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bulldozer poor performance?

Who reads BSN these days? My tea leaves are more consistent and accurate than that BS!

Also of note, nVidia and VIA are also out, which leaves Intel, in their own Intel consortium and benchmarking suit. Funny that

Edit: My source tells me OP smells of cabbage and old socks btw
 
Nvidia, AMD, and VIA quit BAPCO over SYSmark 2012

Update 2, 10am June 21, 2011: Nigel Dessau has a blog up. This contains the tip of the iceberg for bitching. Others have much more to say. Rest assured, it will come out.

BAPCO logoBAPCO has turned into a bad joke, so bad that Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), AMD (NYSE:AMD), and VIA (2388:Taiwan) just quit. Yes, that leaves Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) as the only semiconductor maker still in the consortium, and there is a good reason for this.

The short story is this, BAPCO makes the SYSmark series of benchmarks, and several others. SYSmark in particular has been long seen by everyone but Intel as a joke, it is so skewed that it is laughable, it really doesn’t measure anything but Intel or non-Intel CPUs. With the release of SYSmark 2012, things got even worse.

SemiAccurate has been hearing rumblings about discontent from everyone involved in BAPCO, everyone but Intel of course, about how broken SYSmark 2012 is. The complaint, again from multiple vendors, is that Intel owns the process, and overrides anyone’s views, thoughts and additions.

We brought these concerns up to a few Intel folk at Computex a few weeks ago. Talking, unofficially because of confidentiality agreements, we heard the same tired refrain, that the process is open and any member can submit anything for a vote. True enough. The problem is that every time someone does, it gets shot down, unless that someone is Intel. Their wishes seem to get in every time for some odd reason.

For months now, the rancor over SYSmark 2012 has grown to a fever pitch, complaints are duly put forward at meetings, and duly ignored. One of the biggest is that the benchmark completely ignores GPU power, if you have a barely functional Intel IGP and add a GTX580, your score won’t budge. Go from a dual core to a quad, and watch the numbers jump. This is a regression, a bad one from the last version. Any guesses who benefits from this little quirk, and who loses? Try it for yourself and see.

There are lists of others, and we have been read bits of several rancorous letters, and told more that were seen as too futile to bother bringing up. The list of fatal flaws with SYSmark 2012 is long and ugly, so long as to render the suite pointless for any real use. And nothing was done about it despite protests. Rather than lend their names to such a sham, Nvidia, AMD, and VIA all quit, leaving Intel to dominate all areas. The status quo is sadly unchanged.

Ironically, if you look at either the about us page or the news page, there is no mention of 3/4 of the chip companies that were members quitting. How odd. Granted, it won’t change the voting practices, but you have to admit, it does look bad. </sarcasm> This looks worse though. </no sarcasm>

Why does Intel do this? Why do they deny it so vocally? Because SYSmark is a widely used sales tool, especially in government and large corporations, and it is supposed to be an open industry benchmark. For it to be seen as anything less would taint the process, so those with vested interests have to shout, and shout they do. Luckily, that pesky FTC thing is settled, otherwise there might be some nasty questions asked.

In the end, BAPCO and SYSmark 2012 is now an official shame, not just one in name only. Anyone using it seriously should be immediately suspect for both motives and technical awareness. If a salesperson comes to your company and mentions the suite, you know who they are pushing, it is that bad. For some reason, BAPCO itself is going to great lengths to keep all this quiet, I wonder if that was an open vote too? One thing for sure, the silence is deafening.S|A
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http://semiaccurate.com/2011/06/20/nvidia-amd-and-via-quit-bapco-over-sysmark-2012/



The president of BAPCo happens to be the head of performance benchmarking at Intel.
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http://www.newsweek.com/2009/06/18/hurry-up-and-type.html#
 
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I'm having a hard time believing that a bulldozer core is only marginally quicker than a llano core, especially considering that a phenom ii core is marginally quicker than a llano core. Is a bulldozer core really the same speed as a phenom ii core?
 
I think at this point in time, it would be better to expect little from Bulldozer and be pleasantly surprised at release, rather than expecting big things from it and being disappointed.

