AMD 'Bulldozer' FX CPU Reviews Arrive

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AMD 'Bulldozer' FX CPU Reviews Arrive

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday October 12, 2011 @12:12AM from the new-and-shiny dept.

I.M.O.G. writes "Today AMD lifted the embargo on their most recent desktop AMD FX architecture, code named Bulldozer, whose CPU frequency record Slashdot recently covered. The fruition of 6 years of AMD R&D, this new chip architecture is the most significant news out of AMD since the Phenom II made its debut. The chips are available now in all major retail outlets, and top tier hardware sites have published the first Bulldozer reviews already." Here are reviews from a few different sites — pick your favorite: Tom's Hardware, PC Perspective, Hot Hardware, [H]ardOCP, or TechSpot. They don't agree on everything, but the consensus seems to be that the new chips aren't blowing anyone's socks off, and that they struggle to compete with Intel's comparable offerings. The architecture shows promise, but performance gains will take time to materialize, making it difficult to leapfrog Intel to any significant degree.

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I skimmed a few... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-10-12 00:24 · Score: 2

And the comparisons seemed pretty much benchmarked performance based, with a side of price comparison. Fair enough, as these are pitched as 'enthusiast' parts; but left me wondering about one thing:

Of late, intel's somewhat confusing set of model numbers has been distinguished, in addition to differences in speed, by various features being lasered off of certain parts, but not others, mostly virtualization-related stuff. AMD generally left those on at all times and distinguished primarily by speed.

Does anybody have an idea how the price/performance comparisons change(if in fact they do) from the pure-benchmark ones given in TFAs, if the buyer requires that all the relevant virtualization features be enabled?
1. Re:I skimmed a few... by pankkake · 2011-10-12 00:36 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  All AMD CPUs allow ECC for instance, so if you require ECC memory it's much cheaper to go with AMD.
  
  --
  Kill all hipsters.
2. Re:I skimmed a few... by magamiako1 · 2011-10-12 00:44 · Score: 1
  
  As a whole you only see these features turned off if you use the lower end CPUs.
  
  The i7 2600K has all of the bells and whistles enabled. Except maybe ECC memory...
3. Re:I skimmed a few... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-10-12 00:46 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  This is partially the motherboard makers' fault, since they can generally scuttle such features in the BIOS even if enabled on die(laptop makers, in particular, seem to revel in doing this); but Intel's "VT-x", for various values of x, is a pit of confusion, and some of those VT-x's make a significant difference for VM workloads.
  
  It's of interest to me because my next build/config to order is likely to be primarily for VM hosting, with routine desktop/workstation tasks taken care of by the fact that modern CPUs are fast as hell. Unfortunately, a lot of the enthusiast benchmarks generally focus on running Medal Of Warfare fast and cheap, and the virtualization benchmarks generally start from the assumption that you are looking to buy a palletload of 1Us...
4. Re:I skimmed a few... by vlm · 2011-10-12 00:49 · Score: 1
  
  Does anybody have an idea how the price/performance comparisons change(if in fact they do) from the pure-benchmark ones given in TFAs, if the buyer requires that all the relevant virtualization features be enabled?
  If I were to set up a business to do this, to cut thru the incredibly frustrating marketing from both chip manufacturers in exchange for a small cut of the price, would I currently have any competition?
  The point of a confuse-opoly like CPUs or american cellphone contracts is to screw over the buyer by confusing them. Aside from screwing over the buyers, it also creates a business opportunity for someone to intermediate themselves while un-screw-up-ing the marketplace.
  The general class of idea is something like a CPU buyers expert system. One UI idea is something like a graph titled "Intel-based Virtualization CPUs" with price as Y axis and performance as X axis and click on the datapoint to order a CPU.
  I'm envisioning my price mark up to be about equivalent to buying me a beer at the bar (plenty of people would answer your question for free, if you'd buy me a beer at the next computer conference / bar / whatever, but my magic web site is 24x7 and accessible everywhere)
  As with many businesses, it seems too obvious, that there must be multiple competitors. But apparently their marketing sucks so bad I've never heard of them.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
5. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 00:51 · Score: 0
  
  And the i5 2500K has pretty much the same feature set, and it's more powerful, cheaper, and more energy efficient than the best of this new line of AMD chips. You do lose ECC, but does anyone actually need ECC on a desktop? Yea, maybe in a true workstation, but none of these chips really belong in a workstation to begin with. Have to say, I'd been looking forward to these chips, and so far they look like a pretty big disappointment.
6. Re:I skimmed a few... by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 00:53 · Score: 1
  
  The part most benchmarks are concentrating on is the 8150, which costs $250 to retailers – i.e. it costs about the same as an i7 2600 when it gets to your wallet. Unfortunately, it seems to perform worse than an i5 2400, so... fail.
7. Re:I skimmed a few... by Kjella · 2011-10-12 00:53 · Score: 2
  
  The i7 2600K has all of the bells and whistles enabled. Except maybe ECC memory...
  No, it doesn't have VT-d or TXT enabled, the 2600 - not the K - does though. It less for a fraction less, has slightly worse integrated graphics and is multiplier locked, it's basically the business version of the 2600K. And like you say, if you want ECC you must get Xeons.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
8. Re:I skimmed a few... by somersault · 2011-10-12 01:11 · Score: 1
  
  I generally don't find CPUs too confusing as they don't change toooo often, but graphics cards I just stopped trying to keep up with years ago.
  When I bought a card recently I just googled "x-card vs y-card", hwcompare.com was generally the top result. It has lots of automatically generated pages which compare benchmarks of one card vs another. If you made a site similar to that for comparing CPUs/mobos within certain categories or price ranges then you might make some money from advertising revenue, especially since those people are out to buy new hardware anyway.
  
  --
  which is totally what she said
9. Re:I skimmed a few... by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 01:14 · Score: 0
  
  Luckily though, the Xeon E3-1235 is very nicely priced, so much so it's better for most people than the i7 2600 if they want to do a lot of multithreading.
  I don't quite get who this mythical person who wants ECC but isn't buying server chips is though... There's pretty much no task that actually wants it.
10. Re:I skimmed a few... by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 01:16 · Score: 1
  
  Here you go http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=363.
11. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 01:42 · Score: 0
  
  i5-2500 and i7-2600 multiplier isn't completely locked. It's OC-able by +4 during turbo (up to 41x and 42x -- 4.2ghz). Compared to 57x maximum multiplier of k-series.
12. Re:I skimmed a few... by somersault · 2011-10-12 01:45 · Score: 1
  
  I was thinking more choose a category and get a table or chart comparing something like 5-10 processors at a time. Basically just like the roundups that these sites do from time to time, but automatically generated and user customisable what price range or other features they want to filter by. Useful page though.
  
  --
  which is totally what she said
13. Re:I skimmed a few... by timeOday · 2011-10-12 01:46 · Score: 1
  
  The i7 2600 is a $300 CPU. I thought it was really cool you could get a Sandy Bridge cpu for as low as $57 (G530), and on the newegg page it does have "Virtualization Technology Support." VMWare Workstation would still run fine with 1 or 2 guests without VT-d, wouldn't it? Lower speed for a lower price makes sense, but "you cannot run application X on this CPU" is more troubling.
14. Re:I skimmed a few... by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 01:49 · Score: 1
  
  Just select stuff from the left hand pair of menus:
  http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/342
15. Re:I skimmed a few... by Kjella · 2011-10-12 01:57 · Score: 1
  
  VMWare Workstation would still run fine with 1 or 2 guests without VT-d, wouldn't it?
  Depends on what you're doing, VT-d is virtualized IO. Both have VT-x so CPU-intensive clients should run just fine with or without it, but disk access will be slower without it. But in my experience running virtualization without it, it's not that slow anyway.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
16. Re:I skimmed a few... by mollymoo · 2011-10-12 01:58 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Plenty of people do work where a silent, undetected error could cost more than the extra couple of hundred bucks it costs to go ECC. Google's study found over 8% of DIMMs had memory errors each year. A hefty workstation with more RAM than a Google server (which are individually quite modest) could expect a proportionally higher rate of errors than a Google server.
  
  --
  Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
17. Re:I skimmed a few... by Vectormatic · 2011-10-12 01:58 · Score: 2
  
  i've only seen the 8150, no other chips out there yet.
  My main comparison point is the x6, since i'm looking at upgrading from a x4 940, so far it looks like the 8150 has serious trouble beating the x6 1100T in anything but the heaviest threading and a few x264 encoding benches. So it looks like i'll pick a 1090T for 100 bucks less then the 8150.
  Bulldozer might be interesting from an architectural standpoint, but to me it looks like they gimped the execution hardware and tried to make up for that with rather massive L2 caches and subsequently Global foundries fumbled the ball on the production, meaning Bulldozer isnt hitting the clock speeds needed for being competitive.
  I'm sort of hoping for AMDs sakes that this will turn out like the original phenom, it was inovative and all, but failed to hit clockspeeds and ran hot, then AMD did a major refactor of that chip and shrunk it to 45nm and suddenly Phenom II turned out quite well.
  
  --
  People, what a bunch of bastards
18. Re:I skimmed a few... by vlm · 2011-10-12 02:16 · Score: 1
  
  Here you go http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=363.
  Doesn't mention features at all. Doesn't even filter by socket type much less manufacturer. I am trying to burn thru the marketing and figure out the fastest CPU to buy that supports virtualization for $X on my motherboard of choice.
  I'm thinking an expert system where I tell it "Intel, Socket B, virtualization mandatory, gimme the performance vs price table, and if you must narrow it down, narrow it down to sub-$300 please".
  I can probably do this by hand in at most a couple hours of work, which is worth a couple bucks for a website to do it for me.
  Specifically I Really Wanna Run KVM or Xen, so if some obscure model simply won't work with the linux/KVM then I'm totally uninterested. For example, I know only certain MBs support USB passthru, so I'm exclusively interested in the CPUs supported by those MBs, furthermore I have to make sure that the virtualization features have not been lasered off.
  Don't much care if there exists a chunk of silicon that is faster yet completely unusable for me. Just don't care. Much like my first criteria for a mythtv FE card is "does it work with vdpau" and I have zero interest in a "better" card that does not support vdpau. Marketing wants to "help" me by having the name of the card include the word "sniper", or by placing a picture of a girl in a chainmail bikini on the box, so they're useless (marketing, not the chainmail girl)
  Its almost as much of a pain in the ass as buying a car...
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
19. Re:I skimmed a few... by rwa2 · 2011-10-12 02:19 · Score: 1
  
  Too lazy... I just generally grep http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ and/or http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/index.php to see where things fall... roughly.
  Plus, the old stuff I'm comparing to is often too old to be listed on any of the more modern benchmarks listed review sites. But I'm a cheapskate like that ;-D
20. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 02:35 · Score: 0
  
  IIRC this is not true for the llano line for example.
  But yes, I choose AMD again and again for this very feature. Though I have never had a documented ECC error outside testing, it's good to be reasonably sure of that fact. Real men value their data, and therefore use ECC.
21. Re:I skimmed a few... by unity100 · 2011-10-12 02:48 · Score: 1
  
  http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2471688&cid=37690040
  
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22. Re:I skimmed a few... by jalefkowit · 2011-10-12 04:00 · Score: 1
  
  The problems with your business idea are (1) it's a niche business (since most people these days just take whatever CPU their OEM gives them) and (2) the people in the niche find figuring stuff like this out for themselves to be enjoyable, not tedious. They're hardware nerds -- that's why they're building their own rigs in 2011 -- and that means they love poring over spec sheets.
  Generally speaking, good businesses are found by looking for things that people hate doing and offering to do it for them for a small fee. (As the old British saying goes: "Where there's muck, there's brass.") Selecting the exact right component doesn't sound like that sort of thing to me, at least not for the build-your-own-box crowd. You might have better luck with something like a one-stop sourcing service -- once you've figured out the exact components you want, bring us your list and we'll help you find the absolute lowest prices on those parts from vendors we certify as reliable. Comparison shopping a dozen parts across two dozen sites actually is tedious. If you can demonstrate a consistent way to get the same parts for less than you would pay by just buying them all from Newegg, without the pain of having to manually compare all those prices, that would be valuable.
  
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  Read my blog.
23. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 04:21 · Score: 1
  
  None the less, Intel does not allow for ECC support accept their Xeon line regardless of the chipset being used on the MB. Cut to the chase of it all. Intel purposefully segments the market between PC and workstation/server markets. The ECC feature is the primary dividing line they use because of how useful this feature is for data reliability.
24. Re:I skimmed a few... by hairyfeet · 2011-10-12 04:54 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Well that would depend on this....is your budget unlimited? Because frankly the bang for the buck has been in the AMD camp for quite some time IMHO, with Intel doing too much crippling on its lower end and when you add in the price of their boards (plus a decent GPU as Intel GPUs are shit) it just makes it that much sweeter. If you want all the features it is AMD or be ready to empty that wallet Fuzzy.
  That said although I won't be having ANY Intel chips in my shop (because I don't reward criminal behavior and the bribery and compiler rigging frankly made MSFT look like choirboys by comparison and I thought MSFT should have been broken up) I would wait probably 6 months to a year before switching to Bulldozer on the desktop. The bang for the buck on the AM3 chips is just too good right now. I have been seeing Thuban 6 cores on sale for less than $130 and have been building nice quad cores for my customers and still making a decent profit for $450. It always takes AMD awhile to ramp up the chips and right now the early adopters will keep the price higher than Thuban and Deneb, which are both nice chips. You can get a nice Deneb for less than $500 for the whole smash, upgrade to Thuban later, and by the time you decide you need more cores they'll have the 16 core FX chips out. Right now the extra premium for two cores just isn't worth it.
  The one place that the new chips ARE being brought into my shop, as well as my home, is the Brazos mobile chips. Man these babies are sweeeet! Truly kick ass battery life, dual core with Radeon GPU, extremely low heat, quiet as a churchmouse, I liked the ones I sold enough I retired my MSI Wind and got me an Asus EEE with Brazos. This baby holds 8Gb of RAM (which I got for $33, gotta love Newegg!) and that ExpressGate is the best thing since sliced bread IMHO. If I just wanna check my email, surf, or chat it is just 6 seconds from button push to full up and adds two hours to the already 6 hours on the battery! Its like getting TWO netbooks, a ChromeOS style AND a full Win 7 X64, all in one!
  So if you want the most bang for your money and want ALL the features including ECC and virtualization Fuzzy I'd go AMD but if you were my customer I'd suggest you stick to AM3 and get either one of the Deneb or Thuban chips, depending on your budget. I'm currently running Deneb (gonna wait until the after Xmas sales to score my Thuban) and with 8Gb of RAM to feed it she'll do anything I want frankly faster than I can think of more stuff for it to do. The 95w Denebs are quite nice and don't heat your house up like the 125 watters.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
25. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anthony+Mouse · 2011-10-12 05:20 · Score: 2
  
  I've seen ECC errors before. It's frequently because the memory is not seated perfectly and if you reseat it they stop. But if you don't have ECC memory, you don't get an ECC warning, your programs just crash.
26. Re:I skimmed a few... by Rich0 · 2011-10-12 05:38 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think the point was so much that the Intel strategy didn't make sense, but rather that it was confusing and that simply benchmarking performance doesn't make as much sense, unless you make one of the performance benchmarks "how many VMs can you run the following program on before completion time takes longer than foo."
  I'd say his point was made in the 47 replies where everybody is going back and forth on what features various CPUs have and whether it matters. Clearly the situation is confusing.
  If a CPU manufacturer is going to vary the instruction set/etc by chip then that should be part of the evaluation, or should be targeted in benchmarks. Running a 1999 video benchmark on the latest GPUs would be pointless as it wouldn't really differentiate between one chip that supports some crazy hardware antialiasing optimization and another that doesn't. In the same way if there are specific features that differentiate CPUs and have different prices then just running nbench or whatever won't really illustrate the differences.
  I've personally gone with AMDs for a while. I tend to spend $100 give or take on a CPU and when you look at the whole picture AMD tends to be the better value for me, and I don't like to switch back and forth for every CPU. Plus AMD has a lot more motherboard variety.
27. Re:I skimmed a few... by TheLink · 2011-10-12 06:08 · Score: 2
  
  subsequently Global foundries fumbled the ball on the production, meaning Bulldozer isnt hitting the clock speeds needed for being competitive.
  125W TDP, 3.6GHz and still not competitive? Why don't they rename it P4/Prescott AMD Edition while they're at it?
  Kinda ironic don't you think?
  --
  
  Too many replies beneath your current threshold
28. Re:I skimmed a few... by Vectormatic · 2011-10-12 06:17 · Score: 2
  
  very ironic indeed, it is very sad to see AMD gamble the good old netburst-play and then foul it up (as is to be expected really). Even if they had the process-control which intel enjoyes, building something a tad inefficient and praying for the clocks to compensate is just stupid.
  It also reminds me of the original Phenom, AMD overreached themselves on features, didnt provide solid IPC improvements (although for Phenom, there actually was some improvement over K8), and then fumble the clock speed so as to make an uncompetitive product. I just hope they can recover from this with a second Phenom II, sadly though, i dont see a new die-shrink comming anytime soon
  
  --
  People, what a bunch of bastards
29. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 06:24 · Score: 0
  
  VMWare Workstation would still run fine with 1 or 2 guests without VT-d, wouldn't it?
  Depends on what you're doing, VT-d is virtualized IO. Both have VT-x so CPU-intensive clients should run just fine with or without it, but disk access will be slower without it. But in my experience running virtualization without it, it's not that slow anyway.
  VT-d is for device passthrough, so unless you are actually passing entire PCI-e device or onboard devices to the guest system, you will not need it and it will not offer tangible benefits to the VM. It doesn't actually affect how virtualized storage or devices function in anyway.
  Besides, most consumer grade motherboards like ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI doesn't even have it implemented in the BIOS and when it is there are frequently bugs in the implemenation: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/VTdHowTo
30. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 06:47 · Score: 0
  
  It isn't about the processors, it is the boards. If you want ECC on Intel, not only do you have to get a Xeon, but also a board with a server chipset like the C206. Asus does make a nice workstation board based on that chipset, but that is the only one I know of.
31. Re:I skimmed a few... by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 06:59 · Score: 1
  
  Or C202 or C204, which are much much more common.
32. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 08:10 · Score: 0
  
  How, exactly, do you judge that "no task actually wants" ECC...? I know many people who prefer ECC on their workstations, but would like to not pay through the teeth for it.
33. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 09:30 · Score: 0
  
  I'm thinking an expert system where I tell it "Intel, Socket B, virtualization mandatory, gimme the performance vs price table, and if you must narrow it down, narrow it down to sub-$300 please".
  ark.intel.com and its advanced search function is your friend. It's still a bit of a pain but it's a hell of a lot better than nothing.
  Here's an example search which finds all LGA1155 CPUs which support both VT-x (basic virtualization) and VT-d (IO virtualization, you might not need that):
  http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&VTX=true&VTD=true&Sockets=LGA1155
34. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 11:03 · Score: 0
  
  I don't quite get who this mythical person who wants ECC but isn't buying server chips is though... There's pretty much no task that actually wants it.
  DIY NAS?
35. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 17:15 · Score: 0
  
  Because frankly the bang for the buck has been in the AMD camp for quite some time IMHO
  Bang/buck has been solidly in Intel camp since January.
  Where AMD still has a niche left, is: at least x bang for no more than n bucks. For most peoples' x, AMD's n is lower. With AMD you get all the computer you need (probably a whole lot more, actually) but spend less money.
  But make no mistake, x/n increases if you let n go up a little. And once you let n get up to the the cost of Core i5 2500K, the x is so overwhelmingly awesome that x/n is better than anything AMD has for sale.
36. Re:I skimmed a few... by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 20:53 · Score: 1
  
  What would you want ECC for in that? 1) If you use a sane file system (read zfs), then all the error checking is done there 2) When was the last time you had a corrupted file ... hell let alone a corrupted file because of a flipped bit in RAM.
37. Re:I skimmed a few... by AmiMoJo · 2011-10-13 00:00 · Score: 1
  
  AES support too. Very handy if you have an SSD and want to use Truecrypt or similar.
  Bulldozer only performs well next to Intel CPUs in heavily multi-threaded apps, so it really depends if you do a lot of that stuff. Looking at the benchmarks it is pretty disappointing, and while it may get better as apps are re-written to take advantage of it that won't happen overnight. Even power consumption is poor compared to comparable Intel CPUs.
  I was looking forward to building a new system based on Bulldozer, but i5 looks like the way to go for now.
  
