a longer pipeline (hence a lower IPC)
Where do you come off with that, seriously?
There is NO IPC lost technically, when moving to a higher pipeline, Fat. Why on earth would it, if the final execution stage STILL gets out the same IPC? Yes there is chance of misprediction and that could put some penalty, but the Hammer is only 2 stages longer, and they are not split, but new stages, so I fail to see why you are still thinking "lower IPC" when it comes to pipeline size. imgod2u can vouch for that, he's the one who cleared up that myth and he's willfully right.
Besides, the IPC of the Opteron at 2GHZ is 60% higher than AthlonXP, after some calculating and extrapolating between a higher and lower clock speed.
In fact it's even more questionable when they said they used PC2700, but did not say DUAL channel PC2700. Makes you wonder if that wasn't a CH.
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