you'll get a lot more overclock out of the LV xeons then you will the opterons... especially if you do all that pin modding that everyone does with the LVs and the PC-DL. The opterons though will do 64bit and unless you get low voltage nocona or galatian xeons you're out of luck... I've owned a lot of xeons and the overclocking is a lot better than the opterons (which I've also owned). The performance Ghz to Ghz the opteron will when hands down though...