Advanced Micro Devices on Monday officially released its new Opteron 6000 series of 12-core processor, code named Magny-Cours, jumping ahead of arch-rival Intel in one of the most important processor metrics: number of cores per socket.



It is the first time AMD has been ahead of Intel in the number of cores per processor since it beat Intel with the introduction of dual-core processors in 2006.



The new processors support DDR3 memory, and its four memory channels per processor exceeds the three memory channels per processor featured by Intel



The new Opteron 6000, when paired with AMD's new 5600 series chipset, also offers AMD's new HyperTransport 3.0 technology and supports PCI Express 2.0.



Prices start as low as $1,386 in 1,000-unit quantities.