Bulldozer failed to beat out Intel.

[DeltrusDisc]

I do love TTL's videos.

This is a dark day indeed though, I hope AMD pulls out some magic tricks, the fact that the x6 from the Phenom II is actually beating the 8150 at some stuff just really is what I can't get out of my mind.

[vesseblah]

Something interesting:

I would interpret that as something like "Windows 8 handles the AMD fake cores better than Win7, which is quite understandable since those processors didn't exist when Win7 was launched".

This and the second gen Bulldozer will give us a minimum of another 10-15% performance increase plus a better overclocking capabilities. You see where I'm going...

When second gen Bulldozer is out, so will be Ivy Bridge, and AMD has even more to prove than just beating current i5-2500K barely.

[Doylez]

This and the second gen Bulldozer will give us a minimum of another 10-15% performance increase plus a better overclocking capabilities. You see where I'm going...

I really don't.

[Deleted]

I think the release timing of Bulldozer was more than unfortunate.

-Had it been released 9 months ago, alongside Sandy-Bride, AMD could have benefited from Intels MB issues it had when SB launched. That, and people would have been more willing to look past some of Bulldozer's short-comings.

-Had Bulldozer been released in 2012, AMD would have had time to improve the energy-efficiency and memory management. It would also be a lot closer to the release of Windows 8, which should give the CPU another ~10% performance bump.

But releasing it now doesn't really accomplish anything. They're launching an expensive new CPU architecture and are forced to make it cheap, cutting into their profit margins. Yet there is very little software out there that benefits from having 8 cores so much of their Strengths are essentially wasted. How can AMD possibly think they can compete with a system that offers the same performance as an Intel CPU clocked 1000 Mhz lower?

[haxartus]

When second gen Bulldozer is out, so will be Ivy Bridge, and AMD has even more to prove than just beating current i5-2500K barely.

If it beats i5-2500k it in WoW, it will be miles ahead in multithreading, since it's already beating i5-2500k in heavy multithreaded benchmarks.
The main concern about Ivy is that it will be on 22nm and the second gen Bulldozer still on 32nm. I'm not sure that they would be able to compete with that without shrinking the Bulldozer to 22nm.

[DeltrusDisc]

If it beats i5-2500k it in WoW, it will be miles ahead in multithreading, since it's already beating i5-2500k in heavy multithreaded benchmarks.
The main concern about Ivy is that it will be on 22nm and the second gen Bulldozer still on 32nm.

The fact of the matter.... the 8150 should have done a lot better than it did... based on logic, at least. We have no reason to expect better from AMD in the future, unless of course they were to acknowledge this fault and say they are trying/going to fix it and they did. With all the hype they're shoving into the markets and crap.

Hell I just got a Tigerdirect email "SEE THE WORLD'S FIRST 8-CORE CPU" /barf

I don't see them fessing up to this mistake.

[vesseblah]

If it beats i5-2500k it in WoW,

But it isn't. THG review says FX-8150 is just as bad in WoW as PhenomII's, and the difference between Phenoms and Sandy Bridges on WoW is quite staggering.

[Deleted]

If it beats i5-2500k it in WoW, it will be miles ahead in multithreading, since it's already beating i5-2500k in heavy multithreaded benchmarks.

It does have some other things going for it already as well.

It supports full and proper 2x16 GPU configurations, where SB Can only handle 2x8. It is able to manage 4 GPU setups - and it also handles ECC memory, which requires E3 Xeons with an accompanying chipset on the SB side. (And these are NOT easy to find)

They also handle the Intel equivalent of VT-D even on the overclockable chips (Remember the broken feature on the initial SB-E processors? Thats the one). The K series of Intel processors do not support VT-D, wheras the AMD processors still have their IOMMU intact.

These are all however niche features that do not matter in the overwhelming majority of consumer setups. Unfortunately native USB 3.0 support is not present on AMD's side either, that could've helped leverage an advantage with the historical shittyness of separate controllers - especially with more than one connected device.

