I disagree, you're logic is missing one very key fact. Integer performance is far more important than FP for most applications, if it wasn't everyone would be using k10.5s instead of core 2 quads (nehalem is a different beast).
Each bulldozer modules has 2 integer "cores" that are 4 issue. k10.5 has 3 issue integer. That makes a world of a difference, so bulldozer should have a sizeable increase in single threaded performance, I believe that latest number was something around ~35%. If you take into account that increase, then the 80% increase from the second module will surpass the efficiency of two physical k10.5 cores (.8*1.35+1.35=2.43). Even if you took 20% increase, which is probably more realistic to be honest, you still get .8*1.2+1.2=2.16, thus on average 1 bulldozer module will not only be 20% faster than 2 k10.5 cores for single threaded tasks, but also 8% faster for multithreaded. If you expand that to 2 modules, then you see an average of 16% increase over a k10.5 quadcore for multithreaded tasks, which quite frankly is a very nice increase.
It's simple math really. This is the same reason why core 2 duo was still faster than k10, even though k10 spanked it in FP. k10 had only 3 issue integer logic to core 2's 4.
Bookmarks