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As you can see, the 2 GHz Opteron - if it were to be released today - would by far be the fastest processor in integer intensive tasks. The improved branch predictor and lower latency of the memory subsystem are probably the reasons why the 2 GHz Opteron is no less than 29% faster than a 2.25 GHz Athlon. We speculate that the 5.3 GB/s bandwidth is the main reason why the 2 GHz K7 FPU is now able to beat the Pentium 4 at 2.8 GHz, something it couldn't do in the Athlon XP.

AMD claims that the 2 GHz Opteron is real silicon, and that samples are available today. In that case, 2 GHz is nothing short of impressive, even if the Athlon already reaches 2.25 GHz. A 1 MB L2-cache CPU which is targeted at the server and workstation market will always run at slower clockspeeds than a desktop CPU, as it has to meet "long term reliability" expectations and requirements. Server CPU have stay alive for a much longer time.
Long term reliability is proportional to temperature and voltage, among other things. Within a single CPU, this means that the hottest parts are the least reliable. Most reliability calculations and estimations are based on the worst part of the CPU. So clockspeeds tend to be lower to meet reliability requirements.