AMD "Piledriver" refresh of Zambezi - info, speculations, test, fans

[TESKATLIPOKA]

-Boris-

Fine, we use your die-size estimates, you do have a point there. So we agree that Thuban is more like 50% effective per mm². Higher single thread performance and smaller size making more cores possible for better multithread performance is a winner in my eyes.

I don't agree about perf/mm2
I made new calculations and it ended with
6C Thuban cache 9MB 32nm 232mm2
4M/8C BD cache 16MB 32nm 315mm2
Thats 36% difference in die size but BD is 8% faster.
The thing is you are talking about the whole chip and I think you know cache doesn't give nowhere near as much performance as the size it occupies.
Second, if you want to compare it that badly compare just the cores vs modules it would be more accurate. 1M/2C is more or less equal to 2C Llano ~ 2 Deneb cores in size.
K10 can have better perf/mm2 actually I think it has but nowhere near as much as you want(think).

Now that's a straw man! I said THUBAN with Llanos IPC-improvements and with BD's or Llanos IMC. That's not the same thing. The GPU is defining Llano more than some IPC improvements. A Thuban with some IPC-improvements is not a Llano.

what you are doing is trying to convince us that Thuban with Llano IMC and Llano Improvements is not Llano just because it doesn't have the IGP, you can call It Thuban 2 if you prefer I don't care because its not important and BTW I clearly wrote 6C Llano without IGP and not deactivated so you had enough time to comprehend what I meant in my original post and that part wasn't even important compared to the rest.

But I understand it's tempting to call it a Llano since Llanos integration of NB has made it very hard to overclock, so it's tempting to make my suggestion look bad by comparing it with crippled products.

Yeah its really tempting and unfair to call a 6 core chip with Llano cores and IMC as Llano
Your point about OC is pointless because I never said anything about that, I was always comparing on default frequency.

I've said Thuban many times during this discussion, and Deneb is an older and less performing version of Phenom II. You can't just use a product with lesser performance when we are talking about how capable a line up is. It's like saying Fords are faster than Ferraris just because Fords fastest car is faster than Ferraris worst. And that's definitely a straw man argument. Let us compare the best of Phenom II to the best of Bulldozer!

For your information Deneb and Thuban have the same core and IMC, everything is the same, L1,L2 cache per core even L3 cache, the only difference is Thuban has 2 more cores with L2 cache nothing more.
BTW I still don't know what's your problem. Did I compare 4M BD versus 6C Thuban? yes I did, but I had the audacity to include the highest(best) Deneb and even compare lower BD models to Llano(IGP was powergated) because they are on the same process. The best thing would have been if I also compared Deneb vs FX4100 (4threads vs 4threads) and Thuban vs FX6100(6threads vs 6threads).

And I still see no reason why Phenom II would have lower frequencies on 32nm. Llano shows that 32nm brings a big drop in power consumption. Why would the frequencies be worse? We can't tell until we have an truly unlocked Llano, and even then we still don't know if Llano suffers from tradeoffs from being coupled with a GPU not made for the same type of process.

I will tell you one last time and you don't need an unlocked Llano.

4C 32nm Llano 2.9Ghz TDP 100W (has higher power draw than FX4100 with TDP 95W while the IGP is power-gated so the TDP 100W should be correct for CPU)
4C 45nm Phenom II X4 B99(Deneb) 3.3Ghz TDP 95W (+400Mhz)
4C 45nm Deneb 3.7Ghz TDP 125W (+800Mhz)
TDP 95->125W is 400Mhz for +30W in TDP
So increasing TDP to 130W would mean 3.3Ghz Llano(+400mhz), the difference is still 400Mhz between the older and current process on the same architecture.

I don't think IGP has a noticeable impact on frequency, because if it had then already produced ES Trinity with bigger IGP than Llano wouldn't have default +200Mhz(turbo +300Mhz) than FX 4100 on the same process and I wouldn't be surprised if it's not the final frequency during launch.