As has been the case since it first confirmed "Nocona," Intel played down the 64-bitness of the processor. The ability to address more memory is just one feature along with a new chipset, 800MHz front side bus, PCI Express, SSE3 and DDR 2 memory...
Intel decided to play down the 64-bit part of the new Xeon for obvious reasons. The release of Opteron many moons ago placed Intel in the rare position of following its main rival. True enough, neither a software "ecosystem" or even a 64-bit version of Windows for either Xeon or Opteron is ready yet, which makes Intel's delay to the technology understandable. But it did allow AMD to steal the spotlight for some time and more importantly allowed AMD to become an acceptable word in the data center. If you have doubts, see HP - Intel's largest customer and biggest Itanium backer - who is selling loads of Opteron gear...