  --
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  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
38. Re:I skimmed a few... by travbrad · 2011-10-13 00:41 · Score: 1
  
  Yep. I picked up a 2500K on sale for $150 a couple weeks ago, which is faster overall than AMD's new $280 CPU.
  The power consumption when overclocking these new BD chips is horrendous as well. They are nearing 500WATTS without even loading a video card, while Sandy Bridge is around 250. I guess it's not surprising considering bulldozer has twice as many transistors.
  Phenom II offers better bang-for-buck than Bulldozer, and that's an old architecture on a smaller (32 vs 45nm) process. That is some serious WTF if I've ever seen it.
39. Re:I skimmed a few... by travbrad · 2011-10-13 00:43 · Score: 1
  
  smaller should = larger, sry
40. Re:I skimmed a few... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-13 02:07 · Score: 0
  
  "Bulldozer only performs well next to Intel CPUs in heavily multi-threaded apps"
  Which threaded benchmarks were you looking at? The several sites I read reviews on showed the BD getting stomped by Intel for both single and multi-threaded. Heck, the AMD Phenom II x6 was able to out thread the BD a few times
If you are an AMD fan.... by CajunArson · 2011-10-12 00:28 · Score: 4, Interesting

buy a 6 core Phenom II, overclock it, and pray that AMD can stay around long enough to fix this mess.
Go check the techreport review and look at the price/performance chart: The 2500K has slightly higher performance, lower price, and *much* better energy efficiency.
Go look at the LKML where you'll see Linus & Ingo Molnar calling out AMD for design flaws in Bulldozer's cache that AMD wants to paper-over with kludgy software workarounds in the kernel: http://us.generation-nt.com/answer/patch-x86-amd-correct-f15h-ic-aliasing-issue-help-204200361.html
I feel bad for AMD's engineers. I *don't* feel bad for the marketing hype machine that has been relying on "geek-cred" from sites like Slashdot and the usual David vs. Goliath myth to get unearned praise. If Intel had come out with Bulldozer instead of AMD, we'd be calling this Prescott version 2.0.

--
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
1. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-10-12 00:35 · Score: 1
  
  You might want to buy some sort of AMD processor, if only to decorate the shelf, even if you prefer Intel... Consider it an investment.
  
  The...optimism... of Intel's pricing guys can get a touch out of hand when their competitors get weak.
2. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by jellomizer · 2011-10-12 00:39 · Score: 2
  
  AMD had a real good run in the early 2000's AMD actually was selling more PC's with its chips then Intel. Then Intel Core 2 Duo processors came out and AMD had to go back to catch up mode again.
  But I have stopped watching the processor market as closely as I did before. Then I wanted to build myself a PC... I was like Dag-Nabit! They seem to name all the chips with a code name and a number... Now I would expect the larger number next to the code name would mean it is a better chip then the previous code name. However when you change code names around then you start over. I miss 80x86
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
3. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by dbIII · 2011-10-12 00:41 · Score: 1
  
  The prices of the Intel ten core stuff is insane on the level of if you have to ask you can't afford it as an example in server space. Meanwhile there are slightly slower AMD 12 core CPUs for under $1000.
4. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Kjella · 2011-10-12 00:44 · Score: 2
  
  AMD had a real good run in the early 2000's AMD actually was selling more PC's with its chips then Intel. Then Intel Core 2 Duo processors came out and AMD had to go back to catch up mode again.
  I'm pretty sure they didn't and it was just a majority of the retail sales outside the big OEMs. I don't ever think AMD ever had the fab capacity to supply over 50% of the total market.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
5. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by epine · 2011-10-12 01:00 · Score: 1
  
  That's a pretty constructive dialog. Is that the norm on LKML these days? Linus, I feel your pain.
  
  Argh. This is a small disaster, you know that, right? Suddenly we have user-visible allocation changes depending on which CPU you are running on. I just hope that the address-space randomization has caught all the code that depended on specific layouts.
  But honestly, it's not like the transition to AMD64 was all that smooth, either. We're all members of the breakage-of-the-month club. Others should be careful what they drool over.
  
  If Intel had come out with Bulldozer instead of AMD, we'd be calling this Prescott version 2.0.
  That's an awfully rash statement. Fanboi, meet anti-Fanboi. You'll get along famously.
  Prescott was designed as it was for bad engineering reasons. They were trying to glue an extra pair of legs onto the frequency horse, with no concern for hay consumption; it didn't end well. We don't yet know that AMD made bad engineering decisions. So far it's not a giant killer. They're a much smaller company than Intel, and it's a tremendous challenge to synchronize their processor design with their fabrication technology without getting a bad case of roadmap rash.
  On paper, the rationale looks fine: treat the thermal envelope as your rate limiting resource. Duplicate as much as possible within that constraint, share resources that burn too hot. Prescott is not a generic synonym for disappointment and slander. It was a very specific recipe for humble pie.
  Intel's P6 was a killer foundation for many years, yet its initial reception was cold by the lovers of Windows 95 (how do you spell loser, let me count the ways). Intel's Pentium was greeted with ridicule in the smoking hot 60Mhz incarnation (15 watts, can you believe that?) It went on to great success after a die shrink.
  There's still hope for Bulldozer yet. Prescott is far from the leading analogy of suck. I suppose you picked it as the only one that's prominent in fanboi lingo.
6. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by CajunArson · 2011-10-12 01:06 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think BD is a failure because it can't beat Sandy Bridge in every benchmark. I think it's a failure because it is a *massive* (2 BILLION transistor) chip with very large (315 mm^2) die and a LARGE power envelope that still doesn't beat a 2600K even with higher clockspeeds and at using highly multithreaded code where BD is supposed to be superior.
  If AMD had come out with a chip that had the same performance as BD but was much smaller and more power efficient (basically the chip that AMD promised rather than the one they delivered) then I'd be calling this a big success.
  As it stands, AMD is not even *price* competitive with BD unless they slash prices even further. They are trying to sell the cut-down 6 core BD for the exact same price as the 6 core Phenom II that we have already seen beats the 8 core FX in a decent number of benchmarks! The 8 core FX is more expensive than a 2500K, but the 2500K wins in most benchmarks that people really care about in this price range (games) *and* uses a whole lot less power to boot.
  
  --
  AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
7. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Kjella · 2011-10-12 01:13 · Score: 1
  
  The prices of the Intel ten core stuff is insane on the level of if you have to ask you can't afford it as an example in server space. Meanwhile there are slightly slower AMD 12 core CPUs for under $1000.
  Intel's most expensive chip is $4616, AMDs is $2649. True you get AMD chips to under $1000, but then it's no longer very fair to compare them to Intel's most expensive ones either. The 10-cores are more like the Extreme Edition chips, which despite having two cores less perform much higher than the fastest Opteron...
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
8. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by QuantumRiff · 2011-10-12 01:19 · Score: 1
  
  I just bought a dual 12 core server from Dell. The difference (all other specs being equal) between the R810 with two 10-core Xeon's, and the R815 with two 12-core AMD's is about $8k (we also have 256GB of ram in them. The Intel ram was more expensive for some reason, even though the speed was the same). That difference in price is going towards a Fusion IO card, which will be a nice little benefit to our IO performance on our database.
  
  --
  
  What are we going to do tonight Brain?
9. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by fast+turtle · 2011-10-12 01:33 · Score: 1
  Look at the transistor count for the i7 - it certainly pushing 2G just like the AMD designs. The big difference is the direction AMD is taking the thing.
  What I suspect is that in another couple of generations is when we'll start seeing the real benefit of AMD's design.
  Some points to think about
  
  APU = FPU
  GPU != FPU
  Power Consumption
  I suspect AMD is moving back towards the slot based board designs (Slot A) and putting the entire computer onto a card. The only thing a mobo will need to provide are things like the ancillary connections such as memory/sata/usb/firewire and the back plane such as HDMI/DP/Thunderbird all else is going to be almost a SoC design as we're already seeing with HDMI audio in the latest Radeon Drivers. Hell most cards have an HDMI port that includes audio for connection to your HD TV. That means fewer back plane/mobo connections.
  --
  Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
10. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by SQL+Error · 2011-10-12 01:50 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  We've benchmarked the 10-core 2.0GHz E7 Xeons against the 8-core 2.0GHz Opteron 6128. The Opteron CPUs deliver about 70% of the performance on our workload for about 12% of the price.
  The AMD motherboards are much cheaper too.
  Bulldozer is underwhelming on the desktop, but it could still deliver great price/performance in the server market. We'll soon see.
11. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by TheRaven64 · 2011-10-12 01:55 · Score: 2
  
  Intel's Pentium was greeted with ridicule in the smoking hot 60Mhz incarnation (15 watts, can you believe that?) It went on to great success after a die shrink.
  I talked to the head of the Pentium Pro to Pentium 4 projects (after he left Intel), and he said that their first power wakeup call came with that chip, when they were told by a company in New York that they couldn't upgrade their desktops because their building's power supply wouldn't be able to cope with the increased load. Sadly, it wasn't until after the Pentium 4 that they really learned this lesson to any degree.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
12. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by timeOday · 2011-10-12 01:55 · Score: 1
  
  Prescott was designed as it was for bad engineering reasons. They were trying to glue an extra pair of legs onto the frequency horse, with no concern for hay consumption; it didn't end well.
  
  Well, wait a minute. Obviously it turned out to be a misstep, but what reason do you have for thinking they knew that going in and were just being disingenuous?
13. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Bengie · 2011-10-12 02:11 · Score: 1
  
  When you drop $60k on a server and another $20k of licensing fees, one really doesn't care about shaving $2-3k from the price through a slower processor, causing you to order more servers. Give me the fastest CPU.
14. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 02:14 · Score: 0
  
  I suspect AMD is moving back towards the slot based board designs (Slot A) and putting the entire computer onto a card.
  
  Based on what, pray tell? Guesswork? Wishful thinking?
  Pics or it didn't happen.
15. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Bengie · 2011-10-12 02:18 · Score: 1
  
  APU != FPU.. not directly anyway
  The APU works just like a GPU, the only real difference is the 1-2 magnitudes lower communications latency(shared L3 does that), which allows for smaller matrices of data to effectively be computed.
  APU = super low latency, but mediocre throughput GPU
  huge potential, but still has the basic limitations of a GPU for the type of work, but not the amount of work.
16. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by drinkypoo · 2011-10-12 02:21 · Score: 1
  
  But honestly, it's not like the transition to AMD64 was all that smooth, either. We're all members of the breakage-of-the-month club. Others should be careful what they drool over.
  The 64 bit AMD chips, when considered in conjunction with relevant chipsets and when compared to the intel offerings of the day with their relevant chipsets, were astounding examples of efficiency and performance, and while there were real compatibility issues, they were at least fairly scarce.
  
  Intel's Pentium was greeted with ridicule in the smoking hot 60Mhz incarnation (15 watts, can you believe that?) It went on to great success after a die shrink.
  This is the time when AMD actually failed, with the K6 and its ever so slightly incompatible FPU implementation. Lucky for them, the Pentium had 0.99999999997 or two FPU problems of its own.
  I'm always concerned for it (well, if I care) when a new architecture comes out and it's not the fastest thing around. But there IS a massive price break, so perhaps scientific computing can keep AMD around until they get the speed up. Not only am I worried about what happens if they go away, but I like AMD processors. I have a Phenom II X3 720 now and I'm happy enough with it, although I still want a six-core. Maybe this holiday season I can get one for a bill.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
17. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by dbIII · 2011-10-12 02:33 · Score: 1
  
  which despite having two cores less perform much higher than the fastest Opteron.
  Only for single threaded applications which are now less relevant than they used to be. Of course you only look at 12 cores (or ten) if you are going to use all of them most of the time.
18. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Shinobi · 2011-10-12 02:33 · Score: 1
  
  The problem for AMD is, over the lifespan of a cluster/supercomputer/data center, the major costs aren't manpower, it's floorspace, power and cooling. These Bulldozer cores use drastically more power and run MUCH hotter than the 10 months older Intel parts. Also, not all workloads(even in science) are easily parallellized, so overall balance of performance advantage leans over towards Intel.
  Using the same memory, SSD's, GPU and such, the FX-8150 gurgles down 79 watts more under heavy load than the i7-2600k.
  Bulldozer=SUV of CPU's....
19. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by serviscope_minor · 2011-10-12 02:38 · Score: 2
  
  When you drop $60k on a server ...then you're doing it wrong. You can get a fully tricked out 2.5GHzx48 6100 with 512GB RAM from SuperMicro for about GBP 16,000. If you want to throw in a 2U case wil loads of disks you might go up to 25,000. But 60k for a server? You're obviously doing something exotic.
  another $20k of licensing fees, one really doesn't care about shaving $2-3k
  That's per processor, by the way, of which there are 4. That's a saving of $8k to $12k, which is beginning to get significant, especially as it's beginning to approach the price of a maxed-out server.
  Give me the fastest CPU.
  In terms of flops/U, the quad 6100s match up very well to the best of what intel has to offer. They're also comparable in terms of flops / W, and stomp all over intel in terms of flops / $. The single threaded performance is lower, but if you're running 48 cores, you probably have a well parallelized task.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
20. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by drinkypoo · 2011-10-12 02:45 · Score: 1
  
  Are you counting the cost of the chipset? In the past, intel has been horribly bad at producing chipsets that don't suck down the power, but I honestly have no idea if they've rectified that situation or not. The early Athlon 64 laptops actually had desktop parts in them and still had power consumption comparable to their Intel-based competitors due in part to the more efficient chipset.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
21. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by dbIII · 2011-10-12 02:45 · Score: 1
  
  The difference is with even with four twelve core AMD CPUs and 512GB of RAM you won't be dropping as much as $60k on the server. Now do you get the point?
  The CPU price difference alone would be $8000+ at the very top end (assuming the Intels are four way), and a bit more than that shaving a few hundred MHz off the speed. Of course the boards are also a hell of a lot cheaper for some reason. You also get eight more real cores which you are going to care a lot about if you are even considering such a machine.
22. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Shinobi · 2011-10-12 02:45 · Score: 1
  
  Or you may just as likely have 48 very CPU intensive non-parallellizable tasks.
  Or most likely of all, looking over all the different fields, you have a mix of tasks that utilize CPU's differently, and find that at peak use, you need 48 cores.
23. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Shinobi · 2011-10-12 02:50 · Score: 2
  
  This is entire system power use, minus monitor. The systems also used the same PSU's, to remove that factor from the comparison.
  The Sandy Bridge chipset and CPU revisions really cut down power consumption.
  The i7-2600k put under heavy load sucked down 164 watts, the FX-8150 sucked down 243 watts. The i5-2500k sucks down 148 watts under the same heavy load. Another interesting comparison is the A8-3850, which sucks down 165 watts under the same heavy load.
24. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by serviscope_minor · 2011-10-12 02:53 · Score: 1
  
  Also, not all workloads(even in science) are easily parallellized,
  Yes, but if you're running a cluster, you are by definition running problems that parallelize well. If your workload isn't parallelizable, then the best you can do is run the single thread on the most overclocked, most expensice i7 you can get your hands on.
  These Bulldozer cores use drastically more power and run MUCH hotter than the 10 months older Intel parts.
  On the server end with the quad 12 core 6100s, the numbers are less difinitive. In some tasks AMD wins in performance / W, in others intel (more) intel win.
  Assume an AMD machine is 30% less efficient than an intel one, and you pay 15p per kWh. Assume that a high end, dense server consumes about 1Kw (intel) or 1.3 (AMD) and runs 24x7 for 5 years. Assume you spend as much on extracting that heat (i.e. double the electricity consumption). The extra electricity cost for the AMD system is about 4000 GBP. That's about 1/4 of the price of the original system for AMD and about 1/5 for Intel. Of course, you might need more AMD systems, and you might need more air handlers (about the same cost as the computers).
  Either way it's a close call. The cheapest option is not going for the best performance per $ or best performance per W. It's a rather difficult tradeoff between performance /W and performance per $ and electricity costs.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
25. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by TheGoodNamesWereGone · 2011-10-12 03:01 · Score: 1
  
  "If Intel had come out with Bulldozer instead of AMD, we'd be calling this Prescott version 2.0."
  Bingo. I love the underdog as much as anyone, and my last few systems have all been AMD-based (Athlon 64 2800, X2 4800, Phenom II X4 810) but now the Sandy Bridge chips are just blowing everything else out of the water. It's a month until my birthday, so I'll be getting a Core I7 2600K with a decent H67 motherboard to treat myself.
26. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Shinobi · 2011-10-12 03:01 · Score: 1
  
  "Yes, but if you're running a cluster, you are by definition running problems that parallelize well. If your workload isn't parallelizable, then the best you can do is run the single thread on the most overclocked, most expensice i7 you can get your hands on."
  This is not true these days, since many use clusters even for tasks that are not easily parallellizable, simply because that's what's available.
  Also, the 12-core 6100 is Magny-Cours which is not based on Bulldozer. Bulldozer-based Opterons are under the name Interlagos.
  I specifically stated that the Bulldozers run really hot, I said nothing about other AMD chips.
  Also, in your calculations, add in the additional space required for the extra cooling equipment etc. And renting that is rather expensive in many places.
27. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by serviscope_minor · 2011-10-12 03:02 · Score: 1
  
  Or you may just as likely have 48 very CPU intensive non-parallellizable tasks.
  That's kind of the definition of parallelizable and is the ideal case. Actually, it's the case I have. It means that I pay a hefty premium for the fast HT links and large system image, but it's still the cheapest way of getting high density computing.
  Or most likely of all, looking over all the different fields, you have a mix of tasks that utilize CPU's differently, and find that at peak use, you need 48 cores.
  The cluster I use spends a good fraction of the time maxed out.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
28. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by afidel · 2011-10-12 03:05 · Score: 1
  
  In the supercomputer space you'll be comparing Xeon E7 (Westmere) to Interlagos (Bulldozer), there the Bulldozer is doing well enough that next years #1 or #2 supercomputer is going to be using Interlagos. What will be interesting will be in 2 socket server space that makes up 85% of the x86 server market where Xeon E5 and Interlagos will shoot it out. I'm betting there it will be highly dependent on your target workload, if you need good single threaded performance E5 will be the obvious choice, if you need a massive number of cores than Interlagos is your choice (32 per dual socket box). Unfortunately for AMD E5 also comes with quad channel memory controllers so one of their big advantages in the dual socket space is gone.
  
