Quote Originally Posted by informal View Post
So you re pretty sure Bulldozer will be slower than Thuban per core? And you are pretty sure you have final platform in your hands? If this is true then the design is truly broken is some way. Still doesn't make any sense to me. AMD knew the perf. level of Nehalem by middle of 2008 probably. They knew intel will just go up from there(Westmere,SB,SB-E,IB). And you are telling me that with all this foreknowledge they opted for Netburst-like design that is actually less competitive Vs Core generation 1 (Merom) while having only 15%-20% higher frequency potential than Family 10h ? This is ridiculous.
Was a P4 slower than a P3 ? Sometimes no, sometimes yes, depending on the software. The absolute performance is not something so important for AMD. The most important thing is money. And just money. Spending gazillions dollars in R&D to reach the performance of a CPU sold in very low quantities (and generating very low incomes) like the 990X is ridiculous. Bulldozer must solve two problems : 1/ Be able to gain performances (with frequency increases) at mid-term without spending more gazillions in another ľarch 2/ Compete with Intel *mainstream* CPUs (and not Extreme CPU) with a similar price/performance ratio.