What happened with Bulldozer?

[Ethas]

A single core overclock breaking records doesn't really mean shit to the average user. The amount of cooling it required to do so doesn't really make it usable in very many scenarios.

Well atleast it very well shows capability of cpu overclocking. Especially for those who use AMD production, because it is often will be overclocked.

[kidsafe]

Well atleast it very well shows capability of cpu overclocking. Especially for those who use AMD production, because it is often will be overclocked.

Except it doesn't apply to the real world for the vast majority of us. Right now you can OC Sandy Bridge to 4.8-5.0GHz with air cooling. AMD FX processors OC to around 4.4-4.6GHz on air. Of course Intel's IPC and PPW are higher too. Bulldozer's only advantage is in heavily threaded integer intensive applications like batch encodes or renders.

If you OC a Bulldozer CPU to 4.6GHz on air, it will use >300W before factoring in the rest of the system.

[DentalFlaw]

Bulldozer is not per se a bad architecture. It just can't compete in the mid-high end user market, which is the segment, that "normal" people are most interested in.

I disagree. The core issue with Bulldozer is it is partially superscalar. They had an interesting idea: make the instruction fetch/decode parts of the pipeline shared, since they happen very quickly compared to executing instructions. However, with x64 leaning more toward the RISC side as compared to IA32, that does become an issue: it has a hard time keeping up. At least in the reviews I have read, multithreaded performance does suffer because of that. In my opinion, this architecture is close, but that's not good enough when you are up against Intel.

My understanding is this architecture had a very long lead-time. My gut feeling is the assumptions they had years ago are no longer accurate. Intel got it right with their true superscalar design (at least on i7), and Turboboost being able to sacrifice multithreaded performance for single threaded when it matters. Intel struck a balance and hedged their bet: AMD put all their eggs in one basket and wagered incorrectly.

I didn't own a Phenom I, but I understand it was utter crap just like Bulldozer. However, if the Phenom II is any indication, maybe the next revision will be incredible.

[jmacphee9]

I thnk AMD is focusing on mobile CPUs since there's a huge market for smartphones, tablets and e-readers. Even TVs.

AMD is getting murdered in that too if that is what they are actually trying to do....ARM and qualcomm owns that whole thing.

IMO AMDs would save them self by releasing two lines of CPUs, their multi tasking FX line, and a nice speedy dual/quad core line that has great single process potential. amd wasted so much time and resources developing a processor that isnt optimized for many many people.

[Milkshake86]

Intel has the best manufacturing in the industry. AMD gets stuck with what they have at their own foundry and one of the problems that came up is poor yields which meant they couldn't get clock speed up to where they wanted it.

AMD holds the OC record, the 8core BD chips can easily push above 4.5GHz dropping from 8 to 4 active cores we got 5.2GHz out of ours. It was leaked to be faster than the first gen i7's and it is, beyond that not so much. As for the people rumoring this money loss nonsense AMD's server cpu market is booming. The absorption of ATI didnt hurt the pocket book much either. On all fronts AMD has a firm foothold. They have cheaper viable products than intel. In some cases consumers literally by intel because they seen an Intel commercial. Do you see AMD commercials, I bet itd do wonders for selling even more than they already do. Not needed AMD wont be going anywhere for a long long time.

[Ethas]

Except it doesn't apply to the real world for the vast majority of us. Right now you can OC Sandy Bridge to 4.8-5.0GHz with air cooling. AMD FX processors OC to around 4.4-4.6GHz on air. Of course Intel's IPC and PPW are higher too. Bulldozer's only advantage is in heavily threaded integer intensive applications like batch encodes or renders.

If you OC a Bulldozer CPU to 4.6GHz on air, it will use >300W before factoring in the rest of the system.

AMD FX can easily be OCed to 5.1 GHz on air.

[Sephiracle]

AMD FX can easily be OCed to 5.1 GHz on air.

Which will pull a lot more power than any sandy bridge.

[vesseblah]

AMD FX can easily be OCed to 5.1 GHz on air.