  --
  There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
29. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by serviscope_minor · 2011-10-12 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  I specifically stated that the Bulldozers run really hot, I said nothing about other AMD chips.
  Well, given the article (we are discussing the articles, right?), you did indirectly. The x6 is basically the same core as the 6100 (more or less), and there is a power comparison between x6 cores and bulldozer cores in every single linked article. In fact, the performance per watt figures are very similar.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
30. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Shinobi · 2011-10-12 03:19 · Score: 1
  
  The direct reason the Jaguar/Titan is upgraded with Interlagos is that it only requires major redesign of cooling. Everything else, including the internode memory controllers etc don't require much in that way, making it mostly(keyword mostly) a drop-in replacement. I'm not saying Interlagos is bad or anything, I'm just pointing out that in the case of Jaguar/Titan, it's for economical and engineering simplicity reasons on the hardware side at least.
  The software side is going to be "somewhat" more tricky.....
31. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Antisyzygy · 2011-10-12 03:21 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Marketing people are almost always morons. Thats not to say some don't come out brilliant, but its maybe 1 percent. Its one of the easiest degrees to get in college due to the constant dumbing down of college programs, and its accelerated by the number of people that pick it due to a misconception that business degrees will make you a lot of money for little effort. "Dude! You mean I can do easy homework, make teh big bucks some day and hit keggers every night! Bad-ass!". I sincerely wish business programs would start actually demanding MORE out of people rather than making it more accessible to idiots and burn-outs. It used to be a prestigious thing to have a business degree, as it was hard. Now its like 4 more years of high school with classes about "feelings" and barely any math beyond what you need to balance a check book and draw pretty pictures, and sometimes not even that.
  
  --
  That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
32. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Shinobi · 2011-10-12 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  No, I specifically compared Bulldozer with Sandy Bridge.
  If we add in the x6(Thuban core), it just gets MORE embarrasing for Bulldozer, considering that Thuban is using the 45nm process while Bulldozer is on the 32nm process, yet has less power consumption and overall comparable performance to the 8150.
33. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Shinobi · 2011-10-12 03:36 · Score: 1
  
  "That's kind of the definition of parallelizable and is the ideal case. Actually, it's the case I have. It means that I pay a hefty premium for the fast HT links and large system image, but it's still the cheapest way of getting high density computing."
  No, the definition of embarrassingly parallell, aka ideal case, is when a single task can easily be spread over multiple processors with little performance loss due to overhead/locks/stalls or simply waiting for other processors to finish their job.
  Raytracing is trivial to parallellize. CFD, not so much...
  "The cluster I use spends a good fraction of the time maxed out."
  Once again, your field is not the same as all fields. In quite a few fields you have peak demands, followed by periods when the systems are idle. Massive real-time statistics systems with hundreds of users for example, with very few working graveyard shifts... That means they need massive amounts of computational resources during office hours, but the system is idle during the night for example.
34. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by sonicmerlin · 2011-10-12 03:52 · Score: 1
  
  Look, Intel's not stupid enough to push AMD out of the market. They could have done it by now if they really wanted to by dropping prices to barely positive margins. Like Microsoft investing in Apple in the 90s, they'll keep AMD around as a defense against anti-trust/monopoly accusations. Instead Intel will just price their CPUs higher and delay release of their next-gen units. People feeling "bad" about AMD dropping out of the market seem to think Intel becoming a monopoly would somehow be a permanent state. This is the reason we have government and organizations like the DoJ.
35. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by serviscope_minor · 2011-10-12 04:27 · Score: 1
  
  No, the definition of embarrassingly parallell, aka ideal case, is when a single task can easily be spread over multiple processors with little performance loss due to overhead/locks/stalls or simply waiting for other processors to finish their job.
  Wow, that's arguing semantics. If you have 48 independent tasks to run, then your problem (that the tasks belong to) is embarressingly parallel and won't even stress your interconnects. It happens to be tha case I have. The problem splits into a large number of entirely independent tasks.
  Raytracing is trivial to parallellize. CFD, not so much...
  Raytracing is trivial. CFD definitely parallelizes pretty well (though not trivially), specifically the linear solver that goes in the middle.
  Once again, your field is not the same as all fields.
  Thankyou, captain obvious. And it's not my field as such: it's a shared cluster spanning several fields. It's maxed out since lots of people want time on it.
  In quite a few fields you have peak demands, followed by periods when the systems are idle. Massive real-time statistics systems with hundreds of users for example, with very few working graveyard shifts... That means they need massive amounts of computational resources during office hours, but the system is idle during the night for example.
  That has no bearing on the original point. You can power down unused systems in periods of low demand, pretty much independent of the CPU architecture.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
36. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Chris+Burke · 2011-10-12 04:54 · Score: 2
  
  Well, wait a minute. Obviously it turned out to be a misstep, but what reason do you have for thinking they knew that going in and were just being disingenuous?
  They didn't know. They (the engineers) thought they were just pursuing the next logical step in the path marketing had decided on with the original P4, selling on high frequency. There was very convincing data they showed that they could extend the P4 architecture up to well above 10GHz and get good performance. Nobody in industry called them on it, because they too didn't see the problem that was just around the corner.
  At 60nm, the leakage current of transistors blew up. What was previously a minor problem was now a large percentage of the total power consumed by a chip, I've heard in some cases as much as 50%. This was a big surprise to basically the entire industry -- everyone still thought parasitic cap at the smaller nodes was going to be the big issue. Intel's high-frequency design got screwed more than most, but everywhere there was upheaval as they tried to take it into account.
  One could question the wisdom of pursuing a high-frequency design in the first place. I know I did. But the reason it ended up being unwise was something I didn't predict and virtually nobody else did either.
  
  --
  
  The enemies of Democracy are
37. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Belial6 · 2011-10-12 06:59 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly. The biggest threat to AMD is that ARM chips are being seen as a competitor to x86. If ARM were to capture 10% of the desktop market, AMD would need to really start worrying.
38. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by demonbug · 2011-10-12 07:05 · Score: 1
  
  AMD had a real good run in the early 2000's AMD actually was selling more PC's with its chips then Intel. Then Intel Core 2 Duo processors came out and AMD had to go back to catch up mode again.
  I'm pretty sure they didn't and it was just a majority of the retail sales outside the big OEMs. I don't ever think AMD ever had the fab capacity to supply over 50% of the total market.
  You're right, AMD only led in retail sales - that is, sales to people building their own computers. AMD probably didn't have the capacity to feed the OEM market, but they also didn't have the demand - this is the time period (for obvious reasons) when Intel went full evil and was basically forcing the OEMs to ship Intel and only Intel products. It didn't matter that the Athlon/Athlon XP/Athlon 64 were competitive with or superior to the Intel products - Intel basically told the OEMs that if they sold AMD systems, they could forget selling Intel systems. I believe the lawsuits were finally settled a year or two ago, but by then Intel had already succeeded - they crippled AMD's OEM sales during the only time that AMD was really beating Intel on the technology front, and Intel put that time to good use and came back with superior products. By the time AMD processors were widely available from OEMs they simply weren't competitive on the performance front any more, and were relegated to budget systems only. At least that's how it shook out in the consumer arena; the leverage of large customers to demand specific products in the corporate/server sector allowed AMD to gain and maintain a strong position there.
39. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by hairyfeet · 2011-10-12 07:39 · Score: 1
  
  That is why I have been saying for awhile now "ever since CPUs went dual core they have been good enough" because I've found that even though the average person is single threaded there is plenty enough going on in the background to make up for it. Updates and firewall and messenger and...you get the idea.
  That is why I'm glad AMD has those Brazos chips for mobile. I don't know how many customers I've had come to me with "Can you make my netbook do (insert task)"? and have to tell them that Atom+shitty GPU equals epic fail. With first the Athlon and now the Brazos I was able to show them a product that was pretty close to Atom on price that nuked the Atom from orbit on performance. Now with Brazos it ain't even funny anymore, it behaves more like a CULV than an Atom style chip.
  So I agree that threads are going nowhere but up and would just add combining the CPU and GPU was a smart move for AMD as I really think "splitting the load" will be the way of the future if not the present. folks are becoming more multimedia heavy by the day, with digicams and movies and YouTube, and by dropping the graphical load onto the GPU you end up with a netbook that still stays snappy even when running 720p video, all for $340 with 8Gb of RAM? That's just nuts.
  And I'd agree about your cores comment with ONE caveat...price. If you can get more for only a few bucks, why the hell not? Whereas before my new builds for customers were usually duals and triples now they are ALL quads, why? Does everybody need a quad now? Nope it is just that the price on the quads are low enough I don't really see a point in building duals and triples anymore. Hell the spare I built dad to sit in his closet for "in case of emergency" is a quad, the whole smash was less than $340 on sale with Win 7 HP in kit form. The only duals and triples I sell anymore is upgrades for clients older machines that simply won't take a quad. If a dual is $70 but you can get a quad for $99 why bother with the dual? I have no doubt with the way AMD builds their chips we'll see the same thing soon with 8 and 10 cores.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
40. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by drinkypoo · 2011-10-12 07:42 · Score: 1
  
  Well, if I go to build a desktop system in particular, then I'm sure I'll go intel. But more realistically, I just want a Phenom II X6 to replace my X3. And then of course I'll be looking for a tiny motherboard for my X3 to use it behind my TV, so I'll end up building another AMD system after all... brilliant of AMD really to keep socket backwards compatibility.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
41. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 10:05 · Score: 0
  Look at the transistor count for the i7 - it certainly pushing 2G just like the AMD designs.
  No, it's not. It's under 1 billion for the 4-core Sandy Bridge i7-2600, which beats the 2 billion transistor 8-core AMD FX 8150 in nearly every category, some by a lot. See this for some transistor counts:
  http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested
  And keep in mind that about a third of that i7 (in area) is a GPU, but Bulldozer has no integrated GPU. Bulldozer is really a server design which AMD also wants to try to sell as a high end enthusiast CPU, and an integrated GPU makes sense for neither of those markets. The Sandy Bridge 2500 and 2600 are mainstream parts with integrated GPUs.
  Comparing die area is probably more informative than transistor count, since area is what counts for yield, costs, etc., and transistor counts can swing wildly inside the same area depending on how much of a given design is cache (SRAM transistor density is very high compared to random logic). If we estimate 216 * 2/3 =~ 150mm^2 for the i7 cores + cache and compare to Bulldozer, which is 315mm^2, we see that Bulldozer is more than 2x as large. For less performance overall, sometimes a lot less.
  
  The big difference is the direction AMD is taking the thing.
  What I suspect is that in another couple of generations is when we'll start seeing the real benefit of AMD's design.
  Some points to think about
  
  APU = FPU
  GPU != FPU
  Power Consumption
  First problem: How do the problems with this architecture point towards AMD having a future advantage in direction?
  Second problem: Um, you realize that an APU is a GPU don't you? You just said, in effect, that GPU != GPU.
  Third problem: If you're claiming that "APU" will take the place of the FPU in the future, dream on. It's not the same thing no matter how much AMD marketing handwaves about "APUs" somehow being different from GPUs.
  Fourth problem: If I'm wrong about #3 and the day does come where people stop using FPUs and instead use GPUs for all FP number crunching, Intel's in much better position to take advantage since their Sandy Bridge GPUs are already tightly integrated with the CPU's cache coherency system. AMD's "APUs" still look essentially like peripherals off on the side.
  Fifth problem: Uh, didn't you notice that these AMD CPUs burn a lot more power than Intel's higher performing CPUs?
  I'm afraid you're indulging in a lot of wishful thinking.
42. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by cynyr · 2011-10-12 12:06 · Score: 1
  
  does them running hot mean i can crank up the inlet temp to the CPUs? if i can i may not need mechanical cooling on my datacenter at all, and can get away with just indirect/direct cooling, and economizer. Something like an allowable inlet temp of 80F or 85F will in some locations mean I need no mechanical cooling, and can run outside air 80-95% of the year.
  
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  All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
43. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by galanom · 2011-10-13 16:03 · Score: 1
  
  That is why I have been saying for awhile now "ever since CPUs went dual core they have been good enough" because I've found that even though the average person is single threaded
  Do you have any idea how many threads are spawned when you type emerge --jobs world in a Gentoo system?
44. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by hairyfeet · 2011-10-14 11:24 · Score: 1
  
  Do you have ANY idea how FEW people run Gentoo? Not trying to insult here, but that is like saying "You can't run that SUV at Le Mans" well since most people aren't gonna be running at Le Mans that really isn't an apt comparison.
  If you are running a niche OS that cranks out threads like no tomorrow frankly you should look at one of those Magny Cours Opterons 4 CPU slot systems. That will give you 48 cores to crank it out. Most people? total overkill.
  I can tell you with nearly 30 years building and selling PCs that this is what the average person does: Facebook, flash videos, webmail, surfing, light gaming, webcams, editing pictures, music, basic stuff. And for THESE folks? Brazos is like heaven.
  Hell I'd consider myself more of a hardcore guy than an average user but I found when I'm out and about and need a computer? Its NOT because I suddenly need to transcode a video! its because I need net access to download files for a customer, I need to check my webmail, I'm stuck somewhere and want to watch a movie or maybe even do a little tweaking on some songs I've been working on with Audacity. So for MY needs for a mobile device? My Brazos based EEE with ExpressGate is like paradise. If I need to do something that takes a full OS I get 6 hours on the battery and Win 7 X64 with 8Gb of RAM, and if I just need the web I get 8 hours, in a highly mobile device for $340!
  So I'd say it all comes down to finding the right tool from the job, and for the masses these new APUs are where it is at. Plenty of performance in daily tasks, plenty of battery life on mobile devices, but at the same time giving a better 'feel" and performance than Atom, and of course at a low price which is REALLY appealing for the masses.
  It just means that guys like you aren't the mainstream. If you want mobile I'd look at one of the nice Phenom II quad laptops (quite affordable) and on the desktop either a Thuban 6 core or maybe the new 8 core APUs. With you more threads are better so you just can't look at the mainstream offerings, they simply aren't tailored to your workload.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
45. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by galanom · 2011-10-14 13:04 · Score: 1
  
  I supposed that you being older on slashdot reader than me, you would be aware of gentoo jokes.
  I still believe however that parallelism is a growing trend.
46. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by hairyfeet · 2011-10-14 15:13 · Score: 1
  
  Don't run niche OSes, so I'm not up on niche OS jokes either, sorry. But honestly I think threading has gotten about as far as it is gonna get on basic web tasks. I mean where are you gonna go? Put every ad in its own thread?
  No I'd say the bigger idea is the one AMD is running right now with Brazos and that is treat the CPU and GPU as one unit and split the workloads to the appropriate subsection. Running video/audio? dump that into the GPU. Running a browser? that goes on the CPU.
  By doing that one can really lower the power and increase battery life without "pulling an Atom" and making the machine feel like a slug. if you haven't tried the EEE 1215B yet you really should. 6 hours on a battery and still feels snappy and you can load that baby up with 8Gb of RAM and have the whole thing for $340. To me THAT right there is the future: Its small, light, cheap, gets great battery life AND still feels like you could do some actual work on the thing.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
47. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by galanom · 2011-10-14 15:46 · Score: 1
  
  Well, Gentoo is a Linux distribution for psychopaths. It compiles everything, including its own tools, though some packages are offered in binary form too. And for a compile you can choose what to compile in and what to leave out, using the so-called "USE flags". Installing OOo in a slow (say Pentium 4) machine from source can be an act deserving a medal of courage. Full installation can take several days in such a machine. However my C2Q needed only half a day to recompile everything.
  As for parallelism: I got my Computer Engineering degree a year ago. Despite the low funding of universities in my country (Greece), it is apparent that scientists and professors push courses of parallel computing in undergraduate curriculum. PThreads are now being taught at second year (of 5 total). Some projects I made while undergraduate demanded multithreading (I programmed a basic http server IIRC), despite the subject was not parallelization. There is also a postgrad program "Parallel and Distributed Systems" in a local university here. So I really think that work is being done to this direction.
  But even in the everyday life there are still many workloads that are multithreaded. I mean, even having FF to play FarmVille and Chromium to play YouTube needs two threads (I don't play flash games and play music with Youtube at the same time because no two flash applications can run in the same browser without crippling performance).
  Many applications for work, MATLAB comes to my mind right now, are multithreaded.
48. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by hairyfeet · 2011-10-16 19:38 · Score: 1
  
  WTF? Why in the name of all that is good would you want to compile everything? Nothing better to do with your winter? It isn't like we don't have excess...well everything when it comes to computers. Sure i could see compiling a custom build when you have 4Mb of RAM and a 10MHz CPU, but today? that is just nuts! I can see now why you made jokes about them, geez!
  As for threads? Servers will ALWAYS be heavily threaded that goes without saying. But I think unless someone trips over the holy grail we have reached pretty much the plateau when it comes to users. They simply aren't doing enough to warrant going thread crazy. I always check my users performance in Win 7 just to see if there is anything they need to increase after about a month and you know what I find? Most of the time the computer is twiddling its thumbs because they simply can't give it enough work to stress it, and that with even the low end Athlon duals and triples, they simply can't come up with enough work to stress the CPU more than a few seconds at a time. as I said I'm "Mr Multitask" and when i'm mobile I find the tasks I have rarely peg out the Brazos APU, web tasks simply aren't that heavy.
  And the tasks you listed is a perfect example of why I think AMD is on the right track: Both farmville and Flash videos are GPU accelerated and since the GPU has 80 stream processors it can handle plenty while leaving the CPU to other tasks. So far the ONLY task I found that pegs the CPU for more than a few seconds is a virus scan, and even that quickly drops after about a minute.
  but sure there will always be corner cases, i have a deneb quad on the desktop and would like to go to a thuban 6 core after Xmas, why? Because I like to do heavy audio and video work on the desktop and thus more cores is always better. But I sure as hell don't want to be transcoding video or trying to edit a 6 track multilayer audio recording in audacity when I'm mobile because a screen large enough to give me the detail required would make the thing weigh 20 pounds. For the tasks I DO perform when mobile, checking mail, downloading files for customers, watching videos, listening to music? brazos does it all while barely breaking a sweat and THAT is why i have been recommending them to my customers. Its the right mix of size, power, battery life, and price. I just don't see the jobs the average person does slamming even the Brazos much less the new quad mobile APU that is gonna be out in the spring.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
49. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by galanom · 2011-10-17 10:50 · Score: 1
  
  WTF? Why in the name of all that is good would you want to compile everything? Nothing better to do with your winter? It isn't like we don't have excess...well everything when it comes to computers. Sure i could see compiling a custom build when you have 4Mb of RAM and a 10MHz CPU, but today? that is just nuts! I can see now why you made jokes about them, geez!
  No, no, we don't compile everything for performance. Packages that would gain from compiling using native features of the cpu, mplayer comes to mind, already offer libraries with SSE/SSE2/etc implementations in binary, that do their work fine from binary builds. And even if we would gain 0.1% of performance while recompiling gcc, it is offset by having to wait for hours for it to compile.
  We compile everything to feel superior. Easy tasks are made purposefully difficult and time consuming, to avoid n00bs spoiling our 1337n335. But even that did not keep them out. The standard package system, portage, was too easy to learn. For example installing a package was as dump easy as "emerge mplayer"! And it was fully documented! So people created paludis, another package system. There I needed more than two days to manage to install a package, after having to switch between the two package systems in order to resolve dependencies. The other system is almost undocumented and its commands are so cryptic that I personally needed to sacrifice a goat to understand that in order to install a package I had to "cave resolve -x mplayer"! Genius! Who would imagine that the install command is called "resolve"? And who would imagine that you need to explicitly say "execute"?
  But even then, some people managed to make working gentoo systems. So Exherbo was born. Haven't tried it yet. Partly because it DEMANDS that plain users contribute to the developement. (I remember 10-15 years a go, when I was a little kid, I wrote to the local linux mailing list that I can't find a driver for my printer -- they told me to write my own!!)
  
