The Phoronix benchmarks, like most others, suggest that the only area where Bulldozer appears at all competent is HPC. To describe this as niche is an understatement.

a) I agree it remains unclear how much difference the SSD makes. That's why I don't think it's a useful demonstration of Bulldozer's performance _even though AMD is citing it as such_. b) Yes, I do. That 1/3 more cores gives 1/3 more performance in a test that scales almost perfectly means that the per-core performance has stood still. A 32 nm K10.5 chip with 1/3 more cores would perform just as well, cost less to build, use less power, and eliminate the performance regressions. So what is the point of Bulldozer? c) No, it reinforces the "Bulldozer performs no better than a scaled up K10.5 system would and hence is pointless" narrative. d) @_@ e) No. I don't have a half million dollars of equipment just lying around so that I can run TPC-C (etc.) myself.