Ohio computer components reseller Provantage accidentally let slip pricing information for the forthcoming "Magny-Cours" eight- and 12-core Opteron 6100 series of processors for two- and four-socket boxes.

The Opteron 6100s, as El Reg readers well know, are due to be launched on March 29, to be followed up the next day by Intel's high-end "Nehalem-EX" Xeon 7500 companions to the just announced "Westmere-EP" Xeon 5600s, for two-socket boxes.

Once the six- and eight-core Opteron 4100 chips are announced by AMD some time in the second quarter, the x64 refresh cycle will be complete and AMD and Intel and their server partners can hunker down to a proper price war.

Earlier this week, if you went to the Provantage site and searched for Opteron X12, you would see a bunch of chips running at between 1.7 GHz and 2.4 GHz, with wattages ranging from 65 to 105 watts, and prices ranging from $293 to $1,491. Provantage quickly removed the data from its website, but not before a few journos and bloggers saw it.

A hat-tip to the IDG News Service, which broke the Opteron 6100 pricing story here. ®