 2.8 GHz base frequency and up to 3.8 GHz using AMD Turbo CORE technology for performance boost when applications demand it;
Up to eight cores per socket for web hosting upsell opportunities;
As little as 25W TDP for power constrained environments;
AMD-P power management features maximize performance-per-watt across workloads while giving IT managers more control over their data center power profiles;
AMD-V technology for low cost virtualization;
Two memory channels with up to 1866 MHz memory support;
Supports up to four DIMMs per CPU for up to 32GB memory per processor;
One x16 HyperTransport technology (HT3) link at up to 5.2GT/s.