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AMD Bulldozer Finally!
- Thread starter AceTK
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Caporegime
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Well yes but, a 8120 is rarely more than 10% slower, and in several situations 40-50% faster, for the same cpu cost.
Like I said, if there was a £150-170 Sandy with HT, no contest, because the 2500k has no HT, it actually loses quite often to a 8150....... which is exactly no different to a 8120, which costs the same as a 2500k.
At £170, I'd be seriously tempted by a 8120, at £240, I'd get a 2600k(but wouldn't spend that much) if Intel drop the 2600k to sub £180, its the ridiculously obvious choice.
You can pick up a Phenom 2 Hex for the same money as a Phenom II 3.7ghz and OC it to 3.7ghz and maybe more, but take into consideration what drunkenmaster has been saying about the BD.
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Soldato
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considering intel are overdue a price drop...this could be something on the cards(around a £200 pricing?). If they want to murder AMD while recouping sales that is...
Caporegime
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Everything points to Bulldozer gaining at least 10% from windows 8, maybe up to 20%, and don't forget a LOT of the stuff benchmarked today does not use 8 threads........ Bulldozer could well, over time as software is both, optimised for Bulldozer, and getting more threads(because thats the general trend already) then Bulldozer should become much stronger than Phenom 2's.
Power is an issue, overclocked, not really at stock, even idle power(with power saving stuff still on) while overclocked is very good on Bulldozer, its just load power overclocked........ ouch.
I'd take a 8120 over anything Phenom right now..... though if theres a great Thuban prices in the next few weeks........ or if we find out FX4100's can unlock to octo cores.
I'd take a £95 octo core that beats a 2500k any day of the week, even with silly power usage.
Waiting for the price shifts as 2700k launches, 2600k drops in price(rumoured to not be much at all though), x1100T's potentially drop in price further, etc, etc, might be the best option, see what ends up best value for money.
Why? £376 for the parts separately(with the 8gb memory pack) or £424 for the same thing as a bundle but "overclocked", except, it doesn't make a difference. Save the £50 and get the bits individually?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/7
Actually, ignore all the low res gaming on the next page and that page, the 8150 is consistantly ahead of the 2500k.
The issue is, if you could get a cheap 2500k that had hyperthreading, so a cheap lower clocked 2600k, great, but you can get a 8120 that hits the same clocks as a 8150, cheaper than a 2500k(a couple quid) but outperforms it in real world situations more often than its beaten.
From that Anand page, 8150 vs 2500k
3d max 2500k 10% lead
Cinebench single thread, 8150 poop
Cinebench 10 multi, 2500k and 8150 on par
Cinebench 11.5 multi 8150 10% ahead
7zip, 8150 50% ahead of the 2500k
Par 2, 8150 10% ahead or so(closer to the 2600k than 2500k)
truecrypt, again 8150 almost 50% faster
x264 2nd pass without AVX 8150 about 25% ahead, with AVX, closer to 30%(and that should extend further with XOp support)
Adobe CS4, 2500k with about a 15% lead
Vis studio 2500k about 5% faster
Excel, 8150 about 10% faster.
All in, the 8150 IS better than the 2500k, you have to go out of your way to find old applications or run in settings you wouldn't use to see the 2500k win significantly(gaming in stupid res, super pi). When the 8150 it can be miles ahead, aside from ridiculous situations I can't find many if any real world benchmarks where the 2500k can spank a 8150.
Like I said, if the 2500k had HT and was just cheaper than the 2600k, it would be the obvious choice, without HT, and because the 8120 doesn't have features missing the 8120 is actually not a bad choice...... except for power usage wise.
Even that is debateable, need to see better per benchmark/app comparisons, VRZone has Prime and possibly Cinebench(its not clear) using more power on the 2600k than the 8150. Bulldozer MAJOR power issue is overclocked power usage, though even overclocked it has awesome idle power usage still, better than overclocked 2500/2600k while overclocked.
This is what always put me off a 2500k, the fact that I'm paying for identical silicon to a 2600k, but Intel removed a key feature, if there was a lower end "full" Sandybridge, say a 3Ghz £150 one I've have bought that 10 months ago
Read and weep.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=434
But wouldn't I get better gaming performance if I bought a Phenom II 3.7 and then over clocked it?
Caporegime
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Well the rumour is rather than put the 2700k in at the 2600k price point, and move that down miles, is that the 2700k will come in at a higher price, and the 2600k will only drop a bit.
