I happened upon the screenshot below, showing a stress test in progress against a Windows machine with 64 quad-core CPUs (which gives you 256 cores). This requires Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition, along with SQL Server 2008 R2.  As Microsoft puts it:

“SQL Server 2008 R2 helps you take advantage of the latest hardware technology advancements and enables high scalability building on top of industry-standard hardware for great total cost of ownership. Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 working in concert enable customers to scale up to 256 logical processors.”

Who says Windows (and SQL Server 2008 R2) cannot do big iron?

That sort of makes my test system look pathetic…