SB-E 3690X benchmarked by THG,Bulldozer controversy continues

Looks like THG got a pre-production SB-E system and run some tests on it. Nothing spectacular compered to 990x/980x,around 10% faster . Still pretty good improvement for a same core count part.

On the other hand ,controversy regarding Zambezi (desktop Bulldozer part) continues. We have some new data that points at in between 2500K and 2600K multithread performance and abysmal single thread performance. Nothing is final yet,but don't expect some sort of SB killer from Zambezi. Even in its strongest performance department which is multithread performance,it looks it will even fail to beat X6 Thuban by a decent margin. Performance is indeed just a little better,if better at all. Price is still hard to figure out. AMD plans to charge 250$ ,approximately, for the FX8150. Unless they are just counting on more OC headroom,nothing else warrants this higher price than existing X6 1100T. This is indeed kind of a let down. It turns out that 4 module part is closer to 4 core part with SMT in performance than to a 8 or even 6 core part. Performance,especially in floating point applications is all over the place,ranging to much slower (linpack) to even("8C" FX @ 3.6Ghz vs 1100T in C11.5) to slightly faster (wprime) . This uncertainty when it comes to performance kind of defeats the whole module concept because AMD touted it as much more consistent performance uplift versus intel's SMT approach. As it turns out,it is not so different after all... Good thing about Zambezi is that it will at least clock high. Some reports point to 4.8Ghz as "normal" overclock across 4 modules,on air.

update: I've just read on XS(thanks chew*) that Zambezi will have even higher OC potential than 4.8Ghz. On air(stock cooling),supposedly one can expect 5+Ghz - regular daily use and benchmarking . By chew*:

I think that any info other than what I or AMD have personally offered which is not much if any can be discarded until further notice.

There are still peices to the puzzle missing that I can assure you 99.9% don't have yet regarding CPU rev and bios support and agesa.

To sum up BD facts

BD is physically a 4 core 8 thread part.

It has no coldbug

Samples can bench at 5+ on stock cooler, 6+ on phase change and 8.4 on lhe.

And most important of all SATA works

Like i said before the joke is on that guy we won't name, he was sent intentionally quite possilby the worst chip ever produced. 6.4 on ln2,
or he needs to learn how to OC, 6.4 is my validation speed on phase change......he who laughs last laughs best............. 

So with phase change 6+Ghz and with LN2 7+ Ghz and maybe 8Ghz. For water cooling ,I suppose 5.5Ghz is not out of the realm of possibility. So with this latest information in mind ( which is very reliable), Zambezi may be pretty competitive with OCed SB 2600K. Since 2600K reaches around 4.5Ghz-4.8Ghz on good air cooling,Zambezi will have some frequency potential under similar conditions. This may equate to better performance in MT applications for those who actually use their overclocked machines for something useful .