AMD Bulldozer Finally!

[Martini1991]

AMD are giving more cores to the masses, Intel offer the same amount of cores currently, but they're at a premium, because they have no competition at the high end.

????

^^

Although, Intel offer more threads too. Just again, at a premium.
Though, I didn't see anything "rofl worthy".

 

[gareth170]

Indeed, I'm just taking into account the current playing field.
However, how easy is it for games to be coded to take advantage of more cores?

i guess theyed have to have more pc only games

 

[Cooper]

I didn't see anything "rofl worthy".

It's just the idea that AMD have 'years' left in the CPU business...AMD wont survive if it has to wait for the games/apps to catch up with their tech.

Lurking over the horizon are Intel's next gen CPU's and then ARM start parking their tanks on the lawn.

AMD needs to keep people like me buying their CPU's to survive, and based on those benchmarks, they've lost me.

 

[FrenchTart]

It's just the idea that AMD have 'years' left in the CPU business...AMD wont survive if it has to wait for the games/apps to catch up with their tech.

Lurking over the horizon are Intel's next gen CPU's and then ARM start parking their tanks on the lawn.

AMD needs to keep people like me buying their CPU's to survive, and based on those benchmarks, they've lost me.

It's pretty rofl-worthy that you think that AMD *don't* have years left in the business.

They've had worse products than Intel the majority of their life as a business and yet they're still here.

I doubt they need people like you (or me) to buy their products. We're not the normal consumer or hosting massive server farms.

 

[gareth170]

if amd was "losing" people wouldn't be buying they products even now, but people are.

theres a big % of people out there that don't really understand about performance or just want system to work and not bothered whats inside or wants a good low price setup.

 

[Trunks9486]

Did anyone expect AMD to make up for the huge IPC deficit they have? They will close the gap a bit but thats it.

It MAY be a winner if its highly overclockable + its in theory better at multi threaded apps.

 

[Bleek]

If anything I thought AMD had taken market share from Intel in the past few years?

 

[LeJosh]

As an entire business AMD are going no where.

The doom sayers in here is quite funny.

 

[SeeKified]

Fellow PCSX2 user ?
I know Deneb didn't have SSSE3 or SSE4.
However, IIRC, BD has AVX?

In the instruction sets, I'm sure I've seen SSSE3 and SSE4 for BD, though I could be wrong.

AVX should be interesting for emulation, however at the moment I wouldn't move from SB to BD for emulation.

There's a lot of rumours on BD's IPC, some claim it's lower than Deneb due to the design, similar to netburst (High clocks to offset lower than previous generation IPC)

Not that I believe them.

Indeed, I run PCSX2 and Dolphin. Both of which benefit greatly from these instruction sets (Dolphin can use AVX in some builds, not sure about PCSX2). I think Bulldozer supports SSE4.1 and SSE4.2, but not the same "4.0" that Intel supports and that PCSX2's core uses. They'll hopefully implement support for these new instruction sets in PCSX2 in the future though.

If Zambezi has the IPC of Netburst, then I'm definitely going Intel for my next upgrade. AMD likes many cores, fair enough, but when quantity is placed above quality, it's time for a do-over. Just because you can put many cores on the silicon doesn't mean you should put many bad cores on the silicon. (Note: I'm not saying BD would be "bad" if this was the case, I'm just saying it wouldn't be as good as it could be).

Cooper: Yeah, that's what I thought. It's still an improvement, but... yeah. Emulation is some taxing stuff, and the emulation cores will only become more accurate (and therefore heavier) as we go along. Instruction set support only buys you so much in the end.

 

[wannabedamned]

Did anyone expect AMD to make up for the huge IPC deficit they have? They will close the gap a bit but thats it.

Who's to say IPC wont be better than Sandy on release? I'm not saying it will be, But why is that so set in stone for you that it will fall short?

If you're going off past releases, that's always a silly thing to do when discussing hardware.

 

[Martini1991]

Indeed, I run PCSX2 and Dolphin. Both of which benefit greatly from these instruction sets (Dolphin can use AVX in some builds, not sure about PCSX2). I think Bulldozer supports SSE4.1 and SSE4.2, but not the same "4.0" that Intel supports and that PCSX2's core uses. They'll hopefully implement support for these new instruction sets in PCSX2 in the future though.

If Zambezi has the IPC of Netburst, then I'm definitely going Intel for my next upgrade. AMD likes many cores, fair enough, but when quantity is placed above quality, it's time for a do-over. Just because you can put many cores on the silicon doesn't mean you should put many bad cores on the silicon. (Note: I'm not saying BD would be "bad" if this was the case, I'm just saying it wouldn't be as good as it could be).

