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HD 7970: Bulldozer vs. Sandy Bridge vs. Nehalem

RavenXXX2

RavenXXX2

RavenXXX2

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It looks like the clear winner of our little skirmish is Intel's "Sandy Bridge" Core i5-2500K. The processor has a significant performance advantage over our other contenders thanks to the combination between an efficient microarchitecture, high clock speed and Turbo Boost. At our lowest resolution of 1024x768 we see about 20% improved framerates when compared to the i7-920 and the AMD FX-8150. However, as resolution increases, and our tests become more GPU limited than CPU limited, the performance lead shrinks to below 10%, which is still noteworthy.

When looking at AMD's Bulldozer at low resolutions, which is where each CPU can prove its worth, we see the FX-8150 showing more weakness than strength, despite its eight CPU cores. That does not mean that Bulldozer is hopeless for gaming. Once resolution and AA is cranked up, even the fast HD 7970 GPU becomes the limiting factor in most games and we see very decent performance. Unfortunately platform cost of the Bulldozer setup is similar or higher when compared to the Intel 2500K which does offer better performance overall. In its current state Bulldozer is a very tough sale to any member of the gaming crowd. I could imagine it being interesting for users who want to use other benefits of the platform, like multi GPU gaming with two graphics cards connected via PCI-Express x16 each - Sandy Bridge LGA 1155 supports only 2x x8. Another incentive for Bulldozer could be the native six SATA 6 Gbps ports with RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 support, which would make a hell of a server. Nevertheless, the average gamer is better off with Intel's LGA 1155 Sandy Bridge platform.
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http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970_CPU_Scaling/21.html
 
It was to be expected.

CPU manufacturers today need to strike a balance between individual core performance and the number of cores, AMD have simply gone too far in the number of cores direction and neglected the former.

Intel = 4-6 Harley Davidson's.
AMD = 8 mopeds.

:p
 
Well im currently running an old i7 920, i thought about sb. But then caught myself on. A costly sidegrade for little to no gain. And as i like to run multi gpu's it could actually be an ever so slight downgrade due to sli/xfire at x8. Yes, the difference is small between x8/x16, but its still a drop. So im better off sticking with what i have. Then upgrade when something with a signifigant performance increase comes along.
 
mmj_uk said:
It was to be expected.

CPU manufacturers today need to strike a balance between individual core performance and the number of cores, AMD have simply gone too far in the number of cores direction and neglected the former.

Intel = 4-6 Harley Davidson's.
AMD = 8 mopeds.

:p
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don't harley davidson's break down a lot ? :D
 
lrlcr said:
Wow, what a load of useless information. 29th december 2011:eek:

Slow news day or something?
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This is the second time i've seen a post like this from you. You sound like a right *****, how about you just do one. Especially if Processor comparisons dont interest you in the CPU section :rolleyes:
 
wannabedamned said:
This is the second time i've seen a post like this from you. You sound like a right *****, how about you just do one. Especially if Processor comparisons dont interest you in the CPU section :rolleyes:
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not really, its a completely useless review which both shows Bulldozer fastest at highest res in 3 or 4 different benchmarks, and that the difference between them at any resolution you'd ever use the cards for, you'd never, EVER notice the difference.

You can get a 8120 for £130 now, you can't get a 2500k for less than £155(afaik), and both offer the same gaming performance.

If you put a £70 quad core Phenom in there, same result, if you put a Q6600 in there and they were £100, actually not the same result, but overclocked to 3.4Ghz which they can all do, same result.

In some of those games a £100 i3 would give the same result, in a few it would actually drop off significantly with only 2 cores and importantly in the future the i3 WILL get left behind while a Bulldozer or 2500k won't.

Would be nice to have an unlocked/overclockable i3, would be nicer to have a 2300k quad core that is even cheaper but overclockable.