Using twice as much power as 4.8GHz i5-2500K and being still slower in real world use. Overclockability means very little when the basic architecture sucks and IPC is from 2007ish.

[Ethas]

Which will pull a lot more power than any sandy bridge.

Don't see the point here. If it is about PSU it really doesn't matter in the world where 1kW are wide spreaded among advanced users (which actually will not be needed, since additional power not that much as you are describing). If it is about temperature - well this is air anyway as I already mentioned.

[haxartus]

As much as I hate to say it, power consumption is everything. If you have 100% performance with 50W, you can double the transistor count, tweak the architecture a little and get close to 200% performance for 100W. Also the power consumption is directly related to heat.

[Sephiracle]

Don't see the point here. If it is about PSU it really doesn't matter in the world where 1kW are wide spreaded among advanced users (which actually will not be needed, since additional power not that much as you are describing). If it is about temperature - well this is air anyway as I already mentioned.

Well it's not only the power consumption, but the performance compared to the sandy bridge really doesn't make the tradeoffs worth it. From a business standpoint I can see the need for the bulldozer, but for the average user, if you're going with a BD instead of SB then you're gimping yourself for the sake of a more 'powerful' processor. Essentially BD is a body builder juiced up with roids, while SB is an athlete that actually works hard to gain what he had. In both instances, they both look the same but only one can actually perform to the best of its ability.

That's really my point about it. Most users on this forum wouldn't gain any benefit going with a BD. In the case that they use a lot of multithreaded applications and productivity software it would probably be beneficial, but for gaming(and this is a gaming site) you should look the other way for a processor.

When comparing the 8150 to a 2500k, at stock clocks the BD already eats twice as much power as the SB.

[vesseblah]

Don't see the point here. If it is about PSU it really doesn't matter in the world where 1kW are wide spreaded among advanced users (which actually will not be needed, since additional power not that much as you are describing).

The point is... After one year's electricity bills the FX-8150 has already cost more than i5-2500K and still is slower.

[DeltrusDisc]

The point is... After one year's electricity bills the FX-8150 has already cost more than i5-2500K and still is slower.

It costs more just to buy the FX8150 instead of the 2500K. :P

---------- Post added 2012-01-30 at 10:01 PM ----------

In some cases consumers literally by intel because they seen an Intel commercial. Do you see AMD commercials, I bet itd do wonders for selling even more than they already do. Not needed AMD wont be going anywhere for a long long time.

I've actually never recently seen an Intel or AMD dedicated commercial, only commercials for Dells or Gateways, etc.

[Sephiracle]

I've actually never recently seen an Intel or AMD dedicated commercial, only commercials for Dells or Gateways, etc.

I've seen Intel commercials. I can't say the same for AMD. You would think in a very consumer world you'd see something, but I have yet to see an AMD commercial.

[Drunkenvalley]

You didn't see the horrendously cheesy AMD promo stuff for Bulldozer? o_o

[Sephiracle]

You didn't see the horrendously cheesy AMD promo stuff for Bulldozer? o_o

Negative. Probably went in the same category as those commercials that sell sex and get banned over here.

[Keller]

I wish IBM would get into the mainstream market

[Sephiracle]

I wish IBM would get into the mainstream market

http://www.lenovo.com ?

Or do you mean them making a cpu for the market? Because that's essentially going to cost them more than it's worth. They have the business market pretty much handled and I don't believe it would make them a substantial amount of $$ if any.

[Keller]

http://www.lenovo.com ?

Or do you mean them making a cpu for the market?

Lenovo is not IBM. Lenovo bought IBM's laptop devision long ago but they still make good ol' thinkpads.
I meant CPU, Power7 is probably the best architecture right now.

[Sephiracle]

Lenovo is not IBM. Lenovo bought IBM's laptop devision long ago but they still make good ol' thinkpads.
I meant CPU, Power7 is probably the best architecture right now.

Yeah, I sort of work at IBM, I wasn't sure what you meant so wanted to clarify. The only 'mainstream' stuff we see are IBM chips going in gaming consoles. It would be nice, but again, I don't think they'd make money on it, definitely not in the short term anyways.