AMD Bulldozer Finally!

davester85 · 28 Mar 2011 at 02:51

i jnow that bulldozer will require an am3+ motherboard, but was looking at the bios utilitys for my formula iv on the asus website and theres a beta test bios for testing am3+ support. Does that mean that the formula iv may be am3+ compatible or are there reasons thats not possible?

JF-AMD · 28 Mar 2011 at 11:44

That is a question for Asus, not AMD. We are only supporting Bulldozer in AM3+ sockets.

NqR · 28 Mar 2011 at 12:40

JF-AMD said:
Why is everything supposedly optimized for quad core today?

!!!
Almost nothing is optimized for quad core today.

Imo quad core is going to be the sweet spot for the next couple of years.
(The sweet spot today is dual core btw)

Fonz-Valo · 28 Mar 2011 at 13:03

NqR said:
!!!
Almost nothing is optimized for quad core today.

Imo quad core is going to be the sweet spot for the next couple of years.
(The sweet spot today is dual core btw)

I always thought the sweet spot at the moment is tri-core? i'm basing this off old reviews of the X3 720 cpu btw....

jms198 · 28 Mar 2011 at 13:27

Distributed computing and video encoding make me want more cores.

ghutchison14078 · 28 Mar 2011 at 13:45

martynpd said:
also the FX was L.L.LLLLLUDICOUSLY expensive

My last rig was an FX-62 based system...really good cpu at the time.

Cooper · 28 Mar 2011 at 13:59

Fonz-Valo said:
I always thought the sweet spot at the moment is tri-core?

It is....for games anyway, my unlocked Tri core 550 @3.6Ghz, runs games amazingly well, in Bad Company 2 that 1 extra core gives me an extra 12-20fps, compared to an extra 14-23fps in quad core mode.

So 3 cores gives me 80-90% of the performance of a quad....its why, now i wouldnt upgrade to anything less than a 6 core Phenom II or wait for a 6 core Bulldozer, which i think will be the perfect CPU for Battlefield 3....

dustofnations · 28 Mar 2011 at 14:33

zoomee said:
Evidenced by my statement regarding 64bit OS's for a start.
Also look at Crysis 2 - Four cores fully utilised - no more. Whys this?
We all know about intel and they're dodgy practices - Do I need to say more?

the Xbox 360 actually uses the triple-core IBM designed Xenon as its CPU

Right, so in the case of games-console ported software it would be logical that it was optimised for the fewer cores. What you're saying isn't evidence, it is a sweeping generalisation based upon observations from a few cases.

Multi-threaded code is difficult to write, it is hard to often difficult to predict the loads that each thread will cause. Furthermore, many large multi-threaded applications have _many_ more threads than cores at a given moment, but they may exist only transiently. Just because you have more threads does not mean they will fully load the processor(s).

Furthermore, look at Amdahl's law, the nature of many tasks in games are _not_ embarrassingly parallel - so you can make certain elements as parallel as possible but you will always inevitably have to wait for some sequential tasks to complete first (on a single core).

Threading also has an overhead (intra-thread communication, mutual exclusion, context switching), so adding a highly threaded implementation has performance costs - particularly for those with fewer cores because context switching is fairly expensive. So if you know that most of your market has 4 cores, and you are looking for ultimate performance (i.e. do as much with the resources you have), then it would make sense to subdivide appropriately.

Techniques for dynamic threading are improving, but this has to be offset by the cost of the mechanisms that implement the threading, the cost of spawning/destroying/managing threads.

It isn't as simple as you think, more threads does not automatically equal more overall performance.

I think you're looking for conspiracy where there isn't any, and unfortunately no matter what I say I suspect you'll be convinced otherwise. Just consider all of the factors that make it difficult: Amdahl's law, having to support multiple platforms (many of which have a guaranteed number of cores), overheads for implementing threading (especially dynamic threading), increased testing complexity, highest performance for the majority of users, ...

Really, I think Intel wouldn't artificially want developers to artificially limit parallelism, because they would be cutting off their own nose to spite their face in the long run.

hth

zoomee · 28 Mar 2011 at 14:49

Your probably about 4 posts behind (responding to my quote) but nice informative post mate - Thanks for the info.

