Quote Originally Posted by -Boris- View Post
How do you know that it's the CPU and not the GPU that consumes the power budget? Besides, the silicon and design could be limited by the compatibility with the GPU.
First indication:

AMD A8-3850
Radeon HD 6550D
100W
4
2.9GHz
400
600MHz


AMD A8-3800
Radeon HD 6550D
65W
4
2.4/2.7GHz
400
600MHz


TDP significant lower while the only constant is gpu resources and clockspeeds.

second indications:

Reviews A8 3850. They include power figures. it is trading power draw blows with similar clocked 45nm x4 parts.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review/9
POwer draw figure cpu only is right where it is for gaming.



A Phenom II X6 at 32nm would be almost half the size of a Thuban if caches scales as good as cores when shrinking the process. BD must significantly outperform Thuban to justify this change in architecture.
Like i mentionned, that is the ideal situation, but the same is true for BD. Ideally on a good process BD would be far better than what they can do now with the current issues. Your hypotetical BD replacement with thuban cores in llano form would simply not do what on this process node what you would expect them to do.