BAD HARDWARE WEEK

AMD's 3GHz K10 to break 30,000 3DMark06

Report seems plausible, but you will have to wait till 3Ghz Barcelona.
By the way, after the test someone has broken into tester car and had stolen all of its equipment.
Probably some nervous AMD fan. Or Intel's? . Who would know.
To me, the most intriguing part of the report is the use of 32 bit Win Me as the underlaying OS. You know WIn is much lighter OS, much less system interrupts and consequently much better benchmarks (that is why I still work on Win98 !).
3Dmark06 test requires XP. And minimum clock size of 2,5 Ghz.
Does it mean that before overclock single cored AgenaFX Barcelona has run at its real clock?.
When running at that 2.5GHz, the 3DMark06 score ended at 23.768. In that case 20% overclock seems quite normal under ordinary (non LN based) applied system cooling methods. However, seems that benchmark value, after overclock, jumped more than should be expected for the given overclock value. Instead just opposite, as might be expected under normal test conditions. That make me a bit suspitious on overall tester findings. But, it is up to you, to accept them or reject.

Now, lets compare Barcelona SDMark06 with Intel's Barcelona killers speeds :

	Core 2 Extreme QX6800	Penryn Quad	Penryn Duo
Codename	Kentsfield	Yorkfield	Wolfdale
Clock Speed	2.93GHz	3.33GHz	3.33GHz
Process	65nm	45nm	45nm
Cores	4	4	2
Total L2 Cache	8MB	12MB	6MB
Front Side Bus	1,066MHz	1,333MHz	1,333MHz
3DMark06 CPU	4,047	4,944	3,068
3DMark06 Overall	11,252	11,969	11,020
Mainconcept H.264 (sec)	89.05	72.75	119.22
Cinebench 10	10,551	12,900	7,061
Cinebench 9.5	1,541	1,917	1,125
Half-Life 2 Lost Coast (fps)	153.14	213.03	206.06
Divx 6.6 (sec)	38	18	22

In the end, lets see 3DMark06 on AMD X2 4400+ @ 2700mhz :


And A64 FX 55 @ 2600 Mhz:


And conclusion. The Inq staff add into the test system TWO high end GC. That pushed overall 3Dmark06 up to its limits. Processor itself can't be much better than it is at Intel. Laugh for Win Me ultimate gaming. Applause for >10X better 3Dmark06 result than on A64 FX-55. Impressive gaming performance advancement in only 3 years.
Think about your next cars 10 times faster. That might be only jet airplane. Congrats for NEW World record, stolen from Intel's LN cooled 5,1 Ghz overclock. Even less overclocked than Intel performance stars, K10h seems better. If proved so, that is my final conclusion. But, wait a bit to ensure youself. Oherwise, 2X improvement is hard or impossible to get.