AMD already offers more cores. Most Intel chips are either 4 or 6 with hyper threading which isn't actually an X86 integer core.
Surely Intel's single core IPC offering is nice. But like any hardware there's ups and downs. Look at AMD for example. You can run that bus clock from 200 to 350 still. Gives more options to explore different tweaks to the system. And the price point.
Hope you stick around a bit. When a ZEN lands at my house, I'll be de-lidding it. It would be grand to get to it before any one else and we can have a look under the hood. If there are different options available such as quad then octacore, then I'll likely do both to see if a quad looks similar like the FX do. It'll be interesting.
F@H - I've done quite a bit of this in the past. But the electric bill didn't agree after time. And then there's only a score. I get a number at the end of the day. Pretty much that's all it is. It became a waste of HW, time and money. Even though for a good cause, it's a very slow process to find results. But still was fun to be on a team and what not.
I don't think AMD is looking to "beat" Intel. But what's really neat with AMD is that they try something new when they release something big. Unique. Different. Last time with FX processors, the added super long pipelines gave the ability to smash world records in sheer clock speed. Nothing to turn a cheek to like most Intel guys do. A gratifying feeling running LN2 and benching in the 7ghz area and higher ya know?
