JJ,that explanation makes the most sense ,but it would imply(like you said) that L3 is a major bottleneck for K10,which is unlikely.It can make a big difference if NB is ran at the same as core speeds,but we need more tests to verify this.K10 looks and performs quite well,but looking at AMD section and some problems people have with early boards/BIOSes,it seems as the whole platform is still a diamond in a rough(problems with changing basic stuff in BIOS for instance).