AMD Bulldozer slower than Phenom II X6?

Looks like Intel is going to bulldoze all over AMD once again. The launch of AMD's Phenom was plagued by the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) bug, and unfortunately it seems that Bulldozer won't be phenomenal either. Dutch tech site Hardware.info heard at Computex that the desktop chips have been delayed because AMD is desperately trying to improve the performance of the Bulldozer core.

According to two anonymous sources, the current eight-core Bulldozer engineering samples are quite a disappointment because they are slower than AMD's six-core Phenom II X6 1100T.

The launch date of Bulldozer is unknown, it was expected around this time of year but the latest rumors talk about an August or September launch. A similar tale can be read at X-bit Labs, they also heard that Bulldozer needs a new stepping because current silicon is unable to deliver truly high speeds.

The currently available B0 and B1 stepping Zambezi/Bulldozer processors can function at around 2.50GHz/3.50GHz (nominal/turbo) clock-speeds and at such frequency they cannot deliver performance AMD considers competitive, a person with knowledge of the situation said on Monday. As a consequence, AMD needs to tune the design of the processor and create B2 stepping of the chip with better clock-speed potential amid similar thermal design power (TDP), which will take several months to complete. Therefore, the Sunnyvale, California-based chip designer will release its highly-anticipated Bulldozer processors for desktops in September, not in June, as planned.