[Drunkenvalley]

I'm not sure if it's all that impressive that you can have that much GPU power under the hood if these are bottlenecked by the CPU. o.o

[haxartus]

The fact is that the Phenom II architecture was pretty much dead. There wasn't much to improve on.
This new architecture is brand new and it has a lot of things to improve. Hell, a lot of stuff isn't even working properly and Windows 7 isn't optimized to handle the CPU.
If the power consumption problem is fixed in the next generation, it's completely possible for us to see something like 5Ghz turbo on 2 modules with the other 2 automatically turned off while they aren't used. This technology is already implemented in the processor, but the current revision is too power hungry and they couldn't get a turbo beyond 4.2 GHz due to that.

[Asera]

Seems to me the two biggest problems with it are:

1) Power consumption. I remember an article a couple months back where AMD was having issues with their intended clock speeds with Zambezi. This first batch could most likely be those chips, especially if they are due to be phased out in Q1 next year when IB comes out. The performance of the Zambezi overclocked is much more in line with what I was expecting it to perform at... unfortunately, the resulting power draw is severe cause for concern, and well over their intended TDP.

2) Immature branch predictor and fetch/decode paths. Considering the total architecture change, and the fact that their thread philosophy has changed rather drastically with Zambezi, this comes as no surprise to me, especially where AMD has nowhere near the available R&D that Intel has. Seems that everything bad with single threaded performance is related to how their new module system functions. Really hoping this is improved in Gen2.

All in all, it seems that the first incarnation of Zambezi leaves a bad taste of Agena and Prescott in my mouth. In terms of where it can go for AMD though, it's far from either as it has loads of room for improvement, IMO.

However, I think AMD should still focus more on Zacate and Llano type chips, as the market share and profit margins there far outweigh the niche high performance sector that Gamers demand. We like to think we represent a significant piece of the pie, but we really don't. (This is aimed at people that spell AMD's doom with this, for whatever reason. Not going to happen when things like the E-350 and HD6970 exist).

Also, too much linking to Tom's Hardware crap. Please refer to good articles like this one instead:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/t...-fx8150-tested

And now to pick apart 4 pages of posts!

holy mother! Seriously? They allowed that? O_o That's ridiculous.

They had no choice, AMD doesn't have the capacity Intel does. Yes it's sad, but still.

Well I hoped AMD would present Intel with some serious competition.

In a small market? They don't really have to when they have things like Zacate and Llano. AMD would not have released this baby version of Zambezi if it's intended market was much bigger than it really is.

I think they will, just not in the current games market. If you look at the benchmarks, the 8150 is getting scores extremely close to ( or better than ) the 2600k. Things like video encoding, and media editing are where bulldozer will do the best. Most current software is totally unable to use bulldozer to it's full potential.

Coupled with the fact that the architecture needs some tweaking and the manufacturing process is being fixed, or might already be fixed, who knows.

This is bad news. Now Intel will treat consumers like slaves.

Why? You think this means the end of AMD? Insert reference to Zacate, Llano and Cayman here.

and intel has plans of ivy bridge which i believe will put AMD in danger zone if they do not react to the market within 2012 Q2-Q3.

Right. AMD could milk this awful version of Zacate for years and wouldn't sink against intel due to other markets existing outside of gamers. And even then, all AMD has to do is make sure you pair that nifty Ivy Bridge CPU with a Radeon HD 7000 series card. :P

I'll pick my processor based on what I do. If I did heavy video editing and encoding, then why shouldn't I get a Bulldozer chip? It is cheaper than the competetion, and still performs on par.

I'd still avoid the current generation of Zacate. The design still needs some work. 1090T is a better choice in terms of a well priced, capable workstation with ECC support.

I can understand that. But, this is a long term play in the business world. If software design keeps on going down the path to using more cores, this is a step in the right direction for AMD. It is fairly underwhelming from a performance perspective, but to be honest, what more could AMD have down? They have nowhere near the same budget or production capabilities as intel.

