Just when you expect prices for the the soon to be outdated opterons to go down, they take an opposite approach.  DDR2 has also an increase in pricing.  The AMD dual core CPUs are taking a dive in prices in about 30-20 dollars on some on-line retailers.  The new AMD socket is coming out soon and expect prices for 939 to go down, but the new socket type is going to start at 1,000 dollars for CPUs.