I was interested to note that the 2 billion transistor figure for the 8xxx Bulldozer line was out by 800m. It's apparently 1.2billion ... so it's an awful lot more 'efficient' than many feared. With future revisions and GF (hopefully) sorting out the process tech, it may well prove to be a very sound architecture in the long term.
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AMD Bulldozer Finally!
- Thread starter AceTK
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Caporegime
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What'd you mean by more efficient?
Performance per transistor, yes, we can no longer say "2 BILLION TRANSISTORS FOR WHAT?"
But it now means that the die isn't all that small, being less dense than SB, and only amplifies the heat/power concerns.
I know AMD are getting peeved with GF, some article about them taking their APU's to TMSC, who knows if that's true like.
Although, I'm still sceptical, they've ONLY now came out with saying it's not 2 Billion transistors?
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surely the lower transistor density further points toward problems on Global Foundries side of things? know AMD do some stupid things sometimes, and god they do, but to design a new chip from the ground up to have some of the problems it has whilst keeping in mind AMD actually know a thing or two about processor design, as much as people choose to forget.
lots of things about Bulldozer don't make much sense for it to be AMD problem, performance wise its not at all bad, not great at gaming but equally not terrible in the same respect that Phenom II isn't terrible for gaming. but the low transistor density and high die size, thermal problems and power consumption all point toward Global Foundries more than AMD themselves.
with regards to removing pointless component and modules from the die, for the sake of argument lets assume that each 4*** die would be less than half the size of a 8*** die perhaps, how is it not in their best interests to make a dedicated 4*** line rather than use crippled 8*** series? perhaps AMD should consider a bold move, keep 8*** production and move 4*** series to TMSC instead?
lots of things about Bulldozer don't make much sense for it to be AMD problem, performance wise its not at all bad, not great at gaming but equally not terrible in the same respect that Phenom II isn't terrible for gaming. but the low transistor density and high die size, thermal problems and power consumption all point toward Global Foundries more than AMD themselves.
with regards to removing pointless component and modules from the die, for the sake of argument lets assume that each 4*** die would be less than half the size of a 8*** die perhaps, how is it not in their best interests to make a dedicated 4*** line rather than use crippled 8*** series? perhaps AMD should consider a bold move, keep 8*** production and move 4*** series to TMSC instead?
They're already supply constrained enough as it is .... making several separate production lines which are unnecessary would pretty much put them out of the desktop processor market, at the moment.
It's something they could consider once the Gulf money for GF eventuates in more production facilities.
TSMC don't have any suitable processes for the bigger desktop CPUs ... besides, they have horrific problems with sub 40nm themselves, and will have zero spare capacity for the foreseeable future.
It's something they could consider once the Gulf money for GF eventuates in more production facilities.
TSMC don't have any suitable processes for the bigger desktop CPUs ... besides, they have horrific problems with sub 40nm themselves, and will have zero spare capacity for the foreseeable future.
been Advanced Micro Device' problem for many years now, no matter how competitive their processors are they can never get enough of them into the market to knock Intel off their perch. their best shot was back in K8 days when they had Prescott by the balls, but the fact that everyone knows who Intel are and almost nobody seems to know who AMD are emphasises the problem even more, asked ten random friends the other day 'know who AMD are...?' one person knew...ONE! and they all knew what Intel is, that speaks volumes about AMD's problem!
lack of supply and masses and masses of Intel buyers make it a frankly impossible situation for AMD to prevail in! doesn't matter if Bulldozer B3 comes along and knocks seven kinds of crap out of Sandy Bridge, it won't make a bit of difference in the grand scheme of things! for example Trinity will be better than Intel, no doubts about that in its target market, but will it make a difference? and will it be plagued by AMD supply problems?
lack of supply and masses and masses of Intel buyers make it a frankly impossible situation for AMD to prevail in! doesn't matter if Bulldozer B3 comes along and knocks seven kinds of crap out of Sandy Bridge, it won't make a bit of difference in the grand scheme of things! for example Trinity will be better than Intel, no doubts about that in its target market, but will it make a difference? and will it be plagued by AMD supply problems?
The problem is that AMD rarely advertise, nationally.
With Intel, they advertise on national TV, which improves the brand image and also lets joe publilc know, who Intel are and what they produce.
I also see adverts for computers which emphasise, "Intel inside". This further pushes the Intel brand into the public's faces.
AMD need to learn from this and push their brand harder. Of course, this means spending huge quantities on branding, but if they spend big in this area and demand increases (as it definitely will), AMD will be unable to cope with the demand. As it is, they are unable to meet supply.
I think the key for AMD is to produce enough CPUs to meet/surpass demand. Their next step should be push their brand (unfortunately, I don't see this happening, as they don't seem to want push their brand image, in the same way that Intel do).
AMD are aware, but like I stated, for whatever reason they don't want to push their brand.
I live in the UK, and UK is a big market. I've never seen any adverts on the telly for AMD (that I can remember).
