AMD cuts to the core with 'Bulldozer' Opterons

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Since they are working within the same thermal envelope I don't see why it would be meaningless.

If bulldozer performs =12.5% better per core, then it scales to 16 cores just as good as MC scales from 1 to 12 cores..

If bulldozer performs <12.5% better per core, then it scales to 16 cores better than MC scales from 1 to 12 cores.

If bulldozer performs >12.5% better per core, then it scales to 16 cores worse than MC scales from 1 to 12 cores.

1.8 times performance is 90% scaling. 90% of 2 is 1.8.

And we don't know about scaling between modules.

The fact that the scaling within modules isn't the same as the scaling between modules complicates the situation a bit.

Is it just I who think this discussion is going somewhere?
I think that we are a bit closer to conclude that due to modules, bulldozer scale a bit worse per core than MC. And that Bulldozer might have quite high single threaded performance. I think that a module, with all it's shared parts, is better on single threads than a dualcore, but as AMDs states, scales a bit worse. It all comes down to how well BD scales between modules.

OK let me help you to understand.
DB module consists of two quasy-cores, not full cores. They have some shared hardware. You can consider them as hiperthreading. In other words, when one core performance is 100%, 2 cores have only 180%, not 200%.
Same for 8 modules: 800% when used single core within each module, and 1440% using 16 threads with 8 modules and taking ideal case 100% scaling of modules.

It is just very good hiperthreading compared to intel's one.

Regarding scaling of MC and BD you wrote above:
Scaling itself means performance increase when adding same cores. Say, Phenom II 8 cores to 12 cores while having same frequency/IPC per core.. So, again, forget your 12.5. That number is only for 16-threaded Interlagos compared to 12-core MC.
4 module BD will have significantly higher clock speed. Particularly in desktop processors having 125 watt TDP.
And you correctly figured out that single-threaded performance is going to be significantly higher that Phenom II. Actually I see it within 20%-25% considering what we already know.