What about memory-management issues

I have been running VERY memory hungry multithreaded apps on dual-socket, dual-core opteron based machines (4 cores total). These apps will use 7.9GB of memory and run for a few minutes with a 399% processor load according to top. I have also had some stabs at running the same on Core Duo, Pentium D, Core 2 Duo machines and a recent dual core Xeon. My results show better scaling with the AMD parts than the Intels, probably due to better memory handling. With quad cores, these memory contention issues get worse, because the cores on one chip all access memory through a single bus/link. Plugging in massive caches helps a bit, but does not solve the problem. I would be very curious to see the results of such memory hungry multithreaded apps on both Barcelona and the Clovertowns before making any definite judgement on my needs. I'm quite happy with the competition between AMD and Intel: as a consumer I can just sit back and pick whichever chip is best at the given time.