Advertising and marketing is always a risk. If you spend £1M on marketing, you may or may not get that back in additional profit. There is no magic formula. You have to try and see.
At present Intel are their main competitors. They advertise nationally. They are HUGE. Perhaps AMD should go down the route of pushing their brand. It may benefit them, but they won't know, until they try.
I live in the UK, and UK is a big market. I've never seen any adverts on the telly for AMD (that I can remember).
Advertising and marketing is always a risk. If you spend £1M on marketing, you may or may not get that back in additional profit. There is no magic formula. You have to try and see.
At present Intel are their main competitors. They advertise nationally. They are HUGE. Perhaps AMD should go down the route of pushing their brand. It may benefit them, but they won't know, until they try.
yeah, agreed! everyone and their dog know who Intel are, what they do and what they manufacture, hell everyone even knows their brands like Pentium and Core which goes to show how powerful marketing is.
have seen a couple of Advanced Micro Devices mentions in written media, like adds in the newspaper for example and their badge on the TV a few times on other adverts, but surely they must understand how powerful marketing is? to sound like the devils advocate a bit to beat Intel they must beat them at their own game, Llano and Trinity give them the perfect attack point against Intel and they aren't exploiting that since Llano beats Intel offerings in that market quite nicely, Trinity is quite a bit better than Llano so should do even better, exploit it for crying out loud!
'this smart laptop with impressive battery life, 4GB of memory, massive 1TB of storage, featuring the latest powerful and versatile Fusion processor from Advanced Micro Devices, offering superior performance, stunning graphics, all at an nice affordable package, the perfect gift for Christmas...' see its not hard at all!
and the point of superior performance and stunning graphics are both true and very valid points!
have seen a couple of Advanced Micro Devices mentions in written media, like adds in the newspaper for example and their badge on the TV a few times on other adverts, but surely they must understand how powerful marketing is? to sound like the devils advocate a bit to beat Intel they must beat them at their own game, Llano and Trinity give them the perfect attack point against Intel and they aren't exploiting that since Llano beats Intel offerings in that market quite nicely, Trinity is quite a bit better than Llano so should do even better, exploit it for crying out loud!
'this smart laptop with impressive battery life, 4GB of memory, massive 1TB of storage, featuring the latest powerful and versatile Fusion processor from Advanced Micro Devices, offering superior performance, stunning graphics, all at an nice affordable package, the perfect gift for Christmas...' see its not hard at all!
and the point of superior performance and stunning graphics are both true and very valid points!When i made the point that part of amd's problem in the past was complete lack of advertising in popular media i got shouted down by some on here and had JF-AMD talking about whether i wanted them to spend a billion on cpu development or a billion on advertising 
. They do have to get a presence in the popular culture and become known by more then just enthusiasts and bargain hunters but they seem to have an allergy to doing it not sure why.
All that said though as it stands right now if they were well known the net would be full of complaints about them not being able to supply the product so maybe there is logic to their reasoning afterall as they rarely seem to have volume until well into a products release life. I said before i sometimes get the feeling amd are quite happy to be number two and don't seem to push themselves like they once seemed to to alter that maybe it is just me
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. They do have to get a presence in the popular culture and become known by more then just enthusiasts and bargain hunters but they seem to have an allergy to doing it not sure why.All that said though as it stands right now if they were well known the net would be full of complaints about them not being able to supply the product so maybe there is logic to their reasoning afterall as they rarely seem to have volume until well into a products release life. I said before i sometimes get the feeling amd are quite happy to be number two and don't seem to push themselves like they once seemed to to alter that maybe it is just me
.indeed, know your frustrations all too well, K8 was a world beater and had Intel potentially by the nut-sack but they never went for the jugular back then, imagine how much market share K8 could have bought them with better marketing, if people knew who they were, did everything Prescott did but better, cheaper, cooler and using less power, win win win situation!
they have the same thing going right now, Trinity is potentially another world beater by them and it will dominate the market its intended to enter, Intel just aren't competitive in that respect but without marketing nobody is going to know that, it'll be the same old 'Intel Inside' dominating as per usual, which is a damned shame! well aware they have limited resources but sometimes one has to take a leap of faith, put all your eggs in one basket, take an educated risk, they would have to put some cash into marketing Trinity but with better brand awareness I think it would work out well for them in the long run.
same thing goes will Bulldozer, fair enough its not performing where it should be at the moment, but it has an absolute ton of room for improvement, the architecture is sound and isn't the problem, manufacturing can and will improve and so will instructions/cycle I am sure, little tweaks here and there. if B3 comes out with some tweaks and gets the instructions/cycle to what they originally expected then Bulldozer will go from being as Intel fans say 'the worse processor in history...' to an incredibly competitive product, but again without brand awareness because of lack of marketing who is going to know about this, 99 out of 100 users don't read reviews, don't care about benchmarks, they just want a good processor for good price, but at the moment as far as the majority of the market is concerned there is only Intel.
