opteron vs xeon quad cpu boxes

Hi,

we are looking at a quad-cpu server for our bioinformatics apps like 
multithreaded clustalw, blast and some in-house multithreaded application 
I developed over time.

I noticed that I can get a basic 8GB RAM 4xOpteron 848 with a RAID 
controller and a couple of hdds for close to $17,000. At the same time it 
looks like I can get a 4xXeon MP 2.7Ghz with the same ram/hdd 
configuration for close to the same price.

Any insights on the performance of the Opteron quad boxes? How do they 
compare to their 32-bit counterparts like Xeon MPs? Have they proven 
suitable for your bioinformatics environment?

Any advice would be valuable!

Thanks,
Ognen

--
Ognen Duzlevski
Digital Biology Laboratory
302 North Engineering Building
University of Missouri-Columbia
(573) 882-5978