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I still allow myself an occasional bit of hardware news here.

AMD hopes to fuel server upgrades with their latest Opteron CPU, code named Istanbul. Istanbul is designed to be a drop in replacement for previous generation Opteron CPUs and brings six cores and a 50% performance boost to the table. Follow along as we upgrade a server from a four-core Shanghai to a six-core Istanbul and determine if there is any "bull" in AMD's Istanbul claims.

Virtualization, cloud computing, thin client computing, and telepresence technologies are becoming common place as services delivered by datacenters. While that is good news for users of advanced technologies, there is a dark side—the costs and hassles of replacing servers to handle the load generated by those applications.

That situation drove AMD to ask a simple question: "What if you could just increase performance with a CPU change?" AMD's answer comes in the form of a Six Core Opteron processor, code-named Istanbul. While both Intel and AMD have offered the ability to upgrade CPUs in the past, other hardware was usually required to gain any significant performance improvement, sometimes necessitating a cooling fan or power supply upgrade as well.

Istanbul is different, the CPU has the same power and thermal profile as previous Opterons (such as the four-core Shanghai and four-core Barcelona), which makes upgrading a much simpler endeavor. Those performing Opteron upgrades will not have to change cooling fans, power supplies, motherboards, or anything else for that matter—all that may be needed is a simple BIOS upgrade.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 … 075,00.asp

Does dv have a suitable mobo?