Given that AMD have been clinging on for years, I don't think I'd be genuinely surprised if Bulldozer was a bit of a flop.
 
if story is true then i'm even more glad i went for sandybridge not only because its better than bulldozer but because AMD is been very evil turning against SYSmark just because their bulldozer chip isn't performing well.

this is probably why they keeping their bulldozer a big secret.
 
ng93 said:
I'm having a hard time believing that a bulldozer core is only marginally quicker than a llano core, especially considering that a phenom ii core is marginally quicker than a llano core. Is a bulldozer core really the same speed as a phenom ii core?
Click to expand...

From everything I have heard it won't be much faster core for core-10-15%. However that is clock for clock but everything I have heard also suggests that AMD aim for higher clocks than with PII, and with very aggressive turbo's.

One also needs to remember that this is both a first gen BD chip and a first gen high-k/32nm chip. AMD have built a completely new architecture and it's not just about having the best chip possible for 2011, but the basis for a very good chip for the next 5-6 years.

I have read things like that from people claiming to be AMD employee's so it wouldn't surprise me if some of it were true. AMD has had a very rough 4-5 years with massive loses but their has been some positive signs of late- Brazos looks fairly good(although it might be a little late for it's target market) and llano has given AMD it's first really compelling laptop chip.
 
as905 said:
if story is true then i'm even more glad i went for sandybridge not only because its better than bulldozer but because AMD is been very evil turning against SYSmark just because their bulldozer chip isn't performing well.

this is probably why they keeping their bulldozer a big secret.
Click to expand...

Work for Intel or unable to read? Lol
 
i've been out of the loop for years, the last cpu i overclocked before my current x6 1090t was an intel 166mhz mmx cpu, it took me about 5 seconds of looking at current benchmarks to see that sysmark was one to ignore as it was utterly useless.
 
Synthetic benchmarks aren't a great comparison tool, and the likes of Sandra\Sysmark even less so. Intel's IGPs do great in 3DMark for example, but in the real world they're usually soundly thrashed by the AMD\Nvidia equivalent.
 
Emlyn_Dewar said:
This.
Story is poor and just trying to get some drama on the go.
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^^ This.

Surely to people like us, "insider stories" and people "speaking out" is just pre-amble. What we are interested in is the cold, hard, scientific numbers that allow us, the consumer to draw their own conclusions?

I hold nothing against bulldozer and I cannot wait to see how it will weigh up against the i-series. Whenever it finally comes out...
 
Exactly - anyone can write a speculative article and quoting an 'inside source' is still mere speculation, hiding the validity of the details behind a vale of anonymity.

Without cold hard facts and actual tangible results that article is deceptive at best.
 
anyone ever thought, ALL of this could be one big stunt AMD are pulling? get everyone thinking bulldozer may be bad/poor then scadoosh, launch day, BD rips bum holes to shreads... meh, suppose we'll have to wait :P
 
it's just so competetive between intel and amd(because they are the mainstream cpu's) that we never know what mind games and properganda will be used

could be true, could not be true

just thought i'd post the article for people to see and make their own minds up
 
I can understand that BD might not be able to match Sandy Bridge, however, the insider quoted seems to be suggesting that BD will only be a small increase on Llano chips. I find this hard to believe.

Whilst poor investment in people and tech can hamper progress I find it hard that with a die shrink and a whole new arhictecture that has been under development for an age they can't produce something more powerful than that.

Presumably it must be better than a Phenom II otherwise they would have given up an awful long time ago.

Who knows. I like the 990fx chipset and the motherboards seem good value for money, but until real figures come out I can't see myself buying anything.

As others have said many times before: BD will be competitive on some level:

a, actually perform the same as or better than SB, or
b, not match SB performance, but undercut and sell on bang-for-buck basis.

Either way, hopefully the wait will not be much longer - and in terms of gamers, as long as the new CPU doesn't bottleneck decent Crossfire / SLI systems then the 990FX with 2 x 16 PCI-E slots might offer a better option that socket 1155 Certainly, the cheaper the CPU / motherboard combo the more you can spend on SSDs / GPUs.
 
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