Wbmw, I stated that I believe K8L will outperform NGA. I meant to say 'somewhat' after that sentence. This is close to your statement that you think they'll be close. You didn't factor in IMC in your post which I think is relevant considering AMD still has that as an advantage if most features are more or less on par with NGA. Everything else being equal the IMC and to a lesser extent the xbar will let K8L outperform first gen NGA. Just my 2c ofcourse.
Couple of minor points:
- Shared L3 is I think quite significant for QC, because the L2's aren't shared.
- re: 16. New instructions: big whoop. AMD has had little success with new instructions outside of x64. I think MS will continue to strive for a unified instruction set, meaning that when AMD introduces new instructions they might well have asked and gained the support of MS.
re: The other "sounds" you are hearing are from people who are still in denial that Core 2 will unseat the current K8 from its performance crown. So to them, it's obvious that K8L will be a lot faster.
I take issue with that. Those people some of them who post at RWT, some at Aces, all long believe NGA will outperform K8. It's no use making accusations without facts.
BTW most of these guys now think that NGA's lead will only last till K8L. This is both in line with what you are saying as well as what I am saying.
re: In fact, Intel is also vulnerable here if they don't get their platform approach to work. So IMO, they have to find ways where AMD can't follow, due to the fundamental lack of a means to influence their 3rd party component vendors to support features as fast as Intel can do internally.
Intel's platform approach isn't that difficult to copy in general terms. I don't see how you come to the conclusion that AMD can't follow in general terms considering their partnerships with nVidia/ATI. From another angle: I don't see the first new platform product VIIV being a killer product. Yes Intel might sell more chipsets but who cares as long as those chipsets aren't better than what nVidia/ATI make for AMD platforms?
Regards,
Rink
