AMD Bulldozer News and Discussion

[Piyush]

Exactly you just stole words from my mouth. If I am purchasing a PC for 100+K then I don't want to regret later that damn I should have waited for a few months.

dont act like a child bro
Its your money
you know when to spend and how to spend
going for 2600k will be a great idea for you coz you have waited pretty long enough
and you can wait for HD 7xxx series if you wanna get something from Red camp
coz your 5770 will still do a decent job until 7xxx arrives
got my point?

 

[gameranand]

Honestly I have waited just a couple of months maybe less. But man I hate waiting. Also I am not on my PC and I have some old games to finish.

 

[sukesh1090]

^^then buy 2600k.but the thing is just what you said, you spend a lot of money to build a comp and then you should not regret that you could have bought a better one.if you have 5770 then i guess you can manage it with it for a while.isn't it?then wait for 3 months.if there is no improvement in BD then go with 2600k.
@piyush,
brother you are right that in current conditions 2600k is best solution but i am seeing some future tech hidden in BD.the architecture design of the BD looks as it is the future of the processor world.

 

[MegaMind]

@gameranand, if u're up for a gaming build forget bulldozer...
I doubt BD can get past 2600K or even 2500K(in gaming) with future tweaks/patches...

The Bulldozer Review: AMD FX-8150 Tested - Gaming Performance

 

[vickybat]

Honestly I have waited just a couple of months maybe less. But man I hate waiting. Also I am not on my PC and I have some old games to finish.

Buddy my suggestion is to jump in for sandybridge for your rig. Believe me, current bulldozer will never be able to beat sb even with optimizations. If you check tomshardware review, they have tested sb and bulldozer in windows 8 pre-build and found that both were gaining some performance grounds.

Its not like fx8150 will decimate i7 2600k. I don't even think it can beat it. Now intel will launch another i7 2700k next month at same price point as 2600k. So it will get tougher and tougher. Next year, pile driver will go head on with not one but two tough contenders i.e sandybridge-E and ivybridge. So things are a bit sketchy for bulldozer currently.

Even tomshardware said to give bulldozer a wide berth and their choice of cpu's were i5 2500k and i7 2600k for an overall performance.

Talk about multithreaded apps, i7 2600k is also performing equally good as fx 8150 and even beats it in maximum scenarios. So i suggest to skip bulldozer and go for a sandybridge based rig.

 

[tkin]

this is what I'm thinking right now... why not they tested the cpu performance ( in dev stage ) with benchmarks ??

as many of you already told I'm considering it something like GTX480 for which we were able get the world fastest single gpu like GTX 580 - they will learn a lot from the this and the next cpu might be better than this,

in 2003 AMD Brought 64-Bit Computing to the Desktop and on the 10th Anniversary they might bring another wonder in desktop cpu world .

For me - I will wait for the next cpu release ( from both side )

I agree, one thing though, on performance side GTX480/470 beat the 5870 and 5850 black and blue across ALL benchmarks, at competitive prices too, the only issue was with power consumption and temps(never was an issue though, GTX480 is one of the most stable cards out there) but for BD, amd's pricing sucks and still it can't perform anywhere near sandy bridge.

Guys, one good news for AMD. Just checking the Anandtech review and found out something useful.
Anandtech also tested X264 encoding using a moddified Binary compiled to support AVX and AMD XOP instruction set and found out that in 2nd pass (which is the original pass where video gets encoded originally) FX 8150 is beating out i7 2600K.
This is really interesting because this example shows how an optimized application for AMD Bolldozer architecture can be benefited and has some serious performance boost. Hoping to see some patch releases to optimize Bulldozer's performance.

Check out here. In Windows 8 preview there is a performance improvement ranging from 4% to 10% over Windows 7. The reason given by AMD is that Windows 7 Scheduler is not aware about Bulldozer's module based architecture and places threads wherever it finds a core is free, rather than judging the state of the module. For example suppose at time t Bulldozer has two free modules (that is 4 cores to OS) and there are two threads waiting for OS to schedule them in CPU. Now if OS is not aware of the modules, it may assign both the threads to the cores of a single module, resulting low resource utiliztion, confilts etc as we all know two cores of a module are not totally independent, they share Fetch-Decode, FP unit and L2 cache.
Now if OS is aware of the modules then two threads can be assigned to two different modules. Here each of the threads gets two cores to finish execution of the instructions present in each of them, resulting faster execution.

