If cost is not a concern then you are better off the newest Intel CPUs. They use less heat, less power and have way better single threaded performance. Very few tasks can load up 8 or 16 cores to 100% CPU load. Even in those tasks which are highly threaded, the (high end) Intel CPUs do better.
If you want a Xeon, then something from the E5-26xx series would be good.
If you wanted and Opteron then the Opteron 62xx series.
I can't see any reason to pick the Opteron except it is cheaper than the high end Intel CPUs.
However an Core i7-3930K would be a cheaper solution than any of these options. Maybe 25% of the cost of a E5-2690 for 80% of the performance.
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