Replies to post #4805 on AMD strictly moderated (AMD)

[chipdesigner]

Bingo, *average* latency will be better than K8, even as latency *to main memory* will be worse.

[wbmw]

Re: Conroe has a much bigger cache which is a proxy for the IMC.
Conroe is known to have more substantial microarchitectural
improvements over its predecessors as well.

It's funny that you guys are willing to explain a 60% discrepancy by claiming it has to do with the cache, rather than the more obvious explanation that the IMC does not contribute 30% to performance, but rather the micro-architectural enhancements of the K8 do. Otherwise, you would expect the Xeon MP with 8M of cache to be a much stronger competitor to Opteron. But it's not.