  As for threads? Servers will ALWAYS be heavily threaded that goes without saying. But I think unless someone trips over the holy grail we have reached pretty much the plateau when it comes to users. They simply aren't doing enough to warrant going thread crazy. I always check my users performance in Win 7 just to see if there is anything they need to increase after about a month and you know what I find? Most of the time the computer is twiddling its thumbs because they simply can't give it enough work to stress it, and that with even the low end Athlon duals and triples, they simply can't come up with enough work to stress the CPU more than a few seconds at a time. as I said I'm "Mr Multitask" and when i'm mobile I find the tasks I have rarely peg out the Brazos APU, web tasks simply aren't that heavy.
  And the tasks you listed is a perfect example of why I think AMD is on the right track: Both farmville and Flash videos are GPU accelerated and since the GPU has 80 stream processors it can handle plenty while leaving the CPU to other tasks. So far the ONLY task I found that pegs the CPU for more than a few seconds is a virus scan, and even that quickly drops after about a minute.
  Virus scan... How many years I have to install an antivirus... I remember catching a virus, I think it was called "Natas" (Satan backwards) back in my MSDOS 5 box. It infected my pkzip.com... Since then the only time remember to be bothered installing an anti-virus it was in Windows 2000 I think, the last version of windows I used before switching to linux, that something (remote possibly) killed a supposedly critical process and Windows had to reboot in a minute, want it or not.
50. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by hairyfeet · 2011-10-19 17:23 · Score: 1
  
  So in other words its a "sorry about your penis" thing. typical Linux crap. You know what the problem I have with linux is? Its not guys like you, they accept they have a fiddly little bitch of an OS and they like it that way. No its the "Linux is ready for the desktop!" types that when you point out HOME USERS ARE NOT LIKE YOU will NEVER deal with CLI, learn bash, read man pages, do the "find the fix" forum dance, etc then start coming up with logic hoops that they insist that by jumping makes Linux and Windows equal.
  There is a numbnuts around here that goes around quoting HALF of one of my sentences like that is "proof" that I don't know what I'm saying. he took the second half of this sentence " AS FAR AS THE USER IS CONCERNED THERE IS NO CLI IN WINDOWS and thinks by showing only the "there is no cli in windows" part that somehow proves something other than many Linux users are delusional. I still stand by the statement, as far as users are concerned? CLI doesn't exist. you could remove it from ALL OSX and Windows machines tomorrow and most users? Would never ever notice. it simply isn't needed.
  As far as virus scans? i run it once a month just for the hell of it, but frankly i haven't seen a virus either since Win9X and IE. With Windows 7 thanks to ALSR, DEP, sandboxing, etc it actually takes a fair amount of work to even get a virus to the point a virus scanner can actually DO anything, most never make it even THAT far. Add in ABP? Frankly it will spend its time knitting doilies. with the exception of the rare zero day nasty that manages a NON ad based method of attack, which frankly i haven't seen in ages, ALL viruses nowadays are PEBKAC, and thanks to Win 7 even PEBKAC has been cut waaaay the hell down. In a way its bad for guys like me as we feel like the Maytag repairman as folks just don't get infected like they used to, but I keep busy with new builds and hardware upgrades so it all evens out in the wash.
  So if the last time you used Windows was 2K/XP you really ought to give 7 a spin, its really quite good. Not only do you get ALL the major FOSS apps AND all the Windows apps but the combo of superfetch and readyboost is really sweet and nothing similar except for a few bad hacks has been implemented in Linux yet. Superfetch is intelligent prefetching, so the longer you use the OS the smarter it gets, so it knows WHAT you launch and WHEN you usually launch it and will have it waiting on you in RAM, and readyboost turns any HDD into a hybrid by moving most small read/write I/O ops to a flash based drive and leaving the HDD for sequential reads. quite sweet and great for netbooks!
  The funny part is playing with new systems there is a bright future for Linux with home users IF and only IF the community would jump onboard this amazing new tech. i'm talking about Expressgate/Splashtop. if you haven't tried it its brilliant. When you need Windows you push the Windows button, when you just need the web? You have A/V, web, chat, and email, all in just 6 seconds from button press to running and adding 2 hours (at least in my exp) to battery life. if the community would get behind writing apps for it you could have a Linux based OS on every new machine, but instead they'll just waste time on flamewars and Ubuntu masturbating monkey or whatever the hell the latest one is. To me it would be like going back in time with the iPad plans and being told "No thanks, we think this CueCat thing is gonna be a hit!"
  
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51. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by galanom · 2011-10-19 22:09 · Score: 1
  
  Linux for the DESKTOP? You mean, we'll have all the n00bs spoiling our 1337n355? Knock on wood!
  Seriously, though. I don't quite care if the average John Doe will use Linux. It is sufficient for me to have the platform I want and like. There's no need the world embrace my beliefs or lifestyle. I always was an outsider, not only relating to computers, and I'm fine with that. However I do put Linux in my parent's or my sister's pcs for example. I mean, they just need FF with flash for Facebook and Google, and Skype. That's it. Nothing else.
  However I'm VERY worried that with the economic growth of MS/Apple, that they abuse their position. I was frightened when I learned how crippled is iphone. It doesn't appear as mass storage device. It doesn't take SD or play flash. You need proprietary apps to download mp3s. You need Apple services to download apps, only the ones that she approves (!!!) and after taking a fee (!!!). Even to customize the phone you need to hack it. As for MS, the certificates she imposes to boot BIOS. The specs that she doesn't open. I mean, isn't she happy having the 90% of the share of PCs? Let us do our job too! That's why I hate those two companies.
  About superfetch etc, Idk, I just have my ssd for everything but my porn. For that there's either a hard disk or youporn.com. And I actually use only 38GB out of the 80GB of my X25-M, despite leaving large source files in /var/tmp or source tarballs in distribution directories. I can't understand why people need 600GB ssds. I really don't know. I am neither aware of ExpressGate or SplashTop, but my linuix box does indeed boot in a few seconds -- unless I forget dns client searching for ip.
  CLI is not inherent in Windows philosophy. I know there's a scripting shell, Power-something, but I doubt 1% of users will install it.
  As for PEBKAC: I don't know why, but all Windows machines of John Doe's I happen to sit for a few minutes, are filled with countless little shitty worthless little programs, that in order for example to show you a "free" wallpaper they install a ton of other software. They add some search engines in Firefox, they add sponsored ads in Google search (YES, I've seen that!!!), a couple of toolbars in IE & FF, for some reason they all run in the background, god knows why. Utilities that add stupid smileys in MSN, annoying flashing images and weird fonts. If you sit in a Windows PC, it blinks and makes sounds like a UFO.
  That's in the Windows ecosystem. It's not in Windows OS per se, but it's the philosophy of cheap commercial software. I'm not blaming all commercial software, just those millions utilities and extensions to do the most simple things. For tools like UNIX's dd or bzip2 or libisofs or bigger applications like k3b or evince or eog or mplayer that come all standard in a Linux distribution, you have to download them separately, with all their bloated packages. I remember the sound cards (SB Audigy2) driver in Windows was 120MB or more. In Linux it's 513,021 bytes. And each of them needs its crackz, warez, serialz, keygens, which you must in pain search amongst porn sites and totally irrelevant dummy sites who offer search "services". And the crackz's version doesn't match, and you have to find newer, and if you find it you can't upgrade the app because it will damage the exe, or you must disconnect from the internet for the activation, and so on and so on. You make fun of me compiling, but the only I need to do is to "emerge mplayer" and wait. Compare it to the time you need to download the huge bloated PowerDVD download, the time you need to find the crack etc, and you'll see that in Gentoo you need only the 1/10th of the time.
  I really don't mind if Windows 7 is a decent OS. It should be. But that's ecosystem -- it's a holy mess. I will install W7 sometime, just to play Heroes of Might and Magic VI when it comes out. But that's it. I'm totally alien to Windows. How can I live without my terminal emulator and zsh. GCC implementation on Windows is crippled. I don't k
52. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by hairyfeet · 2011-10-21 16:45 · Score: 1
  
  Well you should be quite happy with MSFT then, since all those corporate contracts and government jobs mean they can only get SO evil before they get their choke chain yanked. as I was telling one guy on the Linux forum who was freaking over Win 8 having secure boot (which they just ripped from ChromeOS BTW) there is NO WAY IN HELL they'll be able to stop other OSes from being installed simply because all those fat software assurance and MSDNs would be flushed down the shitter if the corps can't go back to older Windows. And if older Windows runs? Then Linux runs.
  And you sir are a brave man if you are trusting all your data to an SSD, i really hope you got backups. I've found the hot/crazy scale is a little too far on the crazy side for me and my customers ATM, maybe in another 5 years when they get the bugs out. Frankly ATM I honestly don't see much point with win 7 anyway, it prefetches everything I run and has it waiting in RAM so the only time the HDD really comes into play is when I'm doing my multitrack editing or video transcoding and I sure as hell wouldn't want to waste THAT amount of space on an SSD with the prices above $1 a Gb. I'd look into one for my EEE netbook but frankly with the new hibernate it is so fast to start I honestly have it started before i can reach my mouse anyway, and what good would be faster than that? Sadly the machines get faster but my reaction time if anything gets slower, aging sucks.
  As for what you've seen on windows? That is a PERFECT example of PEBKAC. the ONLY reason that exists is because of dumbasses. This is an actual conversation i had with a former customer "Me-Don't open that password protected zip file, its a virus! Velma-Oh you worry too much, its from my BFF Kim see? she wouldn't do anything bad!" can you guess what she did? if you guess boned the whole system, you get a cookie! That is why this face comes with the job.
  But you will be happy to know that if you don't go around installing "free smilies" and other total dumbshit? Windows 7 is solid as a rock. mine has been running since Oct 09, been through two RAM upgrades, three HDD upgrades, and two GPU upgrades, and has just purred like a kitten. no reactivating or other bullshit, just keeps on humming. But your final answer just shows what I mean, how often is the 99% of the planet that buys PCs ever gonna need to spawn a thread? hell how many of them would even know what a thread is?
  I do agree about Apple and mobile in general though, I find it troubling too. Maybe i'm spoiled but I've run BSD and OS/2, I've run win9x and was even tortured by WinME and Vista (Where is my apology and free Windows 7 license Ballmer? You sweaty bastard!) and through it all I HAD CHOICE. i could stay or go, i could send my data to and fro, in the end I was the one in control NOT the corp. what worries me about the cell phones is it looks like they could become the new laptop and if they do? your data ain't yours anymore, its theirs. And the way they can bribe congress for new laws it frankly wouldn't surprise me if we got some "network protection act" that made hacking phones a crime. Hell if they can make copyrights more than two lifetimes long anything is possible. like 'em or not MSFT and the clones made hardware nice and open so you can run what you want, the phones are more and more looking like black boxes with pretty screens and that is truly troubling. BTW did you hear they are talking about killing dumb phones? soon you won't even have a choice, it'll be that or nothing.
  
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53. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by galanom · 2011-10-21 17:33 · Score: 1
  
  I believe too that the secure boot will not stop determined people from installing Linux. In the worst case they can install NT Loader which in turn boot Linux.
  But it makes the issue more complicated. To call the manufacturer, to find the certificates, etc. And if I buy a mobo from eBay? Should I make intercontinental calls to the US? Do you know how easy is it to understand a foreign language through VoIP with multiple tandem encoding at low bitrate? (I'm referring to Quantum) How can I threaten the company if I am not a US citizen if they don't give it to me? And it'll be great if it's from the US. If it is from China? How many people speak Chinese? Furthermore, ok. let's say that I get a certificate for grub-0.97. When grub-1.0 gets out, should I get a new certificate? Again?
  I am worried that the platform becomes increasingly closed. I don't want to have to ask permission to do something with my own computer.
  As for SSDs, I've never lost a byte and I have had quite a few SSDs from the time of SLCs of 16GB. I do backup my most important data (university stuff) but not the other. I have lost countless conventional hard disks. Most were kind enough to show bad sectors first so I saved my data. But WD tends to break suddenly. I generally abuse my disks, have them with external cases, carry them with my travel case, waist pack, etc. CD/DVDs are even worse. Unbranded are certain loss of data, I stopped buying them at all, even if they're 10 times cheaper. As for CDRWs, I think they're worse. But my worst disasters were my faults. I remember restoring the MBR (with the dd command) to the partition (sda1) instead of disk (sda). Everything was lost!
  As for PEBKAC, it's just that Windows facilitates that behavior. For example not requiring a password to destroy your system, and the fact you have to navigate through tens of porn offers to find a crack for a program.
  And as for choice, I don't know what happens there, but here no, not at all. All computers, desktops or laptops come with windows preinstalled. Period. You can't change that. I have bought two windows licences, that I didn't use at all. You can't return them. I know that some companies offer Ubuntu or FreeDOS but not here. Apart from Apples, only very expensive servers or exotic hardware may have Solaris. For a brief period there were some 7" netbooks that had linux, but no more.
54. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by hairyfeet · 2011-10-22 00:27 · Score: 1
  
  Dude it don't matter if you are USA or not, tech support bites. look up "Foamy tech support" to see a great little cartoon that NAILS it. I just miss having a little Indian coworker, as handing the phone over to Sakar and saying "YOU deal with this idiot" as just sooooo satisfying. To watch this little 90 pound woman start cursing in Hindi in between "NO YOU DO NOT TELL ME REBOOT!" damned near made the BS worth it.
  But again no worries on windows 8, if nothing else the Chinese will be happy to sell you unlocked boards and lappys, and guys like me will be happy to build or acquire them for you. Where there is money to be made somebody WILL make it, and again if MSFT doesn't make it "granny easy" then IT depts WILL avoid those models and OEMs will have a living shitfit. Most likely it will be as simple as run this free "MSFT preboot environment CD" that flips the switch to off. that way they wash their hands of it, they CYA and you can do what you like. Which lets face it, it ain't like you are gonna get shit for support anyway, whether you run windows or not. Haven't seen a decent tech support in nearly a decade.
  As for PEBKAC, but whose fault is that? you think if anyone actually had to pay a dime for Linux programs cracks wouldn't exist? hell look at Android malware, its just human nature. if Joe Blow can get a "wink wink" copy from a friend/relative/smart neighbor they WILL, risks be damned. And Windows 7 you specifically have to elevate NO different than linux
  Here nearly all PCs come with windows, but since its free who cares? oh and despite the FUD here is a little secret: Windows IS free because the OEMs make more money off the trialware than the Windows license costs. that is why Dell will only give you $15 for your Win pro license, as that is all they are paying
  So if it costs you nothing, hell if you are just loading Linux it doesn't even cost you the time to remove the trialware, who cares? give the license away to somebody. Its not like MSFT cares either, as long as its a legit license its all good. hell I've even called on licenses where a customer tried to fix it their self and boned up the thing, did MSFT care? Nope they just gave me another key. But if you TRULY want a "windows free" machine it isn't like you don't have choice, there is ZaReason and System76 just off the top of my head. One of those (I think System76) will even send you a pair of ubuntu stickers for free to replace the Winkey on your old machine, even if you didn't buy it from them. again where there is money to be made? SOMEBODY will make it. Its just with niche OSes it takes a little longer to find. Hell there is even a company still selling OS/2, did you know that? they call it ecomstation now, but its just good old OS/2 warp with some support for newer hardware added.
  So you have plenty of choice friend, its just as with ANY niche product one has to take a little longer to look. But I bet 5 minutes with google will find several whitebox vendors that would happily sell you windows free machines, just don't expect them to be cheaper simply because trialware makes the OEMs money. hell if i could figure out a way to do so profitably I'd be happy to build the thing for ya, just as I build custom machines for my customers. they hand me the money and tell me what they want on it and just like subway i make it fresh and ready to go. its just my customers always ask for Windows, but money is money and if they wanted Linux? that's what they'd get.
  