This is the mindset I wish more people had.

I'm not sure for what users upgrading to bulldozer would make sense for at all. By those arguments, you could say that going with an 1100T makes even more sense given the current pricing.

True, but remember that K10.5 is a dead end. Zacate is the first incarnation of something radically different. Bulldozer can go somewhere. Thuban couldn't.

Not to come off as a troll, but WINRAR? Really? I don't think anyone is going to be making a purchase based on WINRAR performance charts, especially in these forums.

I find performance in WinRAR and 7zip are decent depictions of how well the CPU performs in general usage. At least for me.

They have 8 "cores" and can barely beat (and sometimes can't) a 4 core Intel in multithreaded performance. They fail to realize that peformance per core is the important part for most, and that you increase core count when you've hit the limit on single thread.

Single-threaded performance is so sub-par that it isn't even funny. It makes it directly bad for WoW and I wouldn't count on it in any workstation because even in the marvelous world of media editing, many things end up on a single thread and then you suffer greatly.

This is more or less why I would avoid it for a workstation right now. Although, like I said, I believe some tweaking will fix the inherently bad performance in single threads in Gen2 and beyond... hopefully.

The sheep who don't do research will buy this over any other because "IT HAS MORE CORES AND BIGGER NUMBERS!!!" You said it Wries. :P

Idiots will buy this just like idiots bought Agenas, Prescotts, G5s, GeForce FXs, Radeon HD 3xxxs, Barracuda 7200.11s, IBM DeathStars, Anything by Maxtor, Killer NiCs, Thermaltake TR2s, ...need I go on? What better way for AMD to get rid of what they have in their first lot, honestly.

[anb]

Nobody expected Bulldozer to roll over Intel ( You were naive if you thought that would happen ). The processor is cheaper than the i7 by ~40$, and it performs almost on par? I'll take that.

Yeah, go ahead and take that, but don't be suprised by your next electricity bill.

[Deleted]

Read through a few reviews, kinda disappointing and seriously lol at the overclocked power consumption. Let's hope they can actually significantly improve on the architechture in the future because otherwise they'll just drop completely out of the gaming market, price/performance was AMD's niche in gamer market and this simply doesn't deliver, even if we ignore the increased electricity bills and possible need for larger PSU when overclocking.

And now to lighten the dark mood in this thread, something I stumbled upon while reading bulldozer review comments.

[Sephiracle]

I wasn't surprised by the bad scores on the AMD. I was shocked to see the power consumption. Sad to see AMD ignore the gaming community, I feel like if they're not providing competition in that market, which will only drive Intel prices up.

[Misen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SArxc...ature=youtu.be


* User was infracted for this post. Please post constructively, don't post memes and don't contribute to brandbashing.

[Saithes]

Haha.. I expected this.. Half Cores, Half the Performance Per Core. Anandtech added it to their Bench Charts. AMD should have focused on their clock performance rather than trying to add more cores.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=287

[Misen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SArxc...ature=youtu.be


* User was infracted for this post. Please post constructively, don't post memes and don't contribute to brandbashing.

hehe... I wish there was something to be constructive about. I've been with AMD the whole way and that pretty much summed it up for me.
I can only hope C2 will be better in 2012.

[anb]

While in heavy-threaded apps Bulldozer may not be that bad, but once we talk about WoW it really turns in Epic Faildozer:

[Asera]

While in heavy-threaded apps Bulldozer may not be that bad, but once we talk about WoW it really turns in Epic Faildozer:

WoW is an ancient engine and a ridiculously poor measure of a CPU's performance.

Zambezi's single thread performance sucks, but you can show it better in other benchmarks.

[anb]

WoW is an ancient engine and a ridiculously poor measure of a CPU's performance.
Zambezi's single thread performance sucks, but you can show it better in other benchmarks.

It is a solid measure of performance as long we discuss it on a WoW fansite. It matters for people building gaming system, as many people here asking for a PC build don't even play any games except Warcraft.