In just a few days, AMD will finally launch its 45nm server generation quad-core CPU codenamed Shanghai. Shanghai will work at clocks of up 2.7GHz, while faster iterations will come next year.

This is not really a breathtaking frequency, but this is the best AMD can pull off today. The new chip is an improved version of Barcelona with a few additions.

AMD will play its energy saving card, knowing that both Core 2 Quad and Nehalem generation Xeons will win in this match against Shanghai, at least on the performance level.

Shanghai Opterons will fit in existing servers which will make upgrades much easier than upgrades from Core 2 Xeons to Nehalem Xeons where you need to change the whole system.