Gaming was just an example - yes I can agree that more cores don't guarantee scaling in games - but this doesn't count in the endless other scenarios pc's are used for. GPU will always remain king in games. In everything else its CPU.

And I suppose I could argue that Intel was monopolising the market (evidenced by all the countries taking them to court, AMD pay-off etc) - hence where the industry bias to support the 'popular' cpu's stems from.

But hey ho - I concurr my opinion with silversurfer - its an industry bias.

And someone tell JF-AMD that Vinyl IS better than CD - Let me hear your CD crack and pop like my records lol

JeditOjanen · 28 Mar 2011 at 15:10

zoomee said:
And someone tell JF-AMD that Vinyl IS better than CD - Let me hear your CD crack and pop like my records lol

Sticking a fork in this side-debate: vinyl provides superior sound quality to CD at the very highest level of reproduction, but at lower equipment levels, and certainly at the level that is to be found in mass use, digital is equal to or better than analogue. People don't use the top level of analogue gear because cost of equipment rises geometrically while quality of output rises linearly, and digital equipment is always cheaper than analogue.

We now return you to your regular scheduled bashing of Intel for making better processors than AMD.

silversurfer · 28 Mar 2011 at 15:14

Side side note, they used to make records from black beatle hides

6 cores for BF3 would be ridiculous. 4 cores will be it for a long time I think, 4+1 will be nice to handle windows in the background maybe but actually giving a benefit to the small elite who have 6 I think is unlikely in most games.

I believe its actually quite hard to get multiple separate but complimentary threads going that would split 6 ways equally.
In theory all programs should scale great but apparently its more like juggling

A progression from 2+1 cores average to 4+1 would be quite noticeable enough I guess

I was playing with throttlestop which adjusts the cpu multipler every second to the workload.
It has superpi test that will vary threads from 1 to 16 and my lil duo core does much better already with 16 threads rather then 2 so maybe everyone will benefit

I anticipate bf3 engine demands being similar to crysis 2

Gashman · 28 Mar 2011 at 16:32

also worth saying JF didn't say CD was superior to vinyl, he simply said 'technology moves on', and he is completely right. times chance, fair enough vinyl can sound better than CD, but its a more or less dead and buried technology. I personally thing that CDs are a dying technology as well, in favour of solid state devices like flash memory, what would you prefer a big vinyl record or a tiny memory card holding thousands of tracks, the size of your fingernail..! isn't technology wonderful!

hux · 28 Mar 2011 at 16:34

Oh trust me bf3 will be beyond cry engine 2, it was intentionally dumbed down as the console boys cried about not being able to play it.

Crysis 2 is bit of a let down, least for me the eye candy is the original crysis far surpasses it imo.

Plus they were paid NOT to have dx11 work unless it's running a 590, sad as that is.

Gashman · 28 Mar 2011 at 16:39

hux said:
Oh trust me bf3 will be beyond cry engine 2, it was intentionally dumbed down as the console boys cried about not being able to play it.

Crysis 2 is bit of a let down, least for me the eye candy is the original crysis far surpasses it imo.

Plus they were paid NOT to have dx11 work unless it's running a 590, sad as that is.

thats entirely a rumour, and i find it hard to compare the two. would much rather play Crysis II than the original, as much as i enjoyed the original. the second feels like a much much more complete, thought out and polished game, plus the graphics aren't remotely far behind, which ain't bad considering they use 'presets' which were terrible in the original Crysis as well, once you start messing with the CVARs you'll understand how potent Cryengine3 really is, don't doubt for a second it can be almost photo-realistic if your willing to put the effort in, from Cryteks point of view there is no need to do it, it alienates too many potential customers by 'speccing it' out of the market, like the original game.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 28 Mar 2011 at 16:56

AFAIK,a DX11 patch is being released for Crysis 2 this week.

