It seems that I'm about to get one of those newfangled Opteron 
processors from AMD.

You see, I've been in the market for a new machine. Normally I would 
have just gone with a G5 Mac, but it was a little too far out of my 
price range, and certain programs limit me to the WinTel platform.

It also turns out that AMD is shutting down its Athlon line of 
processors. The whole thing. Athlons and Athlon XP's. Apparently the XP 
3200+ is one of the last chips to be developed. They might bring out a 
3400+ or a 3600+, but that'll be about it. The socket A platform is 
dead.

Another interesting thing I discovered is that the Athlon XP 64 uses a 
different socket - socket 754 - and that it is merely a castrated 
version of the Opteron. That also means that it won't have a very 
lengthy lifetime. Perhaps a half a dozen different processor sizes and 
it too will be retired. Bye-bye socket 754. Can anyone say Slot 1 redux?

It turns out that the thing to aim for if you are looking for an AMD 
platform with future expandability is a socket 940 motherboard. Opterons 
are going to be as long-lived as the original Athlon, which means that 
the socket 940 design will live for at least the next two years. Since I 
always focus in on future expandability, this was my only choice. That, 
and I get one of those newfangled 64-bit processors that can also run 
32-bit programs and OS's (unlike the Intel 64's - they are strictly 64-
bit and cannot run 32-bit software of any kind).

So my question is this -- has anyone had an opportunity to try out SETI 
on an Opteron system, and how much of a performance increase did they 
see in comparison to an Athlon XP processor of comparable speed?

Just curious.
...Geshel