Discussion Forums > Technology
Your view on AMD's Bulldozer
ColdFission:
--- Quote from: nstgc on October 12, 2011, 07:15:38 AM ---Bulldozer failed to hit the mark (I'd call it "crash and burn personaly")
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fx-8150.html
--- End quote ---
That is pretty much the overall feel from these reviews. AMD brought back the FX brand and that lead to failed management of expectations as the FX brand represented the best of AMD; the gamer's brand, the enthusiast's brand. After years of development, design, and engineering, AMD has brought a chip to market with similar performance of their previous Phenom II x6 lineup and that's really just sad in my view. In the anandtech review, it mentions that IPC went down compared to the previous lineup. Also in that review, Bulldozer weighs in at 2 Billion transistors with a 315 mm^2 die size vs Sandy Bridge's 996 Million transistors with a 216 mm^2 die size WITH their GPU on the same silicon. In my view, this is worse than the Barcelona launch. At least the Barcelona processors had faster performance compared to its predecessors.
kureshii:
Everything that mentions GCN with HD7000 is listed as a rumour. Considering the recent spate of rumours surrounding AMD, I am going to err on the safe side and assume GCN won't be here until at least 2013.
If it sounds like I'm being harsh on AMD (or perhaps even being an Intel fanboy), let me say that I was just as harsh on Intel's P4 (on which I'm typing this post at work), and I see no reason why I should hold back on Bulldozer when it is just as callous with expectations.
Just saw Anandtech's review, which puts Bulldozer in a better light: at least Bulldozer seems to bump shoulders with i7-2600K in heavily threaded benchmarks (Cinebench, x264), and synthetic benchmarks (7-zip MIPS). Curiously Anandtech didn't run their real-world 7zip benchmark (in MB/s instead of MIPS) in this review, so we won't know what that gap in MIPS performance translates to in real-world performance.
Unfortunately, I still don't see Bulldozer as a value proposition, for a few reasons. Although the CPU itself is cheaper than an i7-2600K, the 9-series motherboards start at $95 for 970 chipset, and $150 for 990FX. The H67 series start at $50. Both are overpriced for their featureset, considering the H67 is really just a southbridge and the 9-series series is almost exactly the same as the 8-series, only with AM3+ support. The 9-series chief advantage is its 32X lanes of PCIe, which few will ever put to good use.
From benchmarks we've seen so far, Bulldozer would make a good small-scale compute processor for the price, especially coupled with a few GPUs to make use of those PCIe lanes. However, for general use a Sandy Bridge i5 still looks like a much better build for the money. Perhaps if Bulldozer prices drop to match the i5, and AMD releases cheaper version of the 9-series chipset ... but meanwhile, those looking for better value for money should just go with an X6 build.
nstgc:
Here's your bad news from another site by the way.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043.html
[edit] One more
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/amd_fx-8150/
ColdFission:
--- Quote from: kureshii on October 12, 2011, 07:29:40 AM ---Everything that mentions GCN with HD7000 is listed as a rumour. Considering the recent spate of rumours surrounding AMD, I am going to err on the safe side and assume GCN won't be here until at least 2013.
If it sounds like I'm being harsh on AMD (or perhaps even being an Intel fanboy), let me say that I was just as harsh on Intel's P4 (on which I'm typing this post at work), and I see no reason why I should hold back on Bulldozer when it is just as callous with expectations.
Just saw Anandtech's review, which puts Bulldozer in a better light: at least Bulldozer seems to bump shoulders with i7-2600K in heavily threaded benchmarks (Cinebench, x264), and synthetic benchmarks (7-zip MIPS). Curiously Anandtech didn't run their real-world 7zip benchmark (in MB/s instead of MIPS) in this review, so we won't know what that gap in MIPS performance translates to in real-world performance.
Unfortunately, I still don't see Bulldozer as a value proposition, for a few reasons. Although the CPU itself is cheaper than an i7-2600K, the 9-series motherboards start at $95 for 970 chipset, and $150 for 990FX. The H67 series start at $50. Both are overpriced for their featureset, considering the H67 is really just a southbridge and the 9-series series is almost exactly the same as the 8-series, only with AM3+ support. The 9-series chief advantage is its 32X lanes of PCIe, which few will ever put to good use.
From benchmarks we've seen so far, Bulldozer would make a good small-scale compute processor for the price, especially coupled with a few GPUs to make use of those PCIe lanes. However, for general use a Sandy Bridge i5 still looks like a much better build for the money. Perhaps if Bulldozer prices drop to match the i5, and AMD releases cheaper version of the 9-series chipset ... but meanwhile, those looking for better value for money should just go with an X6 build.
--- End quote ---
I personally think you have the right to be harsh on AMD, maybe even more so. It doesn't make you an Intel fanboy at all, I see it as you and me and others wanting AMD to actually COMPETE and not follow. So, don't hold back.
And because of the reviews, Intel will have no incentive to drop prices on its CPUs, which would have been great if that did happen if only Bulldozer actually competed.
I do agree that I can't see great value with Bulldozer. It performs equal to or greater than a 1100T (but again, anandtech points out the IPC actually went down) but being more expensive and sucks in more power.
I can't wait to do a system overhaul from my current system to either a 2500K or a 2600K, depending on the pricing next year.
kitamesume:
!
yea i didnt notice it was the same benches... bah.
i want a 2core... er... 2module/4core review, not some funny 4core... er... 4module/8core fail(?).
well its still be useless on making a budget rig based on bulldozer because of the prices of the motherboards XD
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