This thread has a lot of info, and destroying it with useless posts is like set fire on a library lol
I trully believe in this AMD archtecture, as we say here in Brazil, "has some fuel to burn". It clearly is a step ahead its time, but it IPC MUST be improved.
Even with worse IPC, the multi thread scales so well that it matches an Hyper-Threaded Ivy bridge. Imagine this thing with Sandy Bridge IPC... It would destroy anything.
the architecture is very good actually and very future proof, the only 2 downsides that need to be fixed is ipc for single thread, and multithread is excellent but still has more room for improvements. amd is targetting for perfect scaling with having dedicated decoders, so that is a 20% increase in multithread performance considering now scaling is around 80%
and add to that 20% ipc increase and you got urself a monster
I have been going through reviews lately and checking the multi thread reviews on the fx4300, and everytime you add 20% for ipc and another 20% for scaling you get yourself i5 2500k performance with the stock 4300 clocks, but then you also have the clock advantage to play with which amd has the upper hand on right now
so 20% IPC puts amd back in the game against ivy bridge, single thread would still be a bit lower, but then fx4000 would go against i5s, fx6000 against i7s, and fx8000 would then be competing with the six core intel extremes.
however if steamroller is what the rumors are saying with up to 45% improvements based on simulation, i will assume that is 20% better multicore scaling + 25% better ipc, that would sure would be competitive with haswell, again probably not in single thread, but if multithread is that good it will make up for it, aslong as the gap in single thread isnt as big as it is now