wbmw - No, no measurements so to speak. But there is a lot of talk around of better OC peak results, many even at stock Vcore. And something is new about at least one A64, the OPN prefix has changed from ADA to ADV.(Enough different for BIOS mods) http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=78744
Even ol' Ed at overclockers suspects that AMD is doing something better, and he has not been an AMD fanboy by any stretch, and has a pretty close finger on the pulse of the OC community. http://www.overclockers.com/tips00867/ What To Do?
Gee, I don't know. :)
If you think this really is a case of cherry-picked processors/cherry-picked manufacturing, this may be the deal of a long time, even at inflated prices.
On the other hand, if you think AMD is just getting better at this, these improvements ought to spread to the whole processor line eventually, and/or AMD will put out more Opteron processors and retail prices will drop.
If you put a gun to my head, I'd say the latter, but I could be wrong.
What won't be wrong is all of us keeping a daily eye on this for a while. After all, it's the only game in town at the moment.
Ed
Granted, that doesn't mean they will introduce higher binned CPUs, but it does mean it'll be easier for them to do if they choose to than it was before.