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55. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by galanom · 2011-10-22 01:22 · Score: 1
  
  There is worse. Here, at least when I worked at a computer shop before go to the university, the most known computer importer (I think we have only two in Greece) offered tech support through a telephone number with insane cost, something like 1.3€/minute. Seen that in America? No?
  As for chinese boards and W7 license fees. No licenses aren't free. Granted they're cheaper than retail but not free. Dell for example offers you a plentiful of OS options (all of them MS) at different prices. But no linux. And no, I can't sell them to anyone else, as they are tied to the system sold. They can install only to the specific machine with default programs. You don't have any options, you just put the CD, press enter, and it reformats your drive as it was from the beginning. Just for curiosity, I searched at the most prominent _local_ price search machine for "linux" and I found 5 laptops and 1 desktop, all below 350€. So it makes me think, will really Chinese makers make secure boot-free motherboards? Probably yes for the US who have a significant market but for small countries? And will be respectable makers? It seems pretty reasonable for me to guesstimate that MS will make deals with bigger makers to have only W8-approved models.
  As for PEBKAC, yes, if Linux apps would have a cost, shitware would exist. It is not a feature of W7 kernel. It is part of Windows ecosystem. I don't blame W7 specifically but the whole environment. Damn, you have to pay/crack for an application to burn an ISO or use a rar file!!
  OS/2 now in 2011, really? :D
56. Re:If you are an AMD fan.... by hairyfeet · 2011-10-22 08:31 · Score: 1
  
  No, we just get to spend more than that as our cell minutes (nobody has home phones here anymore) get sucked up by horrible elevator music and some stupid computer saying "please hold' for 3 HOURS only to get some tier one numbnuts who thinks reboot is a magic word.
  And yes the home version IS free, the Pro and Ultimate? The price is $25 for Pro, $65 for Ultimate. I actually got to talk to one of the guys that worked making the images and he broke it down. for the Home version they load the crap out of it with trialware, the companies that make the trialware often get as many as 40% pay through, that is 40% of the people choose to keep the Norton or whatever crap, so they pay plenty. According to him they actually make about $16 on a copy of Windows Home, but they often use that to help lower the price. Dell and HP makes about 8 BUCKS on those $300 specials so anything that will lower the price? they'll do it. that is why Linux is MORE expensive, because Linux don't have companies pushing crapware. They don't make nearly as much on pro because that is the SMB dept and they catch holy hell if they crapify the hell out of the install, but they do usually manage to stick plugs for at least their own supply chain, such as "buy HP ink" and the like, they just don't get paid for it like with Home.
  But saying "its part of the ecosystem" is a cop out. I mean there are people wasting their lives watching snookie, are YOU watching snookie? probably not, but saying 'its part of the ecosystem' is like saying "everyone watches snookie" because you are blaming the whole system for STUPID people. But you know what? I've met "dee dee dee" dumbasses in ALL walks and using ALL oses, that don't make the OSes bad. You have Linux guys that run royal PITA versions of Linux just to have 'purity of essence" and won't even allow binary blobs, even if it cripples their hardware, would you say that was smart? probably not but i wouldn't blame the OS.
  I've had plenty of SMBs and SOHO that have been running XP close to a decade with NO dee dee dee dumbshit. No rocket scientists, just using good old fashioned common sense. Don't run attachments from strangers, don't go hanging around crack sites, don't load a bunch of "free smilies!" style crap. Hell I had a customer that JUST NOW retired his beloved win2K box, he had been running win2K since 99, we are talking 12 YEARS of service, not a single problem. Hell he'd probably still be running it if he hadn't gotten into SolidWorks and that sucker needs all the RAM and GPU it can get.
  So just don't blame the tool for the monkey using it, it isn't fair, anymore than it would be for me to blame Linux when I saw an ID10T decide he didn't like apt and just loaded his apps from Freshmeat and put himself in dependency hell. Now I agree that you have the right to blame MSFT for XP, whomever thought running as admin was a bright should have been sent to Greenland and made to build PCs out of ice, but that was two versions ago, three if you count XP X64 which was a great OS. Now just like Linux you run as a user, just like Linux you have to elevate to do anything that requires system level permissions, in fact one thing MSFT has gotten right that Linux hasn't done yet is the browser automatically runs lower than user which makes it pretty damned hard to get anything to stick, especially if you swap IE for Chrome.
  But we don't blame stanley when some numbnuts decides hammering his penis was a bright idea, and you really shouldn't blame MSFT because some dipshit decides to click "yeah, give ALL my permissions and rights to this program" so they can haz LOLCatz. BTW have you ever seen the security tool EULA? it actually spells out EXACTLY how they are gonna get you, complete with the data gathering and install third party extra crap, and they click anyway! But you can't babyproof the world without taking some rights away from the user, see Windows 8 secure boot for an example.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Trinity and beyond by epine · 2011-10-12 00:29 · Score: 2

You have to hope that whatever sacrifice AMD made in this design was made to better enable the CPU and GPU to be fabricated on the same process in Trinity and beyond.
It's a disaster by Kjella · 2011-10-12 00:31 · Score: 0

Sorry, but even though the reviews try not to kill the underdog this chip is huge, hot, performs crap in anything but extremely well threaded applications and even there it barely competes with Intel's 2500K/2600K. Anandtech passed 300W trying to overclock this beast. It's like AMD implemented every bad idea Intel had with the PIV.

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
1. Re:It's a disaster by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 01:25 · Score: 0
  
  A pity... it seems better to wait for the next iteration of Bulldozer if you want to support the underdog. Unless they really screwed up there's no reason they couldn't improve the power usage to at least comparable levels with the Phenom and fix the worst performance issues (like the cache bug mentioned by CajunArson above).
2. Re:It's a disaster by Vectormatic · 2011-10-12 02:06 · Score: 1
  
  i'm pretty sure the 300W figure there is for the full test rig, not the chip itself, just to somewhat blunt that shock.
  I agree though, bulldozer isnt pretty and the analogy of the P3-P4 intel phase is striking.
  
  --
  People, what a bunch of bastards
3. Re:It's a disaster by naasking · 2011-10-12 02:59 · Score: 1
  
  Anandtech passed 300W trying to overclock this beast.
  No they didn't.
  
  --
  Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Anandtech! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 00:31 · Score: 0

Anand has always done a better job than Tom IMHO
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested
obviously why SB-e not arriving until Q1 2012 by scalarscience · 2011-10-12 00:31 · Score: 2

Well now I know for sure why SB-E (sandybridge-e) is not arriving until Q1 2012... Intel is just going to continue to milk SB parts for the time being. Sad because I really wanted to get an Ivy Xeon rig to replace my current dual proc mobo, but I'm not sure I can wait until 2013!
1. Re:obviously why SB-e not arriving until Q1 2012 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 00:53 · Score: 0
  
  Intel is *big* into the 'tic-toc' thing. I would say they are probably having issues with their next chip/fab process.
  For every process shrink they get *MORE* chips out of the same wafer. So for the same approximate material/labor cost they get 20-30% more product to sell. Never mind the fixed up front cost of replacing all of their fab equipment. They are also switching substrate architectures to be more 3d. The CEO has been saying it will be on all of their chips by the end of 2012. My guess is they are having problems with that. As this part of the tic/toc is fab.
  I doubt they are sitting around watching every move AMD does... But AMD coming out with a new chip at comparable performance should speed them up a bit... It means AMD is about 1 gen behind Intel. All it takes is one misstep from Intel and AMD will be back on top...
2. Re:obviously why SB-e not arriving until Q1 2012 by afidel · 2011-10-12 03:19 · Score: 1
  
  Ivy Xeon is a LONG way off, don't expect them before 2013.
  
  --
  There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
3. Re:obviously why SB-e not arriving until Q1 2012 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 04:21 · Score: 0
  
  Yep. Intel can delay SandyBridge-E and Ivy Bridge for another few years. All the while charging more for their 2-3 year old CPU's because we no longer have viable competition.
  Expect Intel to continue with the trend of multiplier & clock locking, and charging significantly more for unlocked parts.
4. Re:obviously why SB-e not arriving until Q1 2012 by scalarscience · 2011-10-12 08:05 · Score: 1
  
  Which would be why I said I'm not sure I can wait =]
  
  On the flipside, TDP for SB-e isn't looking peachy for Intel either, so maybe I'll just reinvest in last gen hardware at the price drop when SB-e launches and tide things over until Ivy/22nm.
5. Re:obviously why SB-e not arriving until Q1 2012 by afidel · 2011-10-12 08:34 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, I'm in the same boat, I'm not sure the E5 16xx hex core's 50% increase in TDP versus Westmere x5670 is worth it.
  
  --
  There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 00:35 · Score: 2

I buy AMD, mostly when I build myself and when I'm on a budget. Not because I like weak chips. I love CPU speed, but I also love to keep my wallet as full as possible. This is what AMD offers: "bang for your buck". AMD is interesting for anyone who wants to balance between spending money and reasonable performance. Want pure performance and it doesn't matter what it costs? Go Intel... No questions asked. (This wasn't so in the Athlon XP/64 days)
Also keep in mind that we are now really on a computing-power plateau. At least from the point of view of the average user. I've got a frigging Atom D525 as my primary desktop, which isn't exactly a powerhouse. It has some quirks, notably because Firefox sometimes seems to slow down (Installing the 64-bit Linux flash player made the situation better, for some odd reason... It still is not really ok though) Most of the time it works just perfectly fine. I'd wager that adding 50% more power to that chip would nullify my troubles.
I can't say much about these new Bulldozer machines, but I just ordered an AMD A6-3560 + Gigabyte motherboard + 16GB RAM for less than 250€. That's a lot of power for not much money. (Moms computer died, building a new one for her... She doesn't need much, this should be more than overkill) I'm very keen on trying it out.

--
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
1. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 00:40 · Score: 0
  
  You missed the part where FX-8150 both costs more and performs worse than i5 2500? For now it seems that both AMDs older chips and especially Intels offerings give much better "bang for buck". Even more so if you factor in power consumption. If the Bulldozers were $50 cheaper, it might have a fighting chance, but currently they are way overpriced.
2. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Just+Brew+It! · 2011-10-12 00:41 · Score: 2
  
  I love CPU speed, but I also love to keep my wallet as full as possible. This is what AMD offers: "bang for your buck". AMD is interesting for anyone who wants to balance between spending money and reasonable performance.
  Which is why this chip is not a good buy until they drop the price. Right now it is not a good "bang for your buck". Looks like I will be putting Phenom II X6 chips in my existing systems and sitting tight for a year or two.
3. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 00:46 · Score: 1
  
  /ME crosses fingers behind his back....
  I swear I'll read the article next time.
  
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
4. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by magamiako1 · 2011-10-12 00:46 · Score: 0
  
  16GB of RAM? Are you stupid or something?
  
  4GB of RAM is more than enough for "mom". Hell, even 2GB is more than enough for "mom".
5. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 00:50 · Score: 1
  
  The i5 2500 alone cost as much as the motherboard plus the A6-3560. Sure it doesn't perform as well, but see if I care.
  16GB RAM? Sure, that was not needed, but at 16.50€/4GB, why skimp?
  
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
6. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 00:51 · Score: 1
  
  Nah, I simply didn't read the article... I'd say "that sucks" and AMD should fix their pricing then.
  
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
7. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 00:53 · Score: 0
  
  16GB of RAM? Are you stupid or something?
  4GB of RAM is more than enough for "mom". Hell, even 2GB is more than enough for "mom".
  Maybe mom is running Windows...
8. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 00:58 · Score: 1
  
  At the current price for get RAM, you simply just cram any machine your build with all the RAM you can afford. It can cache the whole operating system for all I care.
  Compare the prices for a 2GB sick versus a 4GB stick? What's a better deal? Now, since the machine is dual channel, you need two sticks anyway. So, that's 2x4GB = 8GB, which is the cheapest GB/price option. Since the motherboard had four slots and the RAM is so cheap I simply added another two 4GB modules. It's not for that 33€, I would have saved, that I would have gotten a significantly better CPU.
  So, yes, I should have gone for 8GB and save those 33€.. Stupid me, I guess.
  
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
9. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Baloroth · 2011-10-12 01:03 · Score: 2
  
  Right now, yes. But moms tend to keep PCs for 6-8 years. 16GB is not overkill for that
  
  --
  "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
10. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by FreonTrip · 2011-10-12 01:03 · Score: 1
  
  And when 8 gigs of DDR3 will set you back somewhere in the neighborhood of $45, slapping in 16 gigs isn't really a bank-breaker.
  *suddenly experiences the memory, now an abomination, of spending $100 in 1996 for 16 megs of EDO DRAM*
11. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 01:04 · Score: 0
  
  Actually, his D525 would be more than enough for "mom". The A6 can be OP's new desktop.
12. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 01:07 · Score: 0
  
  Maybe "mom" is inadvertently running a server VM host and paying the power bills?
13. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 01:08 · Score: 1
  Mom runs Ubuntu Linux 10.04LTS. She could do with 1GB, I guess... Consider this (prices from my local vendor):
  
  1GB DDR3-1333: 9.69€ => 9,69€/GB
  2GB DDR3-1333: 10.99€ => 5,495€/GB
  4GB DDR3-1333: 16.99€ => 4,2475€/GB
  8GB DDR3-1333: 229,90€ => 28,7375€/GB [*]
  What's the best deal? Given it's a dual channel machine, you go for module pairs.. So, the logical option is to go 2x4GB. That would have been the cheapest too. For that insanely low price, I just decided to go full 16GB.
  I don't understand why people scoff at giving my mom a 16GB machine. Sure, it's overkill, but it's affordable and no big deal.
  [*] Obviously this is not in the same league as the other offerings, but it's the only 8GB sticks I could find in their shop.
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
14. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 01:10 · Score: 1
  
  Pentium G840 + decent H61 mobo with 4 RAM slots + 4*4GB of RAM == $215, and beats your A6 system in every respect except GPU performance, and quite frankly, if you're able to cope with a 6530, then you're not looking for a big graphics card, and the HD2000 on the pentium is almost certainly enough.
15. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 01:11 · Score: 1
  
  Nah, I've got an i7 laptop. I just need time to set it up. I bought the Atom as a toy, but it ended up being my desktop. Go figure.
  
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
16. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 01:12 · Score: 1
  
  But the i5 2500 is massively faster than the A6 3560 –even a Pentium G840 is faster than the A6, and it costs less.
  Your argument is akin to "but, an FX3150 is way more expensive than a Pentium G840, therefore AMD is sucky value"
17. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 01:14 · Score: 1
  
  You should have been there in the late eighties and try to buy 1MB of RAM. *sigh*
  Our first computer, an IBM PS/2, had the insane amount of 1MB RAM... I remember people reacting the same way as they do now with the 16GB for mom.
  
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
18. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 01:16 · Score: 0
  
  If you don't know for a fact that you have workload that scales up to 6 cores, you're better off with X4 chips. Most desktop and gaming gains more from high singlethreaded performance than extra cores.
19. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by somersault · 2011-10-12 01:22 · Score: 1
  
  Why do you "need" two sticks? Is that an actual requirement? Genuinely interested, not trying to be awkward. If you're referring to the timing boost you get by using two sticks, isn't that negated on most mobos when you put in 4 RAM sticks because of the extra overhead (either in power or just address space, I can't remember..).
  
  --
  which is totally what she said
20. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Rockoon · 2011-10-12 01:24 · Score: 1
  
  If you want bang-for-buck and you are reaching for a Phenom II x6 then you aren't paying attention..
  
  The AMD A-series APU's are by far the best value around. The AMD A6-3650 ($120) and the AMD A8-3850 ($135) are on par in performance with the Phenom II 1055T ($150) and the Phenom II 1075T ($160) respectively. If you need the (very) marginal performance boost of the Phenom II 1090T ($170) or the Phenom II 1100T ($190) then you should probably be buying the Intel i5-2400 ($188)
  
  They perform as well as the x6's, cost significantly less, have a competent GPU which itself may save you even more, and they even use less power. Nothing on the market comes close.
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
21. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 01:27 · Score: 0
  
  But Bulldozer cores have also 2x more transistors than Sandy Bridge cores, so AMD is probably not able to compete with price if they actually want to make profit. So basically what AMD has is chip that's expensive to make, performs poorly, and has many years of R&D to recoup. Not exactly an easy position to be in.
22. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 01:31 · Score: 1
  
  16GB of RAM? Are you stupid or something?
  4GB of RAM is more than enough for "mom". Hell, even 2GB is more than enough for "mom".
  Maybe mom is running Windows...
  Maybe mom does large scale computational fluid dynamics...
23. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 01:34 · Score: 0
  
  Hurrr
24. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Chrisq · 2011-10-12 01:34 · Score: 1
  
  So basically AMD is good because you're a stinking peasant so impoverished or fully greedy that you cant even be bothered to invest in a 2500 which is faster than your antiquated junk? Oh but now that we have the trash of the century let's not forget 16GB of RAM because 8GB isn't good enough for the lowest form of peasant such as myself. Seriously, how do you live with yourself?
  So, do you drive a Ferrari, always fly first class, and have a home IMAX? If not, is driving an affordable car being a stinking peasent?
25. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 01:36 · Score: 1
  
  Back in the day it was required. Might have changed. Never tried.
  
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
26. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Just+Brew+It! · 2011-10-12 01:38 · Score: 1
  
  Note the part where I said "existing systems". If any of my existing systems already had Socket FM1 motherboards, I'd already have APUs in them. ;-)
  There's also the minor detail of the APUs not supporting ECC RAM. I generally use ECC RAM for any box that acts as a server (prefer it for desktops too, actually... but it is less of a "must have" and more of a "nice to have" for desktops).
27. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 01:38 · Score: 1
  
  Point taken. Thing is, I tend to stay way from anything named Celeron or Pentium these days. Those names have negative connotations to me. That might not be warranted any more, but habits die hard.
  
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
28. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Just+Brew+It! · 2011-10-12 01:42 · Score: 1
  
  I do run some multithreaded workloads and VMs, but I also realize 6 cores wouldn't be fully utilized most of the time. It is really more of a future-proofing move, so that I can wait out the 1st gen Bulldozer chips.
29. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Rockoon · 2011-10-12 01:55 · Score: 1
  
  "There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying." -- Josh Billings
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
30. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Rockoon · 2011-10-12 02:07 · Score: 1
  
  You want 2 or 4 sticks if its a dual-channel motherboard and CPU, 3 or 6 sticks if its a triple-channel motherboard and CPU, and 4 or 8 sticks if its a quad-channel motherboard and CPU.
  
  The idea is that memory is interleaved between the memory chips, so that the memory chips work in parallel to load and unload data from the CPU's caches. That 64-bit bus effectively becomes 128-bit, 192-bit, or 256-bit.
  
  It is this reason that the old i7's (triple-channel memory) beat up the newer sandy bridge chips (double-channel memory) in some scenarios, but not others.
  
  You will only see servers supporting quad-channel memory, and thats nearly universal there.
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
31. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Vectormatic · 2011-10-12 02:14 · Score: 1
  
  What? i'd like to know how a A8 3850 (which is basically a 2.9 GHz athlon II X2, better known as a l3-less PII) can keep up with a 1075T.
  Sure, for general browsing/wordprocessing the A8 is more then sufficient, but once you get into stuff you would actually need a quad-core for, the PII chips are superior.
  Yes, if you are building a new surfer-box for mom, by all means get a A6/A8, but if you do any gaming/encoding stuff, the few extra tenners for a PII x4/x6 pay off. I agree with the intel i5 2400 recommendation, but i'm looking at this from the perspective of having a fully functional AM2+ mobo with 8 GB of ram which i might want to plop a new cpu into, currently the 1090T looks like the winner.
  
  --
  People, what a bunch of bastards
32. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Vectormatic · 2011-10-12 02:17 · Score: 1
  
  Two sticks isnt a requirement for modern cpu's, and as far as i know, there are no timing boosts to be had (but then again, i've been out of the game for a few years). The benefit is that with a dual channel setup, you get twice as much memory bandwidth, and in modern systems under certain use cases that is a genuine bottleneck. Some benchmarks show 10% performance increase going from ddr 1333 to 1600, now imagine the impact of not adding 25%, but 100% bandwidth.
  
  --
  People, what a bunch of bastards
33. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by mollymoo · 2011-10-12 02:26 · Score: 2
  
  Quite clearly the cheapest would have been a single 1 GiB stick at 9.69€. The logical option would have been 2 x 2 GiB at 21.98€ because 4 GiB is more than enough and the additional cost over 2 x 1 GiB is negligible. 4 GiB is enough for me to play the Battlefield 3 beta so it's more than enough for your mom to do the same, let alone do stereotypical mom things like emailing you amusing pictures of cats.
  
