AMD's dual-core Opteron processors, due to be launched on Thursday, will cost more than their single-core equivalents.

So claim Taiwanese motherboard maker sources cited by DigiTimes.

It's no great surprise, perhaps, given the greater performance the dualies offer. According to said report, the bottom-of-the-range four-way dualie, the Opteron 865, will cost $1,514, as much as the top-of-the-range single-core Opteron, the 852.

Each line of dualie Opteron is said to each ship at three clock speeds, 1.8GHz, 2GHz and 2.2GHz, which puts them below many single-core Opterons in terms of clock frequency.

Clock speed isn't the only factor in processor performance, of course which is why the dualies' model numbers are higher. Those three clock speeds yield model numbers of x65, x70 and x75, respectively, with the x replaced by 1, 2 or 8, as per the usual one-way, two-way and four-way plus scheme adopted by AMD two years ago.

AMD's approach is interesting, and commendable. Rather than shout "dual core!" at every turn, it's simply relying on ever-higher model numbers to indicate higher performance. That's as it should be. It doesn't, after all, matter whether a system's CPU has one core, two or more, as long as you know you've got the best-performing processor currently available.

That said, if AMD's plan to ship dualie Athlon 64s as 64-X2s is correct, then it clearly believes, like Intel, that consumers are less able to understand this fact than enterprise buyers and professional users. ®

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