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Official Bulldozer Reviews

mmj_uk said:
Probably so that they can disable L3 cache in cheaper 4 and 6 core variants. That way they can still sell chips that were manufactured with faulty L3 cache, if it were one big 8MB chunk they would have to sell all of them with 8MB L3 and any faulty chips would have to be discarded instead of sold as a cheaper variant.

Poorly manufactured Phenom X4's with one big chunk had to be sold as Athlons with L3 cache disabled completely, that was probably quite wasteful once yields improved.
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but the 4 and 6 core versions all have 8MB L3 cache also
 
So my questions are:-

If its optimised for windows 8 when windows 7 is the norm and 8 probably wont be out for another 9-12 months, was it forward thinking or just a total balls up?

The GPU bottle neck situation, is it really that bad?

Is the architecture flawed or does it just need "tweaking"?

Tony:)
 
TB1968 said:
If its optimised for windows 8 when windows 7 is the norm and 8 probably wont be out for another 9-12 months, was it forward thinking or just a total balls up?
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For me, it's a balls up, AMD have publically been speaking about Bulldozer since about 2005/6 so this isn't something that's just happened overnight. These should either have been talking to Microsoft to get support in Windows 7, either from release or even just an update before release. The same thing happened when the X2 was released, eventually a dual core processor patch was released.

TB1968 said:
The GPU bottle neck situation, is it really that bad?
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For me, it's underhand tactics from AMD to ask reviewers to use a series of gaming benchmarks that make the GPU a bottleneck regardless of what CPU is used, the good reviewers were fairly open about this and some even threw in comparison benchmarks with other, older CPUs to show that they all performed the same in these benchmarks.

TB1968 said:
Is the architecture flawed or does it just need "tweaking"?
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I don't think the architecture is flawed, more that the process it's based on didn't live upto expectations. Though it does have a worrying Netburst feel about it to be honest. AMD had two options, make the IPC higher, or make the clock rate higher. The easy choice is to go for a higher clock rate, especially when you have no where near the design resources of your competitor.
 
Revised stepping should see higher clocks and better power consumption which should push the performance above previous gen chips.

I think we're losing a big chunck of performance from the lack of cache L1 & L3 compared to Phenom II, and a bump in stock CPU-NB speeds should also give another small boost which should be fairly simple given most C3 Phenom IIs we're happy at 2.4ghz CPU-NB so that should be doable while keeping the extra heat etc down on BD/PD
 
have my CPU-NB running at 2.8GHZ here no worries, running water though so temperature isn't a concern, at stock speeds it gives an impressive performance increase in some applications, it never slows things down, it is always an increasing trend rather than the opposite! also RAM timings seem to affect performance, with tighter timings and higher CPU-NB speed seems to give even better gains again, maybe as much as 15% in some applications since I got a fairly healthy boost in Starcraft II, so I think that if they could be bothered there is much more potential in K10.5 to be honest, from a pure execution point of view it should trade blows with Sandy Bridge without much trouble, its held back by slow L3 and Intel have a healthy advantage in branch prediction, plus their process is way more mature and more efficient, those sorts of things add upto the 30 or so % increase in IPC between K10.5 and Intel current offerings! :eek:
 
aln said:
I'm one of those hardcore competitive gamer types who demands minimum FPS over 100, but I'm not confident that the Intel CPUs wouldl offer much real world value beyond what I'd get from AMD today
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If you want minimum FPS over 100 I would say you are probably the posterboy for Intel (this isn't a jibe, I probably fall into the same category as I'm extremely sensitive to framerates), you are exactly the sort of case where SB will shine because minimum FPS will often be dictated by the slowest thread maxing out the single core that is processing it, and that threshold will get hit much sooner on AMD. As a hardcore competitive gamer you will likely be running with relatively low graphics settings which again increases the cpu limitation and makes BD look weak.

When it comes to real world value I guess it comes down to cost; Intel may not be massively faster, but it isn't massively more expensive either. Personally I'd choose a 2500K over 8120 given the choice.
 
Why, why why? AMDelilah? :(

I was expecting the FX-8150 to be the i7's equal. Near enough similar performance but with a price low enough to destroy it. I'm disappointed it isn't and also because for once I backed an underdog that let me down.

My choice has been made for me. Intel. But i5 or i7?
 
If it's optimised for windows 8, I'm surprised none of the reviewers benchmarked it with that to make a real comparison against sandybridge, considering lots of people have already installed windows 8 preview.
 
HangTime said:
If you want minimum FPS over 100 I would say you are probably the posterboy for Intel (this isn't a jibe, I probably fall into the same category as I'm extremely sensitive to framerates), you are exactly the sort of case where SB will shine because minimum FPS will often be dictated by the slowest thread maxing out the single core that is processing it, and that threshold will get hit much sooner on AMD. As a hardcore competitive gamer you will likely be running with relatively low graphics settings which again increases the cpu limitation and makes BD look weak.

When it comes to real world value I guess it comes down to cost; Intel may not be massively faster, but it isn't massively more expensive either. Personally I'd choose a 2500K over 8120 given the choice.
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That was my point, I am a poster boy for Intel because I'd rather play with low graphics and high FPS, but I'm honestly not convinced this matters as I believe both types will offer me minimum frames above my specified max_fps settings. Given that, if I was giving a straight choice between the 8120 and the 2500k, I actually think the AMD CPU could be the better choice today*, whilst the future is a gamble between whether newer tech games will react better to more threads, or better ST performance.

On the other hand, price removed from the equation, there is simply not competition for a 2600k, which is a CPU AMD realistically don't have an answer too at the moment. I was actually hoping for more from AMD, but just because they haven't made a slam dunk doesn't mean the question at the 2500k price point is an open and shut case. Neither offering has convinced me to part with my money.

* The only benches I've seen are those of the 8150. I may completely change my mind when I actually see 8120 benches.
 
aln said:
the future is a gamble between whether newer tech games will react better to more threads, or better ST performance.
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I don't view it is as a gamble because in the realistic lifetime of these cpus (for enthusiasts demanding high minimum fps), I simply can't see there being such a drastic seachange in how technology adresses multicore processors.

For an octacore to offer tangible benefits over a quadcore in terms of minimum framerates, this would effectively mean that you would have to have extremely well balanced load on cpu threads, which is something that is extremely difficult to achieve. It is pretty much a given that you are going to be bottlenecked by something sooner or later when it comes to gaming, especially when you consider that Intel has quadcore meaning that even if you do some real top notch code and manage to get say 3 really well balanced demanding threads, they will still be the bottleneck leaving the remaining 1 core (Intel) or 5 cores (AMD) to handle the weedy stuff. It's a bit more complicated than that because Intel cores are more powerful anyway.

Yes there may be a few exceptions to the rule, such as games where the primary cpu drain is AI (e.g. SupCom) as that lends itself very well to distributed threads, but games with heavy AI processing are usually SP games rather than competitive multiplayer as we are talking here.

When you factor in that consoles currently don't have a huge number of cores this will further dissuade massive investment in engine optimisations for more than 4 cpu cores over the next couple of years. I just can't see us having a situation where BD will consistently be giving better min fps in competitive online gaming until at least 2014 by which point chances are something better will have come along anyway.
 
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