  --
  Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
34. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by drinkypoo · 2011-10-12 02:26 · Score: 1
  
  And one more point, it can actually be true that the price of the memory can go UP when it gets scarce later, but these days your computer might conceivably provide enough computing power for you for years, and if you make an OS upgrade you will want more RAM; why not buy it now when you know you can get it cheaply?
  Last time I went looking for ordinary DDR it was priced higher than what I paid for it the first time I got some, while DDR2 was way cheaper. OTOH, I just got some RDRAM for a free machine I picked up (which now has four identical P/N modules in it, whee) for ten bucks. And I think we all remember how much that ECC RDRAM with the heat spreaders on it cost back in the day.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
35. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 02:27 · Score: 0
  
  That's just not fair. The 6530 is very much more capable than the HD2000. The 6530 will run all games, the HD200 will definitely crap out at the more demanding ones and give mediocre performance at best. Also the Atis have better support for nongame GPU-accelerated software, which are more and more common (his mothers browser will thank you for the AMD). I'd take the ~$30 extra is absolutly money wisely spent.
36. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by unity100 · 2011-10-12 02:35 · Score: 1
  
  http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/A8-3850_Fusion_GPU_Performance/5.html
  
  http://techreport.com/articles.x/21730/8
  
  http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review/6
  
  --
  Read radical news here
37. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 02:41 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, absolutely my experience too. 1GB DDR laptop RAM, costs more than two sticks of 4GB DDR3. If you need it you just cough it up, but really, at these prices... Just cram the mobo full with all the RAM you can get.
  
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
38. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by jawtheshark · 2011-10-12 02:45 · Score: 1
  
  You're thinking in absolute terms, I think in relative terms. As others have said, "mom" machines tend to live for years and years... Better stack up for the future. The RAM it requires will probably be expensive and hard to find when the upgrade is needed.
  My mom doesn't send cat pictures. She sends email to family and friends, does some ebanking and her digital photography. That's all... Assuming this machine will at least last 5 years, the it costs her 50€/year, or 5.2€/month. Cheap.
  
  --
  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
39. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 02:53 · Score: 0
  
  It sounds like you don't love your mother.
40. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 02:58 · Score: 0
  
  What? i'd like to know how a A8 3850 (which is basically a 2.9 GHz athlon II X2, better known as a l3-less PII) can keep up with a 1075T.
  The A8-3850 has a whopping 1MB of L2 per core (twice that of the 1075T.)
  The A8-3850 is also built on the 32nm process size (1075T is on the 45nm process size.)
41. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by BrentH · 2011-10-12 03:20 · Score: 1
  
  I think going down to 8GB and putting that money towards the A6 is by far the best option. The 6530 smokes any Intel graphics, and be honest: the 6530 is even for nongamers much preffered over the HD2000. Casual games like the Sims3 will thank you for it, as well as gpu-assisted computer which is increasingly common.
42. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  If you're going to roll back to 8GB of RAM, why not put the money towards a Radeon 6770 to go with the G840... that way you have a faster CPU *and* faster GPU.
43. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by rwa2 · 2011-10-12 03:29 · Score: 1
  
  16GB of RAM? Are you stupid or something?
  4GB of RAM is more than enough for "mom". Hell, even 2GB is more than enough for "mom".
  Meh, I'm with GP on this... For most casual use I'd rather use money to buy enough cheap RAM to fit all of my OS and apps in memory paired with a cheap 1TB disk, rather than plunk money on even a small SSD (that would just get cached to RAM anyway).
  16GB is a bit overkill, but maybe she doesn't like to close tabs or something. :-P
44. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by sonicmerlin · 2011-10-12 03:36 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see OS's using any more RAM. Windows 8 certainly doesn't. There are no computing tasks this guy's mom does that will ever need more than 4 GB, let alone 8.
45. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by BrentH · 2011-10-12 03:57 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think that card is only $30? But yeah, you could get a decent separate card that beats the Intel for that price, but still, I doubt that you get much more performance than the A6 though.
46. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by 0123456 · 2011-10-12 04:01 · Score: 1
  
  So, do you drive a Ferrari, always fly first class, and have a home IMAX? If not, is driving an affordable car being a stinking peasent?
  The difference between my i5 system and a slower AMD system would have been about $100 at most, but the AMD system would have been hotter and sucked up more power.
  If a Ferrari was as reliable and practical as a Civic but more economical and more powerful and only cost $100 more then we'd all be driving them.
47. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 04:34 · Score: 1
  
  The point is that the intel system is $35 cheaper... if you're going to say "but I could shave off 8GB from the AMD rig" I can equally say "I could shave off 8GB from the intel rig, and use the $70 now left to get a better graphics card"
48. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by BrentH · 2011-10-12 04:45 · Score: 1
  
  If you are comparing systems with the same amount of memory, the AMD is still only $35 more expensive. In your example the Intel has 8GB versus the AMD with 16GB, which is clearly not similar. I only suggested that if the $35 extra is a problem, getting the A6 with 'only' 8GB makes sense.
49. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by damnbunni · 2011-10-12 05:09 · Score: 1
  
  He typed 4 * 4 GB there, not 4 + 4.
50. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by damnbunni · 2011-10-12 05:12 · Score: 1
  
  Whippersnapper! Why, my 4K RAM expansion for the VIC-20 cost me... ... oh god, I'm old. I'm going to go hide in the corner. And get off my lawn.
51. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by sapgau · 2011-10-12 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  Heh, was that sarcasm? Or just an idle Intel rep trolling for the team...
52. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by beelsebob · 2011-10-12 05:34 · Score: 1
  
  No, *I* typed 4 * 4GB... He typed "I think going down to 8GB and putting that money towards the A6 is by far the best option." to lower the price of the A6 system to the same as the intel one with 16GB.
53. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Vectormatic · 2011-10-12 06:13 · Score: 1
  
  and how are game benches of the integrated GPU of Llano relevant to the comparison of the Llano cpu to the deneb/thuban cores?
  Yes, if you want a budget machine which can also run a few games decently, Llano is a cheaper route then deneb/thuban, if however you want cpu performance, Llano is about as irrelevant as they come
  
  --
  People, what a bunch of bastards
54. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by unity100 · 2011-10-12 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  and how are game benches of the integrated GPU of Llano relevant to the comparison of the Llano cpu to the deneb/thuban cores?
  actually you would be dumbstruck :
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQpfgiQd7WU&feature=related
  
  fast forward to end of video to the point where guy pulls out the results. you will notice that there is little difference in between a fully laid 1100T rig with 6990 and A8-3850.
  
  --
  Read radical news here
55. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Vectormatic · 2011-10-12 07:15 · Score: 1
  
  Those bench numbers look rather GPU limited, and in the cases where they arent GPU limited on both cpu's, the 1100T leads by 25-30%, which is somewhat in line with what i would expect in terms of single core performance, seeing how most games wont effectively utilise the two extra cores the 1100T has over the A8.
  You are basically saying "see, the A8 is nearly as good as a 1100T in scenarios in which the CPU isnt the decisive factor". Also, if you are going to use a dedicated GPU, you would be better off with an Athlon II x4 640, which runs at a higher clock and doesnt waste diespace/power/money on an unused onboard GPU.
  
  --
  People, what a bunch of bastards
56. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 08:05 · Score: 0
  
  the difference between $350 and $450 is 28%
  the people straining to pay for a $350 computer can't afford the extra 28%.
  If someone bought a nice Honda for $30,000, but you were arguing that they should just go ahead and finance the $39,000 car ...is that being smart? responsible?
57. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 08:27 · Score: 0
  
  Yet everyone and their mother on /. has a smartphone and a tablet and probably even a car. Nobody here is "straining" to pay $350.
58. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by cynyr · 2011-10-12 14:17 · Score: 1
  
  I'm waiting for the database tests, heavy heavy multi-threading, say a 6 way x264 encode in the background while playing a 4 thread game, or some other such load.
  
  --
  All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
59. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by galanom · 2011-10-13 15:53 · Score: 1
  
  I don't quite agree. I remember my 8086 PS/2 had 640kB. If you had a TSR like SideKick Plus could take 100-200kB. Command.com and the other .sys whose name i can't recall, needed another 150kB. If you wanted to run Lotus 1-2-3, I think your RAM would fill.
60. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by Daniel+Phillips · 2011-10-13 20:20 · Score: 1
  
  Looks like I will be putting Phenom II X6 chips in my existing systems and sitting tight for a year or two.
  With you on that. I'm looking at my X4 power consumption sitting consistently around 80 watts from the wall full system including disks and color me happy. I'll buy Phenom II again, and I'll wait for the Bulldozer shrink. Meanwhile, Brazos is likely to find its way in here one way or another.
  
  --
  Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
61. Re:AMD isn't about performance anymore by drinkypoo · 2011-10-13 23:19 · Score: 1
  
  What I meant and probably should have said is that if you keep it long enough to make an OS upgrade you will want more RAM, because time marches on. Frankly, also, the new operating systems WILL use more ram. If you are one of the poor bastards who still doesn't have SSD (like me) then going from 4 to 8 GB actually affects boot time on newer systems like Windows 7 or even Ubuntu.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do these contain DRM? by ickleberry · 2011-10-12 00:37 · Score: 1

Similar to Intel Insider? In 2007 there was talk of disallowing users access to the framebuffer, did any of this ever materialise?

This is what is keeping me away from buying core i5 cpus, even if the AMD ones might be a bit slower
1. Re:Do these contain DRM? by unity100 · 2011-10-12 02:34 · Score: 1
  
  ntel intends doing that, admittedly, and even they want to charge for overclocking.
  
  --
  Read radical news here
Rings a bell by arisvega · 2011-10-12 01:02 · Score: 1

The architecture shows promise, but performance gains will take time to materialize, making it difficult to leapfrog Intel to any significant degree.
Hasn't that been the case for 20 years now?

--
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
1. Re:Rings a bell by TheRaven64 · 2011-10-12 02:14 · Score: 1
  
  Nope. Compare the original Althlon to the comparable Intel chips at the time. It was both faster and cheaper, making it an obvious win. The K6-2 was about the price of a Pentium, but performance was comparable to a Pentium 2 or 3. My K6-2 350MHz cost about as much as a 266MHz Pentium 2 - much less if you included motherboard costs in both cases. The K6-2 and K6-3 were a bit slower than fast Intel chips, but it was very close. The Athlon was faster than the Pentium 3 and than the early Pentium 4s. The Opteron was the only serious game in town for server chips for a while. The Core 2 was the first chip that Intel released for a while that was really competitive and none of the AMD offering since then have really been that exciting.
  There are still some niches where AMD is better. I just finished building a NAS box, and if you want a low power CPU that supports virtualisation extensions, then AMD is the only game in town.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
2. Re:Rings a bell by Rudeboy777 · 2011-10-12 02:30 · Score: 1
  
  The outstanding "integrated" graphics performance of the laptop and desktop Llano APUs (ugh, marketing) greatly expands the number of niches where AMD is the better choice. That now includes nearly home user on the planet.
  I wouldn't worry much about AMD even if this Bulldozer launch is underwhelming.
  
  --
  From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
3. Re:Rings a bell by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 03:33 · Score: 0
  
  Athlon was relevant from 1999 to approx. 2002, after which it was totally buried by the faster P4 chips. Opteron lead the pack for about a year circa 2004.
  As you said, AMD has been sucking wind since 2006 (except for the occasional 'bargin' chip), more than 5 years ago. You think people would have given it up by now, but no. Judging by this story AMD fanaticism lives on.
4. Re:Rings a bell by TheRaven64 · 2011-10-12 05:04 · Score: 1
  
  The faster P4 chips were rarely faster than comparative Athlons in real workloads. They did very well in some benchmarks, but the cost of a branch predictor miss was insane (something on the order of 150 instructions), which killed their real-world performance. The Opteron and HyperTransport gave AMD an edge in 2+ socket systems and a big lead in 4+ socket systems for quite a while.
  AMD was very late to focus on power consumption. This was probably due to their chips not being quite the space heaters that Intel chips were. Going from the late P4s to the Core 1 was a huge leap in power consumption for Intel, but not such a big leap for AMD. Since then, Intel has pushed power usage down, but AMD didn't really have anything competitive with Atom until the recent Fusion line.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
5. Re:Rings a bell by RogerWilco · 2011-10-12 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  No around 1998-2003 AMD had a lead on Intel. For example the AMD K7 Thunderbird was the first to break the GHz barrier (and by a margin, it was running at up to 1.4 GHz, when Intel was in the 700-800 MHz range). It was at that point by far the fastest x86 CPU around. It did have some heat issues, but mine is still running 10 years later. Their K6, Opteron and Athlon were also very good, not to mention they were the first to do 64bit with AMD64, while the Pentiums were 32bit for years after that because Inter was betting on Itanium.
  
  --
  RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
6. Re:Rings a bell by Lanteran · 2011-10-12 10:56 · Score: 1
  
  Are you retarded? Athlon was insurmountably better than all netburst architecture chips. The clock was lower, but it greatly outperformed all the pentium 4s in every area, including power consumption, while still costing less. Intel only got ahead through marketing, even then were already losing nearly 50% of the market to AMD, and they only caught up to AMD after the core architecture was released in '06, which was actually a really solid design.
  
  --
  "People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
7. Re:Rings a bell by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 11:53 · Score: 0
  
  See what I mean? No-lifer AMD fanboys are still hanging round throwing shitfits about about chips from 2003. Sad.
  And not only did Prescott slam Athlon to oblivion in most tests, AMD never had the fab capacity to supply more than 25% of the market. So you are completely delusional.
8. Re:Rings a bell by Lanteran · 2011-10-12 12:00 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps because there wasn't a market for it? Sorry, but Athlon was better than pentium 4. I'm a fanboy for stating this? I freely admit that core is a superior architecture to anything that AMD's released since '06.
  
  --
  "People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
AnandTech by Nemyst · 2011-10-12 01:20 · Score: 1

As usual, I feel somewhat obligated to post up AnandTech's review, which always seems much more in-depth and polished than almost all the sites out there:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested
If they ship it with IOMMU by FithisUX · 2011-10-12 01:27 · Score: 0

uKernel and Virtualization folks will buy. I really don't care about performance. I care about documentation and standards compliance. My next PC will be AMD.
amd has better MB choice at lower price points by Joe_Dragon · 2011-10-12 01:34 · Score: 1

Intel has limited pci-e in the i3 i5 and low end i7 boards that makes USB 3.0 and other on board stuff eat in to the X16 for video.
With amd you can get a board with lot's of pci-e lanes with out the need for the high end cpu and or get a high end cpu and not need to buy a super high end MB.
1. Re:amd has better MB choice at lower price points by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 21:53 · Score: 0
  
  Benchmarks have shown that PCI-e 2.0 x16 is unnecessary for even current high end cards (I was surprised).
  It's a problem when you start using multiple video cards.
  But when you use multiple top of the line video cards you'll start running into CPU performance barriers. Ack, I was hoping Bulldozer would let me buy AMD for my next computer, but it looks like I'll be sticking to just their video cards.
Linux Kernel Compilation Benchmark? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 01:45 · Score: 0

In the available reviews i found no benchmark about compilation. Is it unusual these days to compile the linux kernel? The FX-8150 could show here if it indeed is capable of decent real-world multi-threading performance and i guess many slashdotters compile software on a regular basis. So please post a link to such a benchmark if you have one.
1. Re:Linux Kernel Compilation Benchmark? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 02:20 · Score: 0
  
  I've found a compilation benchmark on Anandtechs site:
  http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/7
  Sadly, it's a disgrace...
2. Re:Linux Kernel Compilation Benchmark? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 08:58 · Score: 0
  
  That's useful if you user Visual Studio, less useful if you use GCC.
Dwarf fortress fail by Issarlk · 2011-10-12 01:56 · Score: 1

It seems this new generation of AMD will run Dwarf Fortress more slowly than Phenom II :(
When new computers are slower, there's something seriously wrong!
1. Re:Dwarf fortress fail by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 05:33 · Score: 0
  
  Heh, here we are in 2011(!) and this one fucking game has so many people (embarrassingly, I'm one of them) looking for the fastest scalar-performance CPU. Do I spend an extra $100 for the 2600K's extra 100MHz? ;-) I never saw this coming. No. Fucking. Way.
  DF is older than it appears, so maybe Toady's decisions weren't dumb at the time he made them. I think he might even be a better programmer than I am (he certainly has more to show for his time), so I'm not fit to judge him anyway.
  But please, anyone starting a new project: you better parallelize. It's really not that hard if you think about it from the very beginning (and a game like DF does have opportunities for this sort of thing).
2. Re:Dwarf fortress fail by Lanteran · 2011-10-12 10:58 · Score: 1
  
  DF is CPU heavy, but I doubt that it's really going to be much more than a 10% difference between the two, if that. I'm still playing it on a Pentium D, so deal with it.
  
  --
  "People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
A lot of stuff in this story ... by unity100 · 2011-10-12 02:33 · Score: 4, Interesting

- First, there is the huge delay intel caused by engaging in fraud by paying pc makers to not use amd chips, right at the time amd was at an advantage.

- Then there is the fact that these synthetic benchmarks use intel's proprietary libraries, which were proven to work ineffectively when 'non genuine intel' architecture was detected.

- Then there is the fact that this is a new platform, and its just out, and the main deal with this is being easily increasable in cores. so amd will just add more cores without any research being needed. expect 32 core cpus in a year or so. 16 cores already out.

- As you can understand these cpus are geared more for server environment, and will take that environment over.

- Amd is moving to trinity in one year or so. Trinity is the APU format that all amd cpus will take from then on. Llano apus have been quite successful in gaming fro example 50-80 fps in starcraft 2 (crossfired and not) -> you dont need to buy an external card anymore, and if you do you can crossfire it with the cpu contained one. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review/6 http://techreport.com/articles.x/21730/8 intel is worlds behind in this one.

and then there is the ultimate question of what the fuck i am going to do if i grab a powerful processor. really. i bought an overclockable board, and an unlocked cpu. and when i played games, i found out that it was mostly the video card i added that did most of the thing. the cpu i had was way, way over any potential requirements and needs of these games. i didnt need to buy a powerful one at all.

i went about hardware/software forums asking what i could do with a powerful computer. answers have been 'video encoding', 'benchmark', 'seti'. as it seems, any daily usage for cpus are WAY behind the power of modern cpus. to utilize your cpu power at all, you need to do unorthodox, unnecessary shit, or be in a profession that works on these.

so i think all this performance talk is bullshit. there is no way in hell you will use that performance, even in hardcore gaming with an eyefinity 3 monitor setup in 5000x resolution, with 2x antialiasing and full detial. (and i just have 2x 5670 cards).

future is in the heterogeneous chips i think. llano already has been a success, and its possible to save 30% on the cost of cpu + mobo + graphics card if you go the llano way over anything intel, and gaming performance is incomparable. when trinity comes, i think there will be a big change in computing. especially when amd puts out a computing platform like cuda.

--
Read radical news here
1. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 05:54 · Score: 0
  
  - First, there is the huge delay intel caused by engaging in fraud by paying pc makers to not use amd chips, right at the time amd was at an advantage.
  Yes, in the distant past.
  
  - Then there is the fact that these synthetic benchmarks use intel's proprietary libraries, which were proven to work ineffectively when 'non genuine intel' architecture was detected.
  Yes, in the past. Is this still the case? Do INTC compilers still fuck over non-'GenuineIntel' silicon? I don't think so.
  
