Quote Originally Posted by JumpingJack View Post
The BIOS argument is a decent one, but typically BIOS code does not interact to produce a computational result... it provides very low level IO code, most of which OSes simply ignore today. Though it could be that there are initializations for various functions that are not occuring correcty and such, but I have never really experienced a BIOS update, even a buggy one, to affect performance that much.

Nonetheless, there is way way too much contradictory information or conjecture. Theo seems to think it is a monster, Hector Ruiz is downplaying the significance, Raul is certain of great performance, AMD has conceded single thread perfomance to Intel in various press statements.... so it is hard to know what to make of this.
we do not really know much about that rig that was benched. only speculations.
but the bad bios argument seems it could be true.

i tell you, once i flashed my mobo with new bios, everything looks good, no errors etc. yet, with exactly the same settings, mem bandwith was whole 2GB less than with older one. sPi went up 5sec. everything was slow. i reflashed the bios twice, same doggy result.
went back to older bios and it was how it should be.

sometimes, especily if you dont have good background, or "base score", you cant tell whether the bios is good or bad one....