I'm not really familiar with CPUs, but I got a hyperthreaded, quad core Xeon with 24 GB RAM, 750 2xRAID1 disks and 10 TB bandwidth from Hetzner for 60 euros a month... Isn't that comparable to what you mention, apart from being many times cheaper?
http://ark.intel.com/compare/47920,37147
The Softlayer server is a Xeon, the Hetzner is a desktop grade processor.
Key differences for me
* Cache
* QPI (especially in a 2P config that makes a difference)
* Max TDP ... that's a HUGE one.
* ECC memory. See http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2012/02/26/ObservationsOnEr... for why this is important
So, you're not comparing apples to apples