AMD Opteron
Shares rank 7 of 8 server CPUs by recommenders
AMD's 64-bit server CPU that people say ran Linux servers faster and cheaper than Sun's SPARC machines, often by large margins.
AMD's 64-bit server CPU that people say ran Linux servers faster and cheaper than Sun's SPARC machines, often by large margins.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Faster than Sun UltraSPARC servers
“the 64-bit AMD Opteron servers with Linux offered an alternative that crushed any kind of SPARC CPU with Solaris”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Fujitsu launches made-in-Japan next-generation CPU FUJITSU-MONAKA” “accelerated dramatically the work in comparison with the traditional Sun servers”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “What Sun got wrong” “Opteron was immensely better than the UltraSPARC CPUs used in the Sun servers.”
Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “Windows XP 2002 for the Itanium: Unbridled rage” - Comment from 9 Aug 2026 in “The Alpha 21264 CPU: NT's Greatest RISC (1998)”
Strong performance on server workloads
“It destroyed Intel's CPUs in many measure of performance for server workloads.”
Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “Windows XP 2002 for the Itanium: Unbridled rage” “the speedup was almost 10x”
Comment from 9 Aug 2026 in “The Alpha 21264 CPU: NT's Greatest RISC (1998)” Replaced Sun servers entirely
“the 64-bit AMD Opteron servers with Linux offered an alternative that crushed any kind of SPARC CPU with Solaris”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Fujitsu launches made-in-Japan next-generation CPU FUJITSU-MONAKA” “We bought them immediately and never bought another Sun.”
Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “What Sun got wrong”
Other server CPUs people recommend
The four most recommended other server CPUs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD EPYC | 26 | 3 | 90% | 11 | — | Approved |
| AWS Graviton | 16 | 7 | 70% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Intel Xeon | 14 | 11 | 56% | 4 | 15 yrs3 owners | — |
| Nvidia Vera CPU | 11 | 7 | 61% | 6 | — | — |
| AMD OpteronThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
All 8 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“We bought them immediately and never bought another Sun.”
“accelerated dramatically the work in comparison with the traditional Sun servers”
“the 64-bit AMD Opteron servers with Linux offered an alternative that crushed any kind of SPARC CPU with Solaris”
“the speedup was almost 10x”
“much faster and much cheaper than the Sun servers”
“Opteron was immensely better than the UltraSPARC CPUs used in the Sun servers.”
“It destroyed Intel's CPUs in many measure of performance for server workloads.”
“It was a nice piece of hardware.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.