AMD Zambezi news, info, fans !

[dess]

nightmare, but not unlikely

I hope we will all be waken up 3 days later with a big "Phew!"...

Do you have access to the benches under NDA yet?

Yes?

...kind of anti-competitive don't you think? A bit of a Monopoly, don't you think?

Definitely. And there is more to it: it's againt the interests of the whole industry.
That's why I for one won't go for SB even if BD is worse.

Can I sincerely ask how are these (i7 numbers) possible with stock ram frequency? I mean, top bandwidth for DDR3-1600 (the max. that SB officially supports) 12800 MB/s... Even with DDR3-1866 you get 14933...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR3

AMD wants to keep Intel in the dark, and have shown they're capable of keeping a secret (Eyefinity, RV770 shader count)

It was surely the case until now. But, if there is anything that can help BD, I don't think they're holding it back intentionally, anymore. Look what I've wrote about it earlier... Perhaps they're still fiddling with AGESA to find some nasty bugs, or something... But, the management said no more delays, no matter if they're able to find a solution before lanuchday or not. I don't think it will come in time, but perhaps somewhat later.

Why BD chip is so big in the first place?

BD surely should be capable of better performance to justify it's size.
Although, cachesizes also have a role:
SB: 1 MB L2 + 8 MB L3 = 9 MB total
BD: 8 MB L2 + 8 MB L3 = 16 MB total

Because if it is actually worse, then it makes no sense at all to release it.

O.C. could justify it... That way you can top K10.x performance.
Don't forget FX is not a mainstream productline... It's Black Edition, meant for O.C.
Probably it wasn't the original plan, though.