Similarly it will also help to improve the Turbo core performance. For example if two threads, say Th1 and Th2 where Th2 is dependent upon Th1, are present, they should be assigned to the two cores of a single module to improve resource sharing and to cut down all the other modules to reach at the peak turbo speed when a single module as all the other module are not in used and can be cut from power.

In Windows 7 it is not possible all the time due to OS' inability to recognize the modules.
But if the OS is aware of a module and the cores inside it, those problems can be addressed and scheduling can be done in much organized manner.

I think this is intriguing, but one thing, BD IPC is abysmally low, cache read/write speeds are down the drain, memory speeds are not so good either, overall single core performance is bad, all of these problems are holding BD back, if they sort the cache thrashing problem with a new scheduler in win 8 that will increase performance but how much I doubt, in the meantime intel will just drop ivy bridge(by the time win 8 comes ivy will make it to the market and will be matured, late 2012), piledriver might be good but too little too late.

There are also other issues as well, for starters, even if GloFo screwed up, BD is a massive 2B transistors chip, and we all know what happen to big chips(Fermi), larger the chip, more power it will draw, even if GloFo fix the process power consumption will never match that of intels.

 

[vaibhav23]

Check the hardwareheaven.net review of BD.There BD is beating i7 2600k in all the three games tested.They have used a different motherboard other than the ASUS' Crosshair V Formula used in almost all other reviews
AMD FX-8150 Black Edition 8-Core Processor vs Core i7-2600K Review - Deus Ex Human Revolution

 

[gameranand]

I'll get my good old PC in mid november. Then I have some old games which runs damn good on that so I'll complete them which would take some months I guess. If by that time there would be no BD revisions then I'll go for the best available SB processor in my budget which would be 2700K if that is to be released next month. Whats your take on this ??

 

[skeletor]

Just setting the record straight.

Too many firsts for AMD and GlobalFoundaries here. Complete new architecture, HKMG, Gate First and a huge ~320 sq. mm die for the CPU. Recipe for disaster if you ask me. Second, Bulldozer was a server oriented design...already too late and they didn't bother fixing it for client properly. Heck, they would have been better off by releasing a hypothetical X8 on 32 nm. Die size would have been approxiamtely as big as Llano (~220 sq. mm) and with 8 cores and ~10% IPC improvement it would have skimmed past i7-2600k in multithreaded benchmarks at least.

Now, if you think GTX 480 beat HD 5870 black and blue, then well..you are deluding yourself. It was 10% faster with 1.6x the die size (530 sq. mm) and 1.6x the transistor count (~3 billion). Too many firsts for nVidia there too. Completely new architecture, new 40 nm manufacturing process with no previous experience and a huge monolithic die.

Both are/were equal disasters. And turn arounds happen too. HD 4850/70 and GTX 500 series. Just hope Bulldozer is fixable. Neither AMD nor nVidia are Intel - in terms of size, revenue and R&D. Also, in the ability of selling crappy products when you're being outperformed by your competitors.

atm what I'm more interested in seeing is, how does Bulldozer (Interlagos and Valencia) performs against Magny Cours and Xeons. Just to know whether this thing sucks for servers too or not.

and sharing just for the sake of it, have I found one positive review? AMD FX-8150 Black Edition 8-Core Processor vs Core i7-2600K Review - Introduction

Every other review has used Crosshair V Formula whereas this review has used ASRock 990FX Extreme4.

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

yeah thanks for link ico and sunny.
here its close to 2600k and beating it in games. so its simple, gaming performance will vary across different games..

AMD FX-8150 Black Edition 8-Core Processor vs Core i7-2600K Review - F1 2011
Benchmark Results: F1 2011 : AMD FX-8150 Review: From Bulldozer To Zambezi To FX
so using a radeon card and a different mobo helped it get past?

 

[skeletor]

I think BIOS upgrades with newer microcode will help in increasing the performance. Something is actually 'bugged.' It appears that the ASRock motherboard had a BIOS with an updated microcode. You see, every review apart from this has used Asus Crosshair V Formula.

 

[tkin]

Just setting the record straight.