An octo core Piledriver around the £150 mark is likely to be a very very nice cpu for the money.
 
setter said:
Well im currently running an old i7 920, i thought about sb. But then caught myself on. A costly sidegrade for little to no gain. And as i like to run multi gpu's it could actually be an ever so slight downgrade due to sli/xfire at x8. Yes, the difference is small between x8/x16, but its still a drop. So im better off sticking with what i have. Then upgrade when something with a signifigant performance increase comes along.
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The main reason I bought a Sandy Bridge system was the native SATA 6Gb connections, though I did see some pretty nice increases since I was running my i7 930 system at stock and my Sandy Bridge is at 4.4GHz.
 
drunkenmaster, sometimes think that you might be the only other person on here who isn't blinded by the strong core argument.

mmj_uk, which delivers eight pizzas at different addresses faster, eight 'puny' mopeds are four Harley Davidson'? its all great looking at everything like its clear cut, but that isn't the case.

same thing applies to the following statement: two body builders or eight average people, there are things the body builders will do better, but there are things the average people will also do better, it depends entirely on the work.

the same thing applies to the people who constantly pick out 'low instructions per clock', irrelevant. instructions per clock means nothing without frequency, since Bulldozer is a frequency based design that will improve in the near future, get it to the 30% higher frequency that its supposed to be and we wouldn't be complaining. well no doubt people would still pick out the 'negatives' of the design and totally forget the positives.

also like Drunken said, you can get 8120 for £130, which should make it quite appealing to those not obsessed with 'strong cores', ~£25 cheaper than 2500K and the only thing the 2500K beats it at all the time is gaming, even then at artificial low resolutions. £105 for 6100 as well, which is cheaper than all the Phenom II X6 range, even though more times than not they beat the X6 and have tons of room for clocking. at the current prices like it or not Bulldozer isn't bad at all, especially if you set core affinity for games, as it should bring performance in the right direction. ;)
 
wannabedamned said:
This is the second time i've seen a post like this from you. You sound like a right *****, how about you just do one. Especially if Processor comparisons dont interest you in the CPU section :rolleyes:
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bit rough mate dont you think?
i dont think it was a personnal attack at raven or you.....
 
Gashman said:
mmj_uk, which delivers eight pizzas at different addresses faster, eight 'puny' mopeds are four Harley Davidson'? its all great looking at everything like its clear cut, but that isn't the case.
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yeah but the problem is most situations don't use all 8 cores, i'd rather have 4 Harley Davidsons doing the rounds than 4 mopeds when 90% of the time you have less than 4 deliveries to make at a time. In this case even when you get 8 deliveries to make the 4 faster bikes make the round in the same time as the 8 slower ones do.
 
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mmj_uk said:
yeah but the problem is most situations don't use all 8 cores, i'd rather have 4 Harley Davidsons doing the rounds than 4 mopeds when 90% of the time you have less than 4 deliveries to make at a time. In this case even when you get 8 deliveries to make the 4 faster bikes make the round in the same time as the 8 slower ones do.
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essentially that is in-fact the problem, the four more powerful bikes can't do the job faster if all the pizzas have to be at different places at the same time, only the eight bikes can achieve that task efficiently, but in the modern computing world for the most part there are only four pizzas getting dispatched at one time, rendering the 'potential' advantage a bit moot at the moment, even in those situations the lack of using the chips resources is also hampering the performance of the processor in some key aspects, gaming being one of those.

the single biggest problem the architecture faces and will face for the foreseeable future is making best use of its plus points, rather than its bad points, everyone is so keen to point out what aspects the architecture is lacking but forgets the fact it does have some positives to come from it. simple things like scheduling improvements will make a difference, hell noticed some weird stuff on mine so far, like core usage bouncing between cores for no apparent reason, stabilise that sort of thing and who knows, but at the end of the day that sort of thing is down to the code being ran, not what is running it. did very small amounts of messing around so far but there is genuine performance in these processors, its just finding it that is troublesome, sometimes you catch a glimpse of 'power' and other times it feels no different to my 1055T if that makes much sense. :confused:
 
I still don't understand your defense of these things though...
Yes, they might have some power if things are written to take advantage of them in future.
Like I keep saying though, we don't live in the future. Why would you buy one of these over a 2500K when the performance at present is worse? (Especially when you consider overclocking potential of both chips)
 
Quote from the link
"Our aging Core i7-920 is still doing respectably well. So if you still have a first-generation Core i7, there's no need for you to upgrade."

That just proves how good Intel make their chips.
 
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