  - Then there is the fact that this is a new platform, and its just out, and the main deal with this is being easily increasable in cores. so amd will just add more cores without any research being needed. expect 32 core cpus in a year or so. 16 cores already out.
  with kW powerdraws at the wall? I'm exaggerating, but you get my point. For a 32nm process, the physical size and power-consumption of this chip is excessively high at idle AND load.
  
  - As you can understand these cpus are geared more for server environment, and will take that environment over.
  We need to see some benches (realworld AND synthetic) before we can state that for a fact.
  
  - Amd is moving to trinity in one year or so. Trinity is the APU format that all amd cpus will take from then on. Llano apus have been quite successful in gaming fro example 50-80 fps in starcraft 2 (crossfired and not) -> you dont need to buy an external card anymore, and if you do you can crossfire it with the cpu contained one. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review/6 http://techreport.com/articles.x/21730/8 intel is worlds behind in this one.
  Can't argue there... although INTC is closing the gap.
  
  and then there is the ultimate question of what the fuck i am going to do if i grab a powerful processor. really. i bought an overclockable board, and an unlocked cpu. and when i played games, i found out that it was mostly the video card i added that did most of the thing. the cpu i had was way, way over any potential requirements and needs of these games. i didnt need to buy a powerful one at all.
  i went about hardware/software forums asking what i could do with a powerful computer. answers have been 'video encoding', 'benchmark', 'seti'. as it seems, any daily usage for cpus are WAY behind the power of modern cpus. to utilize your cpu power at all, you need to do unorthodox, unnecessary shit, or be in a profession that works on these.
  Good points.
  
  so i think all this performance talk is bullshit. there is no way in hell you will use that performance, even in hardcore gaming with an eyefinity 3 monitor setup in 5000x resolution, with 2x antialiasing and full detial. (and i just have 2x 5670 cards).
  wat
  1. The better the performance, the faster you can do shit (when you are doing it).
  2. The better the performance, the longer the life of your box (you can upgrade at a later point in time).
  
  future is in the heterogeneous chips i think. llano already has been a success, and its possible to save 30% on the cost of cpu + mobo + graphics card if you go the llano way over anything intel, and gaming performance is incomparable. when trinity comes, i think there will be a big change in computing. especially when amd puts out a computing platform like cuda.
  AMD needs to push OpenCL more, but maybe they'll do that between now and when Trinity comes around. Right now OpenCL sucks ass compared to CUDA.
  Thank you for your interesting post.
2. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by unity100 · 2011-10-12 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, in the distant past.
  that 'distant' past translated into huge revenue intel made, and amd havent, amplifying over time. the money you made just does not stand in the bank. intel now has a monopoly on almost all the good silicon shops out there. amd uses what intel does not.
  
  lockheed comes to mind. they bribed various countries to buy f104s instead of bac lightnings, and the result just ended british aerospace. lockheed paid some ridiculous fine compared to the profits it made.
  
  Yes, in the past. Is this still the case? Do INTC compilers still fuck over non-'GenuineIntel' silicon? I don't think so.
  you should think so. this kind of thing is not something that is just done one time, and then corporations realizing the err of their acts, refrain from doing it. its continual. recent was nvidia, with the under-the ground water tasellation 'incentive' in crysis that caused ati cards to appear less capable whereas they were ahead of them.
  
  with kW powerdraws at the wall?.
  yes. the capability of the cpus are already way over any kind of serious need an ordinary person may use in his/her daily life. even for hardcore gaming, cpus are way too powerful and remain underutilized, unless one goes for fps counting from 80 to 120 then to 125, just for kicks. with no perceivable results.
  
  so, cpu processing power becomes the need of professionals or those who do rare, focused stuff that needs processing power over anything else. and if that is the focus, wattage does not matter - someone who is in need of serious processing power, would have the means to pay some percentage higher power bill in a hardware built for it.
  
  We need to see some benches (realworld AND synthetic) before we can state that for a fact.
  rtfa. in heavily multithreaded performance, this processor gets ahead even in this state. there will be a certain point at which this new dozer framework's core count will surpass anything an intel processor can offer due to multithreaded performance. it is appalling that you are talking without reading the fa.
  
  1. The better the performance, the faster you can do shit (when you are doing it). 2. The better the performance, the longer the life of your box (you can upgrade at a later point in time).
  no. there is no point to having 120 fps if you are getting 80 fps in a 5000x resolution in full details in a tri monitor setup. and even if you go berserk with a 6 monitor setup, you will still be bound by gpu, not cpu. this is the state of matters. the extra 40 fps is unnecessary. the extra 15 fps over 120 fps is even more unnecessary, except for achievement enthusiasts. the game will still play exactly the same in all states with full details.
  
  even for stuff like video encoding, it does not matter zit if an encoding completes until i went to kitchen and got my tea and back, or when i just arrived in the kitchen. the timeframes in which cpus can complete things have really gone over our daily perceptions and needs. only if you are a professional that does heavy load work, maybe there may be some benefit, tho, still questionable - unless in extreme cases of cad/cam, 3d applications and so on. but then again these are generally done with specialized servers.
  
  Thank you for your interesting post.
  np. post may be interesting, but the level cpus have gone over, seems to be not so much. there is really no point to having a powerful cpu at home now. i dont know whether this is a sad state of matters, or a fortunate state of matters.
  
  --
  Read radical news here
3. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 06:48 · Score: 0
  
  So basically what your trying to say is you dont need a powerful processor for gaming and the fact that bulldozer sucks doesnt matter.
4. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by unity100 · 2011-10-12 07:13 · Score: 1
  
  i am saying that we are way past the power we need even for performance gaming in regard to processors. the games as they are now way behind what hardware can offer. ironically, one reason for this is multithreaded programming being costly to implement. therefore limiting games to at most 2 cores, except the adventuring big titles that go to 4.
  
  costs are the major problem. if ways to fix the costliness of multithreaded programming are not found, this probably wont change. or, an alternative way would be to assign more than one core to the same single thread.
  
  another problem holding back gaming is the consoles. because games are generally made to also work in consoles, their old hardware is keeping gaming back.
  
  --
  Read radical news here
5. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 07:14 · Score: 0
  
  I don't agree with a some of what you are saying, especially were it pertains to high end. I would like to see more thorough benchmarks that include better and clearer multicore tests and Linux benchmarks to get a better measure of any hidden/untapped potential.
  The are many other things you can use that power for such as audio encoding, compression, compilation, encryption, data processing of all kinds, virtualisation, video processing for user input, rendering (raytracing), etc. Many of these might be fringe but there are a hell of a lot of fringes. That is, unorthodox quite often turns out to be the norm. Also as desktop PCs do more and more for us the load will come not from a single task but a multitude of tasks. If there is a void people will work to fill it and though powerful CPUs might rarely see consistent 100% usage the power will be used to give relatively realtime responses to the user. This is a case where it helps to be overpowered. On a daily basis you might not be using many more cycles on CPU A than CPU B, with A being twice as fast, but you probably wont have to do nearly as much waiting. Don't underestimate professional needs either. There are many people working in the many professions that benefit from more CPU power.
  The "software forums" might have been subtly trolling you because typically if you need to ask what it's for you probably don't need it. If you needed it you would be asking "X application is slow when I Y. How can I make it faster?".
  Perhaps what you have overlooked the most is that the power can be useful for hardcore scalable gaming. Not all hardcore gaming consists of pushing the graphics quality to maximum. There are other limits that can be increased. The more processing power the bigger the battles (the more units and projectiles that can be simulated) the more accurate the physics and more complex the rules permitted. If your games aren't giving you a CPU bottleneck, that just means you aren't playing games where CPU is the likely bottleneck. It doesn't speak of all games. Perhaps the biggest annoyance with this is that few such games have been released that can fully make use of multiple cores.
  My overall point being, though trinity might encroach upon the lower middle end it isn't going to get anywhere near to supplying the needs of the upper middle end and above any time soon.
6. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by unity100 · 2011-10-12 07:23 · Score: 1
  
  let me put it in context for you. i got a phenom ii 965 black edition.
  
  i fired up ubuntu. i set all the pulseaudio settings to max (quality float32le, all settings to max) and i even forced resampling of all audio streams to 96khz, totally pointlessly. real time too.
  
  then i fired up my media players. then i started to open and use 20-30 tabs like i always do on firefox. there were 2 instant messengers running, i was also watching high quality flash video through web. and working through web development tools all the same time.
  
  with ALL these, i wasnt able to even approximate 15% of the 4 cores phenom had. oh, i also launched up mount and blade warband in 1920x1200 resolution in high detail settings through wine, and played it perfectly, with no hiccups.
  
  this is what im saying we are way past the point where powerful cpus may give us any reasonable returns for even heavy desktop platform usage. go figure.
  
  Perhaps what you have overlooked the most is that the power can be useful for hardcore scalable gaming. Not all hardcore gaming consists of pushing the graphics quality to maximum. There are other limits that can be increased. The more processing power the bigger the battles (the more units and projectiles that can be simulated) the more accurate the physics and more complex the rules permitted. .
  that wont happen. multithreaded programming is costly. this is holding software studios back from engaging in it. the retarded state of consoles and the need to develop games to also work on consoles, does not help. i dont see these change anytime soon.
  
  My overall point being, though trinity might encroach upon the lower middle end it isn't going to get anywhere near to supplying the needs of the upper middle end and above any time soon.
  you got a confusion there. trinity is not the current apu. Llano is. and Llano is already encroaching in lower to lower middle on desktop. It will be possible to do serious gaming even on a cheap laptop, or even notebook now. Trinity is the next (1 year or so) iteration, which will not only contain a bulldozer core which will come with all the improvements in its 2nd revision, but also a new graphics processor core, even surpassing the current 5xxx core they use in Llano. With that, the need for discrete gpu will go down. however, hybrid crossfiring a same generation card would still be major performance. as you can see in the benchmarks i have included in this discussion even with Llano. Tri-crossfire seems to be also in the horizon.
  
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7. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 07:56 · Score: 0
  
  I agree with you in most cases. Primarily that the CPU is being commodized. Intel's offerings are downright insulting - they sell same hardware with milliard options in what seems to be an attempt to confuse the consumer. AMD is selling hardware cores * clock. AMD's offerings are much easier to decipher than Intel's (i3, i5, i7, K or not to K, 2100 or 920, supports hardware virtualization or not, etc. etc.)
  In today's commodity CPU market, almost any CPU is "fast enough". When an OEM chooses a CPU, price is going to be a major factor. For laptops, power envelope is another factor. Raw speed is no longer as important. This is where Llano shines - fast enough CPU and fast enough GPU make it a nice APU.
  In my case, I've had an old dual core AMD CPU. I've upgraded that to a Phenom X4. This gave me a huge performance boost without any other upgrade - kept DDR2 RAM and AM2 socket mobo (ASUS, thanks for supporting your old motherboards via bios upgrade!!). Now, the CPU is probably not as fast as on a AM3 board and there is more heat issues, but I don't care. The dual core became a bottleneck when running 3 -5 CPU intensive applications. The quad core, I have yet to max it out and it is nowhere near the top of the line (it cost me $100 few months ago). So frankly, why would I care to spend money on an i7??
  On another note, few months ago I've put together a crappy desktop for someone that is using it only to check email, surf the web and maybe write some office documents. They are used to KDE desktop and they were using an old, old Pentium 4. They didn't want to spend more than $200. So they got a AM3 sempron, single core, 45W processor and 1G RAM (2x what they had before). Now the only "complaint" is that the computer is too fast. And that is with a $30 CPU. Today, that CPU+mobo+RAM combination is under $100.
  So yes, from my experience, CPU is no longer the limiting factor for modern software and to user experience. Faster does not necessarily results in better experience.
  
  especially when amd puts out a computing platform like cuda.
  CUDA is nVidia. OpenCL is what you are looking for.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL
8. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by kermidge · 2011-10-12 08:59 · Score: 1
  
  "and then there is the ultimate question of what the fuck i am going to do if i grab a powerful processor"
  Edge case: there is little I'm still able to do to contribute anything useful anywhere or to anyone. Therefore, six years ago I started crunching for worldcommunitygrid - I figured it was at least useful, and potentially very useful, provided I had a place to live, had a computer, and could pay the electric and ISP bills.
  I got a six-core processor (1090T, up from a 9350e) in June. Using three cores I've been able to crunch since then more than the previous five and a half years. So for me the question is a no-brainer. It helps that I've still got three cores left for normal stuff, games, and virtual machines.
  Presuming I can save enough from what little is left over from Social Security after bills, I look forward to putting together an eight-core system.
  Regarding overall price/performance/power consumption after reading through five comparisons, yes, I'm a bit disappointed with FX, but not enough to preclude me from using it in my next build.
9. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by unity100 · 2011-10-12 09:06 · Score: 1
  
  I'm a bit disappointed with FX, but not enough to preclude me from using it in my next build.
  then wait until the soon to come revision in half a year or a year.
  
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10. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by Lanteran · 2011-10-12 11:01 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, start encoding HD video, it'll kick up usage really fast.
  
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11. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by kermidge · 2011-10-12 11:52 · Score: 1
  
  Yep, thanks, that should time out about right, God willin' and the creek don't rise.
12. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 22:19 · Score: 0
  
  You must be playing undemanding games then. Try Battlefield 3 with the settings you've described.
13. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-13 03:54 · Score: 0
  
  You must be playing an older game or something... 5670's in crossfire running an eyefinity setup at max res with full detail and playable framerates? No.
  x-fire 5670's is a horrible waste... should've went with 5770... a crossfire 5670 setup doesn't even come close to a GTX 465 (shitty ass card as well) and you can get one of those for $99 from newegg (open box or recert) or you can get an 5850 for $98 or 5870 for $130 open box/refurb
14. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by unity100 · 2011-10-13 08:08 · Score: 1
  
  You must be playing an older game or something... 5670's in crossfire running an eyefinity setup at max res with full detail and playable framerates? No.
  well, surprise surprise, it works.
  
  x-fire 5670's is a horrible waste... should've went with 5770
  then you dont know shit. excuse me. 2 5670s in crossfire performs equally with a 5770. and yes, my framerates are still playable in eyefinity.
  
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15. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by unity100 · 2011-10-13 08:26 · Score: 1
  
  can you count age of conan as undemanding ?
  
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16. Re:A lot of stuff in this story ... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-16 03:13 · Score: 0
  
  Thank you. You summarized my thoughts exactly. The only way you'll see the performance difference between AMD and Intel is through benchmarks. The performance difference is is a point where it's imperceptible to the average user.
Reviews are totally wrong in that regard : by unity100 · 2011-10-12 02:43 · Score: 1

If you were to sum up the Bulldozer concept with just one word, it’d have to be scalability. AMD put the bulk of its effort into designing a building block that’s small enough to be duplicated over and over in silicon, and yet capable enough to handle both integer- and floating-point-based workloads as deftly as possible. Indeed, the company confirms this was a from-scratch project started several years ago after considering some of the target markets its next-gen architecture would end up addressing: everything from mainstream clients to the top of the server range.

this.

now amd can just go adding cores/modules, all the way up to 30 and beyond. this would be unbeatable in multi threated applications.

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1. Re:Reviews are totally wrong in that regard : by Dr.+Spork · 2011-10-12 03:02 · Score: 1
  
  As an AMD fan who hasn't bought an AMD cpu for a few years, I sure hope you're right. But there's something familiar in what you say: AMD fans looking forward to the next generation as the time when the real competition with Intel will be reignited. Well, Bulldozer is the next generation, and so far there's nothing there to cheer about. So let's hope for the generation after that, that's how this works, right?
2. Re:Reviews are totally wrong in that regard : by unity100 · 2011-10-12 03:09 · Score: 1
  
  to be honest, actually there is no competition on the desktop anymore. if you havent seen, Llanos blow intel's socks off everywhere in desktop and heavy gaming usage. and they are cheap. i got a phenom ii 965 be, and a 990fx board, but im thinking maybe i should have bought a fm1 and llano.
  
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3. Re:Reviews are totally wrong in that regard : by TPoise · 2011-10-12 08:40 · Score: 1
  
  Wow you are an extreme fan boy. I've seen you post on this article a few dozen times full of FUD and lies. You must be paid by AMD. Llano was a huge dissapointment. I sat around waiting for Llano to come out because of the supposed battery power and supposed gaming usage and CPU power. Llano is based on a previous generation of AMD technology. It is a Phenom II core with an ATI Radeon GPU sewn together. A Core i3 blows Llano out of the water on anything CPU related. Read any respectable site and you will see benchmarks where the Llano doesn't even come close to the Core i5 or i7 except for GPU usage. Intel's onboard GPU is very weak (by its own admittance). You don't buy an Intel CPU expecting to get a great onboard GPU for playing games, but you get a CPU that magnitudes times faster, better battery life, etc. And you can use the extra money that you saved to get a BETTER discrete GPU if you do intend to play games on a laptop.
4. Re:Reviews are totally wrong in that regard : by unity100 · 2011-10-12 09:02 · Score: 1
  
  benchmarks say enough.
  
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5. Re:Reviews are totally wrong in that regard : by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 10:49 · Score: 0
  
  The benchmarks say that if you want real GPU performance, get a discrete GPU, otherwise what Intel provides in the SB GPU is enough. The problem with Llano is that while its GPU is unquestionably better than the SB GPU, the number of people who want a mediocre GPU plus a mediocre CPU is small. It's far more common to want one of two options:
  * good CPU + good GPU (graphics)
  * good CPU + minimum acceptable GPU (office work)
what about the compiler? by mark_osmd · 2011-10-12 03:17 · Score: 1

Lots of negative posts here about BD but remember, it's all the code being tested coming from compilers that have no clue about BD. In this case, the BD code is probably coming out as generic X86. To really test BD fairly, the compilers need updated to optimize for BD like the Intel processors get optimized.
1. Re:what about the compiler? by tgd · 2011-10-12 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  Why? Your programs are almost certainly not compiled with the optimizations.
  Thats a more accurate test.
2. Re:what about the compiler? by makomk · 2011-10-12 05:52 · Score: 1
  
  Your programs probably aren't compiled with some of the more Intel-oriented optimisations in the common benchmark suites either...
3. Re:what about the compiler? by Cajun+Hell · 2011-10-12 06:24 · Score: 1
  
  Your programs are almost certainly not compiled with the optimizations.
  That's sort of a tautology, because we don't have the compiler optimizations yet. Some people probably said the same thing about P6 and later AMD64/IA64, but when the compilers came along, people were running entirely recompiled systems within days.
  Whether Gentoo ricers would find Bulldozer-optimized CFLAGS to make much a difference, let along make Bulldozer competitive, I have no idea. But it's silly (especially given history) to say it would be "more accurate" to test without it, after it were to become available. If you care enough about your computer's speed that you're looking at benchmarks and fretting over percentages anyway, of course you're going to have your compiler target the hardware that you have.
  