Too many firsts for AMD and GlobalFoundaries here. Complete new architecture, HKMG, Gate First and a huge ~320 sq. mm die for the CPU. Recipe for disaster if you ask me. Second, Bulldozer was a server oriented design...already too late and they didn't bother fixing it for client properly. Heck, they would have been better off by releasing a hypothetical X8 on 32 nm. Die size would have been approxiamtely as big as Llano (~220 sq. mm) and with 8 cores and ~10% IPC improvement it would have skimmed past i7-2600k in multithreaded benchmarks at least.

Now, if you think GTX 480 beat HD 5870 black and blue, then well..you are deluding yourself. It was 10% faster with 1.6x the die size (530 sq. mm) and 1.6x the transistor count (~3 billion). Too many firsts for nVidia there too. Completely new architecture, new 40 nm manufacturing process with no previous experience and a huge monolithic die.

Both are/were equal disasters. And turn arounds happen too. HD 4850/70 and GTX 500 series. Just hope Bulldozer is fixable. Neither AMD nor nVidia are Intel - in terms of size, revenue and R&D. Also, in the ability of selling crappy products when you're being outperformed by your competitors.

atm what I'm more interested in seeing is, how does Bulldozer (Interlagos and Valencia) performs against Magny Cours and Xeons. Just to know whether this thing sucks for servers too or not.

and sharing just for the sake of it, have I found one positive review? AMD FX-8150 Black Edition 8-Core Processor vs Core i7-2600K Review - Introduction

Every other review has used Crosshair V Formula whereas this review has used ASRock 990FX Extreme4.

And apparently the ONLY website to do so, if it was really the mobo holding it back then AMD would have already opened their mouth, they seem suspiciously quite about it, the site cranked up the game settings/res so much that the CPU is no longer relevant, see their forum, looks like a lot of forum members agree with me: AMD FX-8150 Black Edition Processor Launch Review @ HH

Just setting the record straight.

Too many firsts for AMD and GlobalFoundaries here. Complete new architecture, HKMG, Gate First and a huge ~320 sq. mm die for the CPU. Recipe for disaster if you ask me. Second, Bulldozer was a server oriented design...already too late and they didn't bother fixing it for client properly. Heck, they would have been better off by releasing a hypothetical X8 on 32 nm. Die size would have been approxiamtely as big as Llano (~220 sq. mm) and with 8 cores and ~10% IPC improvement it would have skimmed past i7-2600k in multithreaded benchmarks at least.

Now, if you think GTX 480 beat HD 5870 black and blue, then well..you are deluding yourself. It was 10% faster with 1.6x the die size (530 sq. mm) and 1.6x the transistor count (~3 billion). Too many firsts for nVidia there too. Completely new architecture, new 40 nm manufacturing process with no previous experience and a huge monolithic die.

Both are/were equal disasters. And turn arounds happen too. HD 4850/70 and GTX 500 series. Just hope Bulldozer is fixable. Neither AMD nor nVidia are Intel - in terms of size, revenue and R&D. Also, in the ability of selling crappy products when you're being outperformed by your competitors.

atm what I'm more interested in seeing is, how does Bulldozer (Interlagos and Valencia) performs against Magny Cours and Xeons. Just to know whether this thing sucks for servers too or not.

and sharing just for the sake of it, have I found one positive review? AMD FX-8150 Black Edition 8-Core Processor vs Core i7-2600K Review - Introduction

Every other review has used Crosshair V Formula whereas this review has used ASRock 990FX Extreme4.

It varied between 10%-30%: AnandTech - Bench - GPU11

For the server side BD consumes too much power, servers are all about power efficiency, and otherwise I want to see a review in which BD server cores come close to intel in terms of power consumption.

 

[skeletor]

And apparently the ONLY website to do so, if it was really the mobo holding it back then AMD would have already opened their mouth, they seem suspiciously quite about it, the site cranked up the game settings/res so much that the CPU is no longer relevant, see their forum, looks like a lot of forum members agree with me: AMD FX-8150 Black Edition Processor Launch Review @ HH

Also look at the link Jas posted regarding F1 2011 FPS in Tom's hardware review and HH. Both at 1080p. Shared it just for the sake of it. Something odd. Nothing less and Nothing more.

It varied between 10%-30%: AnandTech - Bench - GPU11

That's how you derail a thread. Next someone posts a Tomshardware review link. Next Guru3D and everyone keeps on fighting over platform biased games.