I just don't really want to spend over £200 on a CPU, if I can get away with a FX4100 at £90 that unlocks and overclocks, I'll take it.
The 2500k/8120 will be a tough choice, lack of HT kills its performance frequently, the 8120 has silly power usage while overclocked.
The more I look at results though, the more it does seem to be either slow in situations I'll never face(stupid low res gaming, daft super old benchmarks) or faster than the 2500k in most of what I'd do, encoding, gaming at "real" resolutions, par 2, winrar I use every single day quite a bit.
Synthetic Bulldozer looks beyond awful, real world and mostly more up to date software it seems significantly more competitive.
Considering Ivybridge is a 5% IPC bump, and Bulldozer is looking at a 10-20% performance improvement with a proper schedualler(tom's does some brief benchmarks) and Piledriver is a 10-15% IPC boost, its not as bad as some of the reviews are making out.
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Soldato
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/7
Or look at this way....
Single core is thoroughly disappointing but these tests show that AMD are far more superior than Intel at SMP despite being crippled by raw performance.
Well AMD has years more experience at server SMP than Intel but at the end of the day low per core performance is undesirable for desktop computing.
350+ pages and we've learned nothing new
Or look at this way....
Single core is thoroughly disappointing but these tests show that AMD are far more superior than Intel at SMP despite being crippled by raw performance.
Well AMD has years more experience at server SMP than Intel but at the end of the day low per core performance is undesirable for desktop computing.
350+ pages and we've learned nothing new
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Give the BD benchmarks, maybe not at all !
I'm undecided at this point whether to go for an 1100T x6 or one of the Bulldozers. Plenty of time to decide, although presumably Phenom II will stop production now ? So stocks will disappear after a few weeks. If the 1100T drops £20-£30 that would be nice...
Caporegime
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YOu do know I linked to the anandtech review, and that you can't read?
The gaming benchmarks really are irrelevant, when did you last use a top end gpu for low resolution, you simply don't, I do not care how it does in situations I don't come across, that NO ONE comes across, but the ones I do.
Do you realise the 8150 is ahead in MANY of those benchmarks, do you realise at on limit resolution gpu limited gaming bulldozer is beating the 2500k. Do you realise that pass 1/2 of rendering, pass 2 is the MUCH SLOWER one that takes much longer that does a lot more work, being 30% faster in pass 2, and 30% slower in pass 1, would make the entire encode all together take significantly less time on the CPU that is faster on pass 2...... thats Bulldozer.
Cinebench, Bulldozer loses in single thread, it matches the 2500k in multi in the OLD version and it BEATS it in the newer version........ and its still an out dated benchmark. Seriously, who would run a rendering program single threaded, no one, thats your answer, its a synthetic test, in the real world you'd run multithread, where Bulldozer is faster, again.
Well the hex and quad OC to about the same and at the same clocks the hex is either equal or better in performance.
Caporegime
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Any
Its gaming, gaming always has, and always will be GPU limited, Bulldozer, Phenom 2, a dual core Intel, a quad core Intel........... in most situations most of them will do fine and you won't notice the difference.
I can guarentee you, without question that given a 3.5Ghz Intel or AMD quad core to play a game on, no one would be able to tell you what was inside as they played, but tell them the resolution, settings and framerate, they'd be able to tell you roughly what GPU was in there.
Spend big on GPU, whatevers left on CPU, that will always give you the best overall gaming experience.
, It may even go up.
drunkenmaster i fail to see how you can possibly attempt to spin the fact that this chip is an absolute failure in almost every department. You seem to have an extremely optimistic appraisal of a very bleak reality...
I am in a situation where I want to
- run one app which uses 4 cores continuously
- run another app which uses 1 core continuously
- have 1 core free for web surfing, spreadsheets etc
So at sensible prices it has to be AMD for me, either 1100T or a 6 or 8 core bulldozer. Sandybridge won't do what I need. 4 core doesn't cut it. But at this point, I'm favouring the 6 true cores of the 1100T rather than BD
- run one app which uses 4 cores continuously
- run another app which uses 1 core continuously
- have 1 core free for web surfing, spreadsheets etc
So at sensible prices it has to be AMD for me, either 1100T or a 6 or 8 core bulldozer. Sandybridge won't do what I need. 4 core doesn't cut it. But at this point, I'm favouring the 6 true cores of the 1100T rather than BD
I wouldn't say everything.