AMD Opteron 254 CPU Review

The Opteron 254 is a single core Socket 940 workstation and server-class 64-bit CPU running at 2.8 GHz. It includes one megabyte of level 2 cache as well as 128K of level 1 cache. It is built with AMD's 90 nm process and supports 32-bit code simultaneously with 64-bit code. With excellent single-threaded performance, this processor is probably at its best in a high-end two-way SMP workstation.

If multithreaded performance is what you're looking for, you'll probably be better off looking at some of AMD's dual core CPU's. If one fast CPU is what you need, the Opteron 254 may be for you.

Most of the desktop-oriented software, media encoders, and analytical scientific software we tested here is either single-threaded or dual-threaded, and shows minimal gains from adding another two cores. If you intend to focus on this type of work, you may be better served by the faster Opteron 254s.

When it comes to 3D rendering performance, however, the Opteron 275 is the 800-pound gorilla; no other CPU or configuration that we’ve tested from AMD or Intel comes even close to competing with the Opteron 275's results.