  --
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Competition, x86 and arm by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 03:18 · Score: 0

Pretty much intel has won. I have a hard time believing AMD will pull this one out on the desktop market.
Intel can now charge whatever they want. The good thing is that now intel's primary competition is samsung, qualcomm, TI and apple. Low powered ARM processors will change the market and I for one am tired of space heaters. Future systems are 10W or less, not 300W or less.
1. Re:Competition, x86 and arm by 0123456 · 2011-10-12 03:56 · Score: 1
  
  Future systems are 10W or less, not 300W or less.
  You can build an i5 system that idles around 30W and peaks around 100W if you don't need discrete graphics. I doubt you can do the same with anything comparable from AMD.
  Discrete GPUs have been the space-heaters in high-end Intel computers for some time now, not the CPU.
Bad for Intel fanboys too! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 03:52 · Score: 0

Great... now we can expect Intel to rest on their Laurels and never upgrade the Core i5 2500k and Core i7 2600k series. If it weren't for AMD, we'd still be using Pentium 4's at 1.6Ghz
1. Re:Bad for Intel fanboys too! by 0123456 · 2011-10-12 03:58 · Score: 1
  
  If it weren't for AMD, we'd still be using Pentium 4's at 1.6Ghz
  Yeah, because it's not like Intel had any other competition. Those 1.6GHz P4s would have stomped on HP-PA, SPARC and other workstation/server CPUs.
  I don't want to see AMD go bust, but they look to me to be facing a downward spiral of low sales prices reducing R&D spending leaving them unable to compete leading to even lower sales.
You folks are truly stoned. by tyrione · 2011-10-12 04:03 · Score: 1

The point of Bulldozer and pairing it with AMD GPGPUs is to leverage all the wealth of work AMD has put into OpenCL 1.1 with OpenGL 4.x.
When more and more apps leverage OpenCL 1.1 [and the list is growing rapidly] using the likes of LLVM/Clang where AMD has worked hard at leveraging you'll begin to see a lot of these ``benchmarks'' being truly useless and tuned specifically for Intel.
The work AMD is putting in with that marriage should be obvious: http://developer.amd.com/pages/default.aspx
Until applications truly leverage the architecture in conjunction with the AMD 6000/7000 GPGPUs talking about game benchmarks is truly juvenile. I mean seriously folks. Grow up, sit back and watch this platform advance and those same games become tuned for that CPU/GPGPU marriage.
1. Re:You folks are truly stoned. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 12:36 · Score: 0
  
  People don't tend to buy computers based on an airy hope that sometime in the future, all software will be rewritten in a fairly fundamental way to take advantage of GPUs. They buy them to run the software they have today. It isn't "stoned" or juvenile to focus on that.
  Have you noticed that even Apple, the company which is most of the heavy lifting on developing LLVM/Clang and OpenCL, isn't switching to AMD CPUs? What does that tell you about what they feel about the importance of CPU performance, even when they have the best shipping OpenCL software stack in existence?
  Also note that even by your own argument, you could just as easily pair an Intel CPU with an AMD GPU and get the exact same benefits. Except that anything which relies on the CPU side will run much faster on the Intel/AMD system than on the AMD/AMD system.
2. Re:You folks are truly stoned. by GigaplexNZ · 2011-10-12 22:41 · Score: 1
  
  Have you noticed that even Apple, the company which is most of the heavy lifting on developing LLVM/Clang and OpenCL, isn't switching to AMD CPUs? What does that tell you about what they feel about the importance of CPU performance, even when they have the best shipping OpenCL software stack in existence?
  It tells me that AMD are having manufacturing issues and can't make the volumes required for Apple's demand. Or at least that's one possible explanation.
To nobody's surpise... by ericloewe · 2011-10-12 04:30 · Score: 1

...Bulldozer is massively underwhelming. Low IPC, lower clocks than expected, deeper pipelines, absurd power consumption... Sound familiar? So much for 2 cores in one.
1. Re:To nobody's surpise... by TPoise · 2011-10-12 08:48 · Score: 1
  
  BD is a big step forward in CPU revolution. If Bulldozer came out in 2009 when it was originally announced nearly a half-decade ago, it would have been a really good CPU for its time. Sandy Bridge is now every where and eats Bulldozer's lunch in nearly every single category. I for one bought into the AMD hype that this would be the next best thing for CPUs and would beat the pants off of Sandy Bridge, but it was just the opposite. Underwhelming in every sense of the word.
2. Re:To nobody's surpise... by ericloewe · 2011-10-12 18:17 · Score: 1
  
  BD's two-cores-in-ome approach makes sense on paper, as long as they get meaningful improvements in the amount of die area needed per core, which they seemingly did not get. I wonder if just finishing up those cores to Phenom II levels (With BD's basic improvements) would have been better overall, despite the added die.
AMD & Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 04:52 · Score: 1

AMD predicts 10-15% improvement per year... This means, in the best case twice the power in... 5 years !!! Moore was more optimistic than AMD...
Why just 4 modules on Bulldozer? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 04:57 · Score: 0

If Bulldozer is supposed to be big arrays of cores doing symphony of carpet-bombing every big computing problem, then why the main work of core multiplication is done by their MARKETING instead of ENGINEERING department ?
Why are they rying to sell us one module as two cores ? Furthermore, why is there so much cache taking the useful die area ?
If you say that you did some optimisations and that now you can get a module for only extra 18% die area of your K-10 core, the why the heck wouldn't you put that 32nm to a good use and pepper on 100% more MODULES than you had K-10 CORES in last, 45nm generation ?
( 45^2 / 32^2 ~2) means you can cram 2x as much logic on the same area as before, so by pure logic one would expect to see 12-moduled Bulldozer, that could do some pretty nifty tricks and in some situations double the number of actual cores, with each module performing as two cores.
And that is without stinging on the cache, giving it the same proportion of the die as on the Phenom II.
Thinning of the cache could byu you quite a few extra modules.
Yes, you would be TDP limited, so the frequency with all modues fully active would have to go down. But the aggregate CPU power would still be staggering.
And, you could heavilly turbo when using just smaller subset of modules.
This is just AMD cutting corners and expecting everyone else to pay for this as some kind of extra value...
1. Re:Why just 4 modules on Bulldozer? by Brane2 · 2011-10-12 12:51 · Score: 1
  
  True. Where are all those promised cores ?
  Bulldozer was supposed to be about doing things parrallel big time.
  All they have shown are four fat cores they call modules, and they paid for each only 18% more transistors than for regular core.
  If that is true and if they have 2x bigger transistor budget, shouldn't we be seeing chips with something like 12 modules ?
How Fast Does It Have To Be? by Nom+du+Keyboard · 2011-10-12 05:05 · Score: 1

Does Bulldozer really have to be the fastest chip ever? Or simply fast enough to run everything that you want to run at the best price/power available? While some people will insist that Too Fast is simply not possible, I am the other 99% that says too expensive isn't worth it.

--
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
1. Re:How Fast Does It Have To Be? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 15:08 · Score: 0
  
  Which part of terrible bang for buck are you not seeing?
  They aren't cheap and they're slow.
  Phenom makes sense. Bulldozer FX doesn't. Performance per W, crap. Performance per $, crap. Performance per core, crap. Peformance per CPU, crap.
  You are buying a cpu to do work right, not as an ornament?
  I can't believe how bad bulldozer is, and I used to buy AMD (Athlon and Athlon 64).
2. Re:How Fast Does It Have To Be? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 18:13 · Score: 0
  
  The problem is that it's neither fast or the cheap. And it consumes a lot of power which translates to a lot of heat which translates to a lot of noise.
  Too bad. I had high hopes. I don't see myself updating my c2q desktop anytime soon, but when I do it would be really nice to have some competition on the market. Let's hope that AMDs new architecture scales well and next set of releases will be more impressive.
3. Re:How Fast Does It Have To Be? by Bengie · 2011-10-13 02:58 · Score: 1
  
  Well, I have a 3 year old computer that was a bargain bin computer at the time. I really need to upgrade it because it doesn't support certain features, but my CPU actually outperforms the highest end BD according to most benchmarks.
  Why would I "upgrade" to a computer that is slower?
  Hopefully the problem is a single point of failure, like needing to beef up the decoder, which they should be able to do with a revision. I have to upgrade in a few months, and they'll lose my sale if they can't provide something faster than my 3 year old cpu.
no you didnt get it by unity100 · 2011-10-12 07:51 · Score: 1

This is the comparison of a8 as a standalone cpu versus 1100T. In this test, the onboard die is not used. this is not how this platform should be run. It should be run as its onboard gpu in hybrid crossfire with a 6670 external gpu :

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review/6
http://techreport.com/articles.x/21730/8

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1. Re:no you didnt get it by Vectormatic · 2011-10-12 08:05 · Score: 1
  
  I do get it, in both cases, the CPU is limited by the external video card in the benches, producing near equal results, in two games the GPU is held back by the A8 3850 more then by the 1100T, producing better numbers for the Thuban, the onboard GPU for the A8 is irrelevant.
  And yes, the hybrid crossfire idea is nice, and might be an interesting value for budget gaming, but in terms of pure CPU performance Llano has nothing on deneb/thuban. Sure Llano has its niche, and might be an interesting cpu in certain cases, but stop trying to say its a better performing chip then thuban, when it simply isnt
  
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2. Re:no you didnt get it by unity100 · 2011-10-12 08:22 · Score: 1
  
  it is a better performing chip then thuban because the playfield is limited. that's it. the hybrid crossfire there, as you can see from benchmarks, gives the user all it needs for current gaming. further than that becomes performance enthusiasm. this is not about the performance of the unit as a CPU. its about the performance of the unit as a unit for gaming.
  
  not to mention in roughly a year, they will be replaced by trinity.
  
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ECC and motherboards by Lonewolf666 · 2011-10-12 08:56 · Score: 1

True, you have to check in advance which motherboards support ECC. It seems that many vendors don't want the effort of testing it or whatever, so the just kill the feature. But with a bit of looking around, you can usually find a board that supports ECC. Asus for instance supports it in many (but not all) AM3 boards.
My own current upgrade (parts bought, but not installed yet) consists of an Asus board and a Phenom II X4 because of ECC. Call me paranoid if you like, but the error protection seemed more important than the extra performance of a Sandy Bridge quad core.

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Worse than the Previous by Bengie · 2011-10-12 09:03 · Score: 1

Ignore AMD vs Intel for a second. There are several single and threaded benchmarks showing the Phenom II x6 3.4ghz out performing the BD 3.6ghz.... WTF?! Even the older AMD chips use less power and are faster.
Intel spanked the BD in almost every benchmark, both single and multi-threaded.
Intel Gulftown 6core(12 HT) 1.17 billion transistors
AMD BD 4module(8 core) 2 billion transistors
Intel's chip is not only 1/2 the transistors, but it's also faster per thread. AMD needs to fix something, and fast
Couple of hundred bucks it costs to go ECC ? by Lonewolf666 · 2011-10-12 09:13 · Score: 3, Informative

Couple of 10 bucks, more likely. I've recently bought parts for an AMD-based PC upgrade (in Germany) and the price differences were
- about 7 euros more for 2x2GB ECC Ram, compared to the same amount of non-ECC. Both Kingston Value RAM BTW.
- maybe 10-20 euros more for a board that supports ECC. That one is not as clear-cut BTW, it is more a case of having less choices if you want ECC, and the cheapest boards tend to not support ECC.
In dollars, that's maybe 40 bucks difference total. Or 50 bucks if you want 2x4GB and assume a similar price difference.
Of course, if you buy Intel, it will be a couple of hundred bucks because their desktop CPUs don't support ECC at all. That means getting a Xeon, and those are expensive.

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i misreplied by unity100 · 2011-10-12 10:28 · Score: 1

below is mr original reply.

it is a better performing chip then thuban because the playfield is limited. that's it. the hybrid crossfire there, as you can see from benchmarks, gives the user all it needs for current gaming. further than that becomes performance enthusiasm. this is not about the performance of the unit as a CPU. its about the performance of the unit as a unit for gaming.

not to mention in roughly a year, they will be replaced by trinity.

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crossfire? by edxwelch · 2011-10-12 11:39 · Score: 1

> and if you do you can crossfire it with the cpu contained one
Yes, if you want to make your games run *slower* -as you see if you read the article that you linked to ;)
1. Re:crossfire? by unity100 · 2011-10-12 14:22 · Score: 1
  
  please read BOTH articles i linked.
  
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2. Re:crossfire? by edxwelch · 2011-10-12 15:10 · Score: 1
  
  The second article doesn't mention the crossfire problem, but I assume that is because he only tested with one game
3. Re:crossfire? by unity100 · 2011-10-12 15:40 · Score: 1
  
  there isnt a crossfire problem. hybrid crossfire works for dx10 and 11 games only. for rest, you use the external card. and, are you sure that you did not misunderstand the crossfire problem with the 69xx card on the phenom board, to be a problem with the llano board ?
  
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4. Re:crossfire? by edxwelch · 2011-10-12 16:07 · Score: 1
  
  Well, I would consider that to be a big problem. There are a lot of dx9 games.
  What about OpenGL? Does it work with OpenGL?
5. Re:crossfire? by unity100 · 2011-10-13 08:29 · Score: 1
  
  catalyst drivers should support opengl nicely. ati leans on opengl in fact.
  
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Why WinZip, Tom's Hardware? Why? by mr_mischief · 2011-10-12 12:10 · Score: 1

They test WinZip and make a big deal about how limited the new AMD chip is under it. Yet they show it deals much better with 7-Zip, which is the same sort of program and free (as in beer and speech, LGPL) to boot. Then they make a big deal about WinZip performance, as if it matters.
Um, hello? When are they going to stop punishing the chip for a poorly implemented application? Sure, if a popular game title or the editing suite you absolutely must use at work performs poorly because it is coded poorly and a processor can make the difference, buy the processor you need. The professional workstation should be specified around the high-end software needs anyway.
If, OTOH, you have an option to pay thirty bucks for something easily replaceable with a free program that forms a small part of your use, why not take the free one that offers good performance on both chips?
1. Re:Why WinZip, Tom's Hardware? Why? by tyrione · 2011-10-12 23:36 · Score: 1
  
  They test WinZip and make a big deal about how limited the new AMD chip is under it. Yet they show it deals much better with 7-Zip, which is the same sort of program and free (as in beer and speech, LGPL) to boot. Then they make a big deal about WinZip performance, as if it matters.
  Um, hello? When are they going to stop punishing the chip for a poorly implemented application? Sure, if a popular game title or the editing suite you absolutely must use at work performs poorly because it is coded poorly and a processor can make the difference, buy the processor you need. The professional workstation should be specified around the high-end software needs anyway.
  If, OTOH, you have an option to pay thirty bucks for something easily replaceable with a free program that forms a small part of your use, why not take the free one that offers good performance on both chips?
  They show apps that are tuned to Intel and then show that AMD isn't matching up. Yet, the apps that AMD lead are the ones which can access all those cores. When the second round of those apps show up as OpenCL 1.1 certified, and they simultaneously tap the CPU cores and the Streams Intel's results will look like shit.
and. by unity100 · 2011-10-12 14:24 · Score: 1

why ? ?

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1. Re:and. by Lanteran · 2011-10-12 14:51 · Score: 1
  
  Very very processor intensive activity. My computers are somewhat obsolete, but if it brings both cores of my Pentium D rig (@ 3.5GHz!) to their knees... well, you get the idea. That, compiling, and dwarf fortress have me considering an investment in a Phenom II 1100 or 1090T and a decent water cooling system. I wanted to wait until bulldozer, but since it looks to be shaping up to be inferior to not only intel's offerings, but previous processors by AMD... well, I think I'll just buy that Phenom II. Don't want to fork over any additional money to intel, plus it's a pretty stable overclocking platform.
  
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2. Re:and. by Lanteran · 2011-10-12 14:53 · Score: 1
  
  Forgot to mention that it gets worse in (I believe) an exponential fashion for resolutions over 1080p. Re-encoding long screencasts from my 2960x1050 setup is usually an overnight job.
  
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3. Re:and. by unity100 · 2011-10-13 08:10 · Score: 1
  
  i didnt ask 'why' as to why it would incur load. i asked, why the hell should i engage in video encoding out of the blue as an activity.
  
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4. Re:and. by Lanteran · 2011-10-13 11:28 · Score: 1
  
  Oh. Well I'm kinda into video editing and all that stuff, but probably the biggest reasons are ripping dvds, and re-encoding ripped videos for finicky multimedia players.
  
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5. Re:and. by unity100 · 2011-10-13 12:08 · Score: 1
  
  im actually at a loss to find stuff to do on my new powerful rig. i asked in a few forums, and they told me a few things, including video encoding. but, none of these count as a daily activity for me that would give me any benefit, leave aside fun. so, cpu in my rig remains underutilized.
  
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6. Re:and. by Lanteran · 2011-10-13 12:51 · Score: 1
  
  Do the scientific community and the world a favor, and donate spare cpu cycles to some BOINC cluster project. Bonus points for GPU number crunching in conjunction. Probably the top two projects I'd recommend are SETI@Home and folding@home, the former is searching for patterns in radio telescopes indicating the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the latter simulates the folding of proteins, opening up superior knowledge of the human body, and particularly cancer.
  
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7. Re:and. by unity100 · 2011-10-13 13:11 · Score: 1
  
  man. i work with a computer, and being bored of gaming recently after the 20 years i gamed, i am at a loss to find any kind of activities that may entertain me in front of a computer. so, i am in need of some activity that will cater to me, before i cater to world peace at this point.
  
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8. Re:and. by Lanteran · 2011-10-14 08:09 · Score: 1
  
  Well, if they're just CPU cycles being wasted at this point, why not join SETI@Home.... 3D modeling comes up as an alternative, I think it's fun being able to see things as soon as you make them :)
  
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9. Re:and. by unity100 · 2011-10-14 14:16 · Score: 1
  
  yes but 3d modeling takes considerable effort.
  
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10. Re:and. by Lanteran · 2011-10-15 06:59 · Score: 1
  
  You could give it to me, and I'll ship you my Pentium D.
  
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GP/CPU by benthurston27 · 2011-10-12 18:38 · Score: 1

I think testing AMD's FX chip and Intel's by pairing them with powerful graphics cards kind of misses the point of Bulldozer, which would be how well it does without the additional graphics card. I think the best comparison would be $235 for the AMD chip and $225 for the Intel chip but add to the Intel price the price of a mediocre graphics card that you would need to add to it to do the stuff the AMD chip does by itself.
1. Re:GP/CPU by GigaplexNZ · 2011-10-12 23:01 · Score: 1
  
  Huh? The AMD Bulldozer chip doesn't do any graphics by itself. This isn't one of their APUs.
2. Re:GP/CPU by benthurston27 · 2011-10-13 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  Oh my bad, I was thinking of the sequel to Bulldozer: Pile-driver.
Bandwidth and APUs by Lonewolf666 · 2011-10-12 21:22 · Score: 1

The Llano is one of these cases, as the CPU has to share the memory bandwidth with the built-in GPU. A review I've read (can't remember where) showed it to be really bandwidth limited, an Athlon II X4 with discrete GPU (that was not much stronger on paper) performed much better.
So I guess the Llano could really use quad channel memory. Probably not going to happen, but at least you want to utilize those two available memory channels.

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