And why is this a strong counterpoint? You're basically saying since it's never been done before there it can't ever happen which is surely silly. What's the GPU clock in Kaveri? Do we know yet?
Had you bothered to actually my posts before replying you'd see there are reasons laid out for you. Stop asserting things and start reading what I've taken the liberty of typing up please.
'Most reasonable' in what sense? Your logic here
begins with an assumption...
...the same math done by MS's marketing team
almost a decade ago. That is what you are using as justification for dismissing what Nick Baker said? I'm not sure it's reasonable to hold Nick Baker accountable for what Major Nelson (a marketing guy) claimed in 2005.
I agree it's a different setup, but why conclude that therefore it's out of reach?
I'd argue that murmurs of machines running hot and poor yields would support my hypothesis of increase clocks rather than lower clocks. I can see the opposite conclusion too; namely that they lowered clocks in response to heating issues...but that would beg the question of where those heating issues came from the in the first place. Hence I find my hypothesis more likely.
Ah, so because someone at working for MS's PR department claimed soemthing almost a decade ago we should therefore assume that during aa hardware and architecture panel their 'dinstinguished engineer' Nick Baker infused his long winded, highly detailed technical discussion with some loose lipped casual, vague talk of bandwidth? Did you actually watch that part? It's anything but a throw away line.
I'm not assuming *anything*. I'm simply not dismissing what Nick Baker said during the panel and I have a host of supportive reasons that point towards the possibility of clock increases. Do you not understand what constitutes the difference between an assumption and a speculative conclusion?
And btw I don't disagree about that sort of thing bringing with it lower yields and machines running hotter, but additional cooling is a stretch. Not sure how much engineering experience you have but I have plenty and I can promise you that anytime engineers are working on a competitive project like this they leave wiggle room in the areas where they feel they can adjust later on if need be. There is already built in wiggle room for these machines thermodynamically. They already will have some give in that area. So I don't agree that just because clocks go up in my described scenario therefore we automatically have to totally retool the cooling system or even just more fans, etc. That's far from a given.
That said, we have heard murmurs about the machine's running hot and yield issues. We also hear that they axed the subsidized sku model for launch. Perhaps they decided bad yields meant low launch shipments which encouraged them to just axe that sku as they will sell out regardless? It's possible, no? Add to that the other stuff I noted too...