Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[mas]

It is clear that 1.8Ghz no-matter-what-L2 will not cut it

You keep repeating this like it's the ultimate truth but without any factual backup. We have datapoints now let's do some approximate estimations for a 2 * 1.8 GHz 512KB part, i.e. a theoretical X2 3400+, assuming the difference between it and the 2 GHz 3800+ is the same as that between the 3800+ and 2.2 GHz 4200+. Starting from page 6, ignoring the synthetics, we would get the following showing the leader first.

DivX 5.21
---------
1.8 GHz X2 3400+ = 64
2.0 GHz Yonah = 57.5


Windows Media Video Encoding 9
------------------------------
1.8 GHz X2 3400+ = 3.15
2.0 GHz Yonah = 3.08


Doom 3
------
2.0 GHz Yonah = 95.5
1.8 GHz X2 3400+ = 93.2


Battlefield 2
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1.8 GHz X2 3400+ = 103.4
2.0 GHz Yonah = 103.3


Unreal Tournament 2004
----------------------
2.0 GHz Yonah = 55.1
1.8 GHz X2 3400+ = 51.5


3dsmax6 - specapc
-----------------
2.0 GHz Yonah = 2.29
1.8 GHz X2 3400+ = 2.07

I make that 3-3 and that's not including the undoubted boost that DDR2 will give to X2. The 2 * 1.8 GHz 1MB 3600+ part could be positioned against the 2.16 GHz Yonah, so what exactly is the problem here also considering that X2 will have faster 64-bit versions of most software too ?