they have the same thing going right now, Trinity is potentially another world beater by them and it will dominate the market its intended to enter, Intel just aren't competitive in that respect but without marketing nobody is going to know that, it'll be the same old 'Intel Inside' dominating as per usual, which is a damned shame! well aware they have limited resources but sometimes one has to take a leap of faith, put all your eggs in one basket, take an educated risk, they would have to put some cash into marketing Trinity but with better brand awareness I think it would work out well for them in the long run.
same thing goes will Bulldozer, fair enough its not performing where it should be at the moment, but it has an absolute ton of room for improvement, the architecture is sound and isn't the problem, manufacturing can and will improve and so will instructions/cycle I am sure, little tweaks here and there. if B3 comes out with some tweaks and gets the instructions/cycle to what they originally expected then Bulldozer will go from being as Intel fans say 'the worse processor in history...' to an incredibly competitive product, but again without brand awareness because of lack of marketing who is going to know about this, 99 out of 100 users don't read reviews, don't care about benchmarks, they just want a good processor for good price, but at the moment as far as the majority of the market is concerned there is only Intel.
I am looking forward to see what they manage to do with b3 and hope it gets bd back where it is supposed to be because if it doesn't not sure amd will challenge in the near to mid future. I do have an inkling for the underdog and also not very happy with some of intels corporate dealings which makes me reluctant to buy their products but at the end of the day i want the best for my budget and if that is an intel then i will buy it. Would be nice to see amd putting up some sort of fight advertising wise as the whole "intel inside" campaign has worked brilliantly for intel and shows how a decent ad can put you into a good position even if your products don't merit it as was the case with p4.
1 rule of a marketing/advertising:
a poor product with excellent marketing
will outsell
a fantastic product with poor marketing
A company should spend big part of their total budget on marketing/sales teams & employees.
In terms of marketing/advertising, for me, Apple are in a different league to everybody else. No one else even comes close. As a result they are the biggest tech company in the World, by market value - this would not have been possible without their slick marketing campaigns.
Marketing/advertising is the life-blood of any company. Unfortunately, AMD do not seem to share this philosophy. Perhaps they have a good reason.
a poor product with excellent marketing
will outsell
a fantastic product with poor marketing
A company should spend big part of their total budget on marketing/sales teams & employees.
In terms of marketing/advertising, for me, Apple are in a different league to everybody else. No one else even comes close. As a result they are the biggest tech company in the World, by market value - this would not have been possible without their slick marketing campaigns.
Marketing/advertising is the life-blood of any company. Unfortunately, AMD do not seem to share this philosophy. Perhaps they have a good reason.
read a very in depth review of Bulldozer the other day (shocking I know, since it showed its not a bad processor!), where the reviewer under-volted the processor, so it was running stock frequencies at 1.10V, bringing load Wattage down to 102W for the processor, down from 136W which is drop of 34W which is pretty good, brings it down to under that of a Phenom II X4 970.
so like I keep saying time and time again on here, there is stacks of room for improvement. there are a ton of people reporting the same thing with Llano based processors, with them running perfectly fine with lower voltage, think this again (for the millionth time) points toward manufacturing issues more than anything. also some indication that Bulldozer does well when all of its instructions are used, rather than un-used like in Cinebench and various other programs, just goes to show what optimisation can do for a product.
so like I keep saying time and time again on here, there is stacks of room for improvement. there are a ton of people reporting the same thing with Llano based processors, with them running perfectly fine with lower voltage, think this again (for the millionth time) points toward manufacturing issues more than anything. also some indication that Bulldozer does well when all of its instructions are used, rather than un-used like in Cinebench and various other programs, just goes to show what optimisation can do for a product.
Caporegime
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That's a biased view there Gashman.
You can undervolt the Phenom II X4 970. It should be better than the Phenom II's by default.
Same as the 2500k was better than its replaced part ; i5 750/760.
You can undervolt the Phenom II X4 970. It should be better than the Phenom II's by default.
Same as the 2500k was better than its replaced part ; i5 750/760.
Caporegime
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BD FX8150 240 on site.
Brilliant price /sarcasm
Brilliant price /sarcasm
Soldato
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BD FX8150 240 on site.
Brilliant price /sarcasm
if you search you can find it £40 cheaper and the fx8120 also £30 cheaper
Caporegime
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if you search you can find it £40 cheaper and the fx8120 also £30 cheaper
Oh indeed.
But a lot of etailors don't even seem to have the FX8's on site.
how the hell is it biased? all I said was it can be under-volt to bring wattage down, which is what so many people are whining about endlessly. you can under-volt most processors to get better power consumption figures, there is nothing biased about that...
also again totally unbiased is that it does well in applications that make use of its instructions rather than leave them sitting there doing nothing, anything that uses AVX or XOP tends to perform well on Bulldozer, again not biased just based on reviews I have read. don't quite understand where the bias in that is? also never said its performance was fantastic compared to previous generation either, neither ever recommended that someone buy the processor in its current form over competitors or previous generation.