Vince · 28 Mar 2011 at 17:12

Liquid said:
Intel quad's cores perform better than the six cores amd's because they are faster ipc wise and amd are playing to their only strength, price. As for intel forcing the market to go quad core software wise, that's complete rubbish. Even now full quad core usage in software is not as high as it should be.

Gaming wise nothing is using 6-core properly, just a token effort really when you look at usage in-game, for the very few games that can take advantage of it. Lets look at your bad company 2, the six cores may make a difference but they are still slower than competing intel quad core cpu's.

In terms of dedicated 6 core usage, are you seriously trying to say that the 1090t is anywhere near the 980x because it isn't. I know it's a lot more money and shouldn't be close anyway.

More cores for less money means absolutely nothing if the software is not following suit, as more cores for less money means lower performing cores individually, and if a program can't fully utilise all cores, where is the benefit. You end up with a six core running mostly on 4 core usage and slower to boot.

The only time I considered amd to be innovative was when they released the Athlon64 as you say. tbh this is the only example I can think of, and it came out in 2003, doesn't say a lot for innovation at amd now does it, given that was 8 years ago.

Dude you picked apart the rest of this guys argument but skipped over anything about virtualization which is possibly the strongest argument for buying a Phenom x6 right now. Virtulization... where more cores for less money = thumbs up

zoomee · 28 Mar 2011 at 17:39

Gashman said:
also worth saying JF didn't say CD was superior to vinyl, he simply said 'technology moves on', and he is completely right. times chance, fair enough vinyl can sound better than CD, but its a more or less dead and buried technology. I personally thing that CDs are a dying technology as well, in favour of solid state devices like flash memory, what would you prefer a big vinyl record or a tiny memory card holding thousands of tracks, the size of your fingernail..! isn't technology wonderful!

LOL - easy now fellas - I was only playing with JF-AMD!

hux · 28 Mar 2011 at 19:14

Won't spec my machine out, i have a 5970

As for how good it looks, well i am going from the very brief dx9 demo i played, and i felt very let down by it, the original had far more realism granted this with a ccc mod to get the most from it.

I'll have a nose around and see what it's worth, i heard the storyline is the opposite, as it's meant to get good when the aliens show up.

Plus i know there's a mod pack already out to add a bit more realism, meh i'll give it a try but that dx11 patch turning up had better be good, or i won't be a happy bunny.

Gashman said:
thats entirely a rumour, and i find it hard to compare the two. would much rather play Crysis II than the original, as much as i enjoyed the original. the second feels like a much much more complete, thought out and polished game, plus the graphics aren't remotely far behind, which ain't bad considering they use 'presets' which were terrible in the original Crysis as well, once you start messing with the CVARs you'll understand how potent Cryengine3 really is, don't doubt for a second it can be almost photo-realistic if your willing to put the effort in, from Cryteks point of view there is no need to do it, it alienates too many potential customers by 'speccing it' out of the market, like the original game.

JF-AMD · 28 Mar 2011 at 19:50

Beta was better quality than VHS. But VHS could actually record for longer, so it won.

I think vinly sounds "warmer" but only on high end equipment.

More than technology marching on, the mass market dictates technology, not as much being "superior."

So if dual core is where it is at, why so many quads sold? Headroom, room for growth. When you buy today, having a few more cores to say that you don't have to buy a new processor in a year is valuable.

Liquid · 28 Mar 2011 at 19:53

VinceB1 said:
Dude you picked apart the rest of this guys argument but skipped over anything about virtualization which is possibly the strongest argument for buying a Phenom x6 right now. Virtulization... where more cores for less money = thumbs up

That was the only part of his statement that seemed factually correct to me, and if that's the biggest argument people can make for the 6-core cpu, then that's sad really, because in most circumstances, even with the 6-cores, it is slower.

I looked at getting an amd 6-core for my recent upgrade and tbh I found it extremely underwhelming and the sandybridge 4-cores take it apart. I occasionally use vm's but for my use the intel's were still quicker, given they tend to be 1 at a time for me.

4-core cpu's will be mainstream for years yet, and single core performance is still very important too and if that weren't the case, then why is bulldozer designed to split single threads between cores/modules