AMD strictly moderated (AMD)

[jhalada]

wbmw,

I know this, but while some guys get very excited about new AMD mini steppings, they rarely offer huge performance gains. More like small power savings or +1 performance bins, not >20% performance boosts that would allow a rev F part to compete with Conroe.

Agreed.

I don't expect 20% gain from one functional stepping to another (well, I expect nearly no performance change, and maybe only a +1 bin or power savings, as you pointed out), but there appears to be something fishy with the DDR2 memory controller on the steppings that were tested, pointing to less than full functionality (BW tests) - which can possibly change between steppings, resulting in performance increase of the subset of apps that are sensitive to bandwidth.

Joe