I see he specs state 1ghz snapdragon; I thought the thunderbolt had the newer Adreno GPU but that typically ships with the 800MHz snapdragon... so is the CPU/GPU an exact copy of the evo inside?
No. The CPU and GPU are both 2nd gen here compared to the EVO's 1st gen. This has the Adreno 205 whereas the EVO had the 200. The 220 will come out shortly for use with dual-core phones.