Keyboard warriors.

But for the sake of it, I'll quote Anandtech's review itself.

The GTX 480 is between 10 and 15% faster than the Radeon 5870 depending on the resolution, giving it a comfortable lead over AMD’s best single-GPU card.

For the server side BD consumes too much power, servers are all about power efficiency, and otherwise I want to see a review in which BD server cores come close to intel in terms of power consumption.

For your kind information, power consumption is one of the last things enterprises worry about. All they care about is maximum throughput/performance from a limited rackspace and floorspace. If performance outdoes the running cost, data center people are happy. They aren't even going to overclock to get more performance. It is very very different from the client scenario and BD is going to be power efficient compared to AMD's previous gen as far as servers are concerned.

Cheaper OEM cost by $40 or so and 0.08 kWh less energy consumption is not a factor here.

 

[max_snyper]

IMO.....It would have been better if they would have done die shrink on the ph-II series and launched them now...Instead of Bulldozer. Directly shifting to Piledriver series ,by that time they would have perfected the problems with manufacturing....!
Almost read al the reviews out there only 5%~6% of reviewers are positive...Thats bad for AMD.
If Ivy-bridge is launched in march-2011 with their 8-core variant then its very bad for Piledriver series....

 

[Piyush]

Honestly I have waited just a couple of months maybe less. But man I hate waiting. Also I am not on my PC and I have some old games to finish.

well if your games are running fine now, then there is no need to upgrade
otherwise you know the path

 

[sukesh1090]

guys take a look at these links,
Why I bought a Bulldozer inside - CPUs - CPU-Components

Our Take on AMD FX | Game Blog

 

[vickybat]

For your kind information, power consumption is one of the last things enterprises worry about. All they care about is maximum throughput/performance from a limited rackspace and floorspace. If performance outdoes the running cost, data center people are happy. They aren't even going to overclock to get more performance. It is very very different from the client scenario and BD is going to be power efficient compared to AMD's previous gen as far as servers are concerned.

Cheaper OEM cost by $40 or so and 0.08 kWh less energy consumption is not a factor here.

Actually yes, enterprises really don't worry about power consumption that much but if its off the roof, then there are some concerns. I would say bd is one power hungry cpu and using it in server clusters will definitely adversely effect power bills.

But it depends how its confronted. If a firm doesn't care and in maximum case scenario it is, then there's little to worry in that front.

But all i care and of course enterprises is performance. Processes, subroutines are queued up and there's a lot to process always. If server bulldozer matches xeon in this, i see no harm for firms eyeing bulldozer as the choice of server cpu. Pricing is also a factor.

But i see a slim chance on amd taking over intel in the server space as well.

 

[skeletor]

I'm hypothetically assuming that a hypothetical Rs. 2000 cheaper AMD offering with more cores compared to a comparable Intel part is utilizing 40w more constantly the whole year. (which won't be true ALL the time, again a hypothetical scenario)

0.04 * 24 * 365 = 350.4 units. Now I'm taking a cluster of 100. 35040 units more than than Intel. Commercial electricity is almost Rs. 1.50 per unit. 35040 * 1.5 = Rs. 52560 spent more with AMD than Intel.

But then the AMD offerings were Rs. 2000 cheaper. Multiply by 100. Rs. 2 lakh saved.

Do your math now.

Electricity isn't a huge deciding factor for data centers.

And datacenters will also not mind buying 100 Intel offerings than AMD offerings too despite the fact they'll have to pay more.

The most important factor for them is...throughput they can get from the limited amount of space available to them. Whether it's Intel or AMD, they don't care.

Heck, runtime cost whether you choose AMD or Intel for 4 years turns out to be same.

If you go with AMD, you pay 2 lakhs less for the server but ~50k more for electricity per year. If you go Intel, you pay 2 lakhs more for the server but ~50k less for electricity per year.

This again vindicates my point of maximum performance from a limited floorspace. That's all what matters for datacenters. With reliability ofc.

Moroever, they deal in crores, not lakhs. This discussion is silly as much as tkin's post was.

 

[saz]

Looking at various BD reviews. Now at least I have no grudges that my motherboard doesn't support AM3+ proccy

 

[Joker]

retarded discussion.

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