Atom vs. Opteron and an unlikely winner ...

Interestingly the most power-efficient desktop platform isn´t the purpose-build Atom CPU from Intel. It´s an AMD Opteron. Tom´s Hardware found this in tests (i don´t like this news outlet but sometimes there are some good articles there) A good example for “the system is key”: Even when you CPU runs at two watts, a CPU alone doesn´t compute a single command. You need a power-efficient chipset as well. And the chipset is the achilles heel of Atom at the moment. PS: That´s good news, i was afraid of being forced to buy Intel for my next homeserver …. ;)