These processors have a lot of advanced features for big-time computing users (warehouse scale, super computers, etc). You can't just look at frequency or cachesize or number of cores for this chip. There are reliability features, quality of service features, and overall capabilities that consumer grade processors don't have.
Also I don't recommend you try to outfit your startups server farm. I dont know your needs, but you should find someone who can figure out what you really need.
Initially all I "need" is a relatively
high end of a consumer grade
mid-tower case, e.g., an AMD
8 core processor, 32 GB of ECC
main memory, several hard disks,
on a current motherboard
for less than $150 or so running
Windows Server or maybe,
initially, just Windows 7 Pro.
Keep that on average half busy
24 x 7 for a month, and I will
be able to afford more.
If I get, say, two wire rack shelf units
18 x 48 x 72", fill them with
a good router and mid tower
cases, and keep all that
on average half busy 24 x 7,
then I will consider
a colocation facility or the
cloud.
A few miles from me is
a nicely big, fully serious
colocation facility
that offers dual 10 GbE
Internet connections, etc.
No joke: One of those shelf
units has room for about 12
mid tower cases. Keep two
such shelf units busy, and that
will max out what I'm willing
to pursue without a lot more
server farm expertise than
I have (or want to get)
and also make cash not
a problem.
So, one hope is that I will be
able to pay some experts, two
or three days at a time, to
hold my hand into more --
reliable electrical power,
HVAC, floor space, cabling, racks,
servers for the racks,
internals of the servers for
the racks, e.g., maybe Xeon,
automation for software
installation, system management,
system monitoring,
farm performance analysis,
fail-over, virtual machine
exploitation, security,
test systems, development
systems, organized
code repository and testing,
all relevant documentation,
training, recruiting,
HR, legal, real estate leasing,
janitorial, physical security,
etc. Or, right, just use
a cloud!
But for the high end Xeon
processors, I'm looking
ahead. E.g., a motherboard
with two Xeons with 18 cores each,
all in just one full tower case,
or two for failover, or
three considering testing,
might provide enough
computing for my startup
all the way to exit so that
I could avoid taking seriously
what I'd have to do
with 100 people
and 50,000 square feet of
server farm, dual optical
fiber connections to an
Internet backbone point of
presence, etc. So, that's
why looking into high end
Xeons now is not totally
wasted time.
Also I don't recommend you try to outfit your startups server farm. I dont know your needs, but you should find someone who can figure out what you really need.