[font=Verdana, Tahoma,]Toss a single-threaded app at the processor, though, and it underperforms Intel's three-year-old Core i7-920 running at its stock 2.66 GHz. AMD’s architects say they shot to maintain IPC and ramp up clock rate, but something clearly went wrong along the way.[/font]
[font=Verdana, Tahoma,]Ironically, consistent, scalable performance is one of the attributes that AMD claims it gets from its Bulldozer module. The issue we see over and over, though, is that it relies on software able to exploit scalability in order to compete. When it doesn’t get what it wants, performance steps back relative to the previous generation. As a result, even though AMD implements a more advanced version of Turbo Core to help improve single-threaded performance, the difference between what you get in lightly- and heavily-threaded [/font][font=inherit !important][font=inherit !important]applications[/font][/font][font=Verdana, Tahoma,] is anything but consistent.[/font]