Quote Originally Posted by qurious63ss View Post
They've been working on this for years and tape out had to of been at least over a year, I'm sure they know what their process can do by now. I think that it's too close to release to debate so I guess we will see.
The Barton processors originally came out with a max 'rating' of 2600. A year later that was up to 3200. I don't know how much you understand about semiconductor manufacturing, but the process tuning to get yields of certain parts is not the same as the chip design. So if they want to shift yield balance, they might do minor tweaks to increase yields of higher speed parts. If, on the other hand, they see a bigger volume need for low power chips, and there is a market for more than the bin split gives, they may adjust the process to increase those yields.

I think AMD is more interested in tuning the process for low power than for high speed.