AMD has launched a new range of three processors aimed at the low-price, low-power market. The Opteron 3200 series is built for hosting companies and Internet service providers, for cheap, high-density Web servers.

The new processors use AMD's Bulldozer architecture. Two models sport two modules and four hardware threads, with a TDP of 45 W; the top model has four modules and eight threads and a higher TDP of 65 W. The processors combine server features such as memory scrubbing, full server validation, and longer lifecycles, with desktop features such as the AM3+ socket. It also has a low price, coming in at $99 and $125 for the 2.5GHz and 2.7GHz four-thread parts, and $229 for the 2.4GHz eight-thread unit. The processors can all be paired with up to 32GB RAM.

With the low-cost processors, AMD believes that hosting companies can build a respectable system (1TB hard disk, 8GB RAM) for $70 less than a comparable Xeon E3-1200 system ($573 for the AMD machine, $643 for the Intel one). In turn, AMD believes that servers using its processors will pay for themselves 14 percent faster than the Intel machines.