Cooper: Yeah, that's what I thought. It's still an improvement, but... yeah. Emulation is some taxing stuff, and the emulation cores will only become more accurate (and therefore heavier) as we go along. Instruction set support only buys you so much in the end.

You might have misunderstood.

I didn't say IPC of netburst .

I meant there's a rumour they've applied the similar strategy, that is lower IPC for higher clocks.

So, lower IPC than Deneb, but higher clocks.

But I don't believe that, it is however one of the rumours doing the run.

 

[SeeKified]

You might have misunderstood.

I didn't say IPC of netburst .

I meant there's a rumour they've applied the similar strategy, that is lower IPC for higher clocks.

So, lower IPC than Deneb, but higher clocks.

But I don't believe that, it is however one of the rumours doing the run.

Right, that makes more sense. Nevertheless, like I certainly hope that's not the case. AMD have been good at energy efficiency so far, it would be a shame to break that trend now.

 

[Martini1991]

Every leaked benchmark which has been called fake showed lower IPC than Deneb.
That could have just been the crippled ES which led to the rumour.
Retail could have IPC better than SB, but I doubt it, although I'd love it to be true.

 

[Final8y]

This is true in a sense, but using a fact to prove a false point. Server parts aren't easier to produce due to lower clock speeds, they have lower clockspeeds largely to hit the TDP's they need, IE stick 2 octo cores together with 4.2Ghz turbo and you'll blow any tdp budget you want, also they are targeting cloud servers and all kinds of servers which generally prefer threads over clockspeed.

They are the same chips, they need to hit a certain TDP points to enable them to produce a lower tdp at the lower clock speed.

You knew my point.

And its is easier to hit a TDP and stabilty at lower clock than it is at higher clock for the same silicon.

Both heat and stability are the most important factors for servers.

Most home users & the average consumer don't have the luxury of multi socket servers so the reliance is on a single chip so more is required from that single chip and a higher clock made be required to get satisfactory results.

Its not false to say bugatti veyron is faster than a mini metro because i didn't go into the details of why, when i was not asked why.

The explanation of what something is and why something is does not have to go and in hand unless its asked or its important to do so.

 

[Martini1991]

I got to admit, I've just been looking at the CH V, and it's lane spacing is a hell of a lot better than my Maximus IV Extreme's, I'm half tempted to get one.

So AMD's boards are quite a lot better.

 

[Predicament]

Have benchmarks been released?

 

[Martini1991]

Have benchmarks been released?

Nope.

 

[Trunks9486]

Who's to say IPC wont be better than Sandy on release? I'm not saying it will be, But why is that so set in stone for you that it will fall short?

If you're going off past releases, that's always a silly thing to do when discussing hardware.

AMD said that they have shifted focus from single threaded performance to multi threaded performance.

Given that Intel (with a lot more cash spent on R&D) have not found it easy to increase IPC (each revision usually gives about 5-10% increase depending on benchmark) then the less focused AMD will probably not be able to match Sandy.

Believe me, i would love to be proven wrong. The market is boring right now and it has been since the release of Conroe (how long has it been now? 5 years?)

 

[Martini1991]

I think AMD are going massively on the aggressive pricing wise.

While they won't offer the same IPC imo, I'm going to say the amount of bang per buck should be pretty impressive.

Maybe enough to make me switch back

 

[two00lbwaster]

What do you think the IPC will be like when compared to Phenom II parts? I'm very much into emulation, and that's a definite area where threading does not help one bit. At the moment SB is much better for emulation, partly because of better IPC but also because of SSSE3 and SSE4 support, something which I'm told even Zambezi won't support?

Fellow PCSX2 user ?
I know Deneb didn't have SSSE3 or SSE4.
However, IIRC, BD has AVX?

In the instruction sets, I'm sure I've seen SSSE3 and SSE4 for BD, though I could be wrong.

Deneb supports SSE 3 and 4a

Thuban the same too.

And FX processors will have SSE 3, 3S(??), 4.0a, 4.1 & 4.2 support, however, not 4.0 which is currently only in Intel chips (may not be the case as my interest is limited to the big two). Lack of 4.0 support will be an issue for you if the emulater uses an Intel compiler.

Edit: Regarding IPC
If AMD IPC for Bulldozer is some 20% higher clock for clock than Thuban they could make up some of the rest of the difference between itself and S.B. with higher clock speeds. However, we know how S.B. overclocks so you'd need a monster overclock from the FX line on air to come close to matching it in the overclocking stakes.

Currently I'm on an i7-950 and I can't see me upgrading to anything else for a few years. Until something like I.B.-E comes out with 8 cores for <£200 and I can get a motherboard for <£150 Intel will likely be too expensive and AMD unlikely to convincingly beat the performance to be worth the upgrade.