HardOCP Readers Ask AMD Bulldozer Questions

[pelo]

I have not ruled out Bulldozer yet. I don't understand this fully and I am looking into this but.. it seems that compiler optimization is what is really holding things back. When things are compiled using Open64, things improve around 30%. Look here:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_bulldozer_open64&num=4


Personally? I think Bulldozer is forward thinking not realized yet. When will things catch up? soon enough and that would not stop me from buying one.

That's on linux where programs are far more multithreaded than they are on windows (windows 8 scheduler included) and with the new compiler. Do you honestly think that's feasible on windows? Hell, do you think it's even feasible in linux? AMD doesn't have the market share or the force to push that through and justify the extra work for the select few poor saps who actually bought one.

It's one thing to be forward thinking but quite another to force everyone to think the same way you do. If it doesn't help, and apply to, a majority of end users and programmers then it's as good as being completely worthless. You don't make a processor and then tell all your customers that they're doing it wrong.

By the way, you may want to read that more closely and realize that the optimizations recommended by AMD weren't great

 

[Pieter3dnow]

To be honest the work that is done on inux is nothing more then compiling benchmark source with the appropriate flags (optimized for Bulldozer). If you checked the [H] review there isn't much wrong with it.

The problem lies with the older software more then anything else and yes badly programmed games prolly don't behave well.

 

[Cobalt35]

Too many whiners on this site, must be Democrats....

If you don't like Bulldozer, buy Intel.... But by all means please stop whining... it's just a CPU.

The irony is strong in this one.

The fact is AMD over-promised and under-delivered, and it was way late, and then tried to cover it up with marketing hype and question evasion. They deserve a roasting.

 

[gunderwood]

They should have just released BD for servers and "workstations." Let the handful of fanboys buy a workstation to play with BD. Then die shrink PII for the mobile and desktop space; aka everyone else. At least then they could claim they are trying to drive a software/enterprise change with BD which will yield huge long term profits. Given the state of most desktop software, BD was always going to be ho-hum...the architecture just doesn't make sense. I'm still interested to see how the BD architecture grows and matures for server workloads, particularly virtualization.

 

[caboosemoose]

I'm not sure what people expected this guy to say. AMD is in the business of selling Bulldozer processors. It's also a listed company. There is no way anyone from AMD is going to openly put their hands up and say, "yup, this chip is a disaster."

Well, not unless they are hoping for instant dismissal.

 

[noko]

New hardware, new design which is significantly different. Of course it has future potential to improve from scheduling, bios updates with new microcode, to software better optimized for the hardware. A 30% increase in performance if optimize is a good increase and probably not the best it can achieve, Intel optimizations for that software is pretty much maxed out. Some folks maybe jumping to the wrong conclusions on the viability of BD.

 

[Michaelius]

And agains with the future software arguments.

I wish any AMD fanboy explained to me why I should be paying more for CPU which performs badly today only to hope it's architecture will be fully used in several years ?

By the time we get 8 cores optimized soft we will be running tock version of Haswell or whatever next step after piledriver is.

 

[daglesj]

Yeah thats really the problem.

Currently AMD is saying yes buy this new CPU configuration that's designed with 2015 in mind.

However, the fact you wont be using that CPU in 2015 seems to not be factored in.

Full marks for being brave enough to go head first into a totally new direction but maybe a halfway house design would have been a better idea?

At the end of the day however, the situation is AMD could not afford the resource or time to fully develop a high-end desktop CPU so they simply reused their server chip. Thats fair enough but I think the marketing team could have handled expectations differently.

Had they announced their intention to throttle back on the high-end desktop side a couple of months ago rather than this week I think the reception would have been different.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

And agains with the future software arguments.

I wish any AMD fanboy explained to me why I should be paying more for CPU which performs badly today only to hope it's architecture will be fully used in several years ?

By the time we get 8 cores optimized soft we will be running tock version of Haswell or whatever next step after piledriver is.

What you want me to post the street fighter IV benchmark again ?

You still do not understand that the only way to get more performance is multithreaded applications this has been the case for the last 4 to 5 years since mhz and instructions per cycle don't scale to the same amount as adding cores ....

And there is no such thing as 8 core optimized software that is needed for Bulldozer.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,685997/Street-Fighter-IV-PC-explained-in-detail/News/

PCGH: Can you give some detail about the thread structure? What different tasks can be or are split up into different threads and what is the expected performance gain resulting from two respectively four or even more (8) cores?
Yoshinori Ono: I don't think we've done anything spectacularly different to other leading titles here but fundamental tasks such as rendering, audio and file I/O can be processed on separate threads. Also, the objects placed on the stages utilises ‘job system' and can be updated over several threads in a scalable manner.

We have also tuned SFIV so that CPU resources do not change depending on the combinations of characters/stages as well as the game experience being constant, unaffected by CPU and GPU specs. Because of this, increasing the number of cores to run SFIV will certainly increase the performance but won't bring a great deal of other benefits.

Look it exists smart developers which didn't know about Bulldozer and yet the game runs fine on it ....

 

[Impulse]

Intel seems to be doing a fine job of scaling IPC from the C2Q to the first gen i7 and then SB...

 

[scout007]

And agains with the future software arguments.

I wish any AMD fanboy explained to me why I should be paying more for CPU which performs badly today only to hope it's architecture will be fully used in several years ?

By the time we get 8 cores optimized soft we will be running tock version of Haswell or whatever next step after piledriver is.

This argument reminds me of when 32/64-bit chip came out. Why buy a 64-bit processor when everything is written in 32-bit? Driver support for everything was mostly missing and it would crash most of the time. Let me remind you that Windows XP did not support 64-bit processor. However, Windows XP 64-bit did support it but it was more of a patch job.

Does anyone still have the first 32/64-bit chips that came out? I haven't met anyone that still have them.

 

[pelo]

This argument reminds me of when 32/64-bit chip came out. Why buy a 64-bit processor when everything is written in 32-bit? Driver support for everything was mostly missing and it would crash most of the time. Let me remind you that Windows XP did not support 64-bit processor. However, Windows XP 64-bit did support it but it was more of a patch job.

Does anyone still have the first 32/64-bit chips that came out? I haven't met anyone that still have them.

I still have my amd64 3000+. The difference was that it was a move that just made sense and not only for the long term but the short term as well.

Secondly, it's not all that revolutionary to offer 8 threads. the i7 2600k has 8 threads and multitasks better than bulldozer more often than it trails, so it's not about the number of cores/threads, but rather how those tasks are executed and how it affects the chip design. Hell, look at the 2011 i7 platform. Those chips have 6 cores and 12 threads and multitask and handle multithreading far better than the bulldozer (at a steeper price) and as a result we've seen huge power draw under load. Kyle was rightfully harsh on Intel with his review (he didn't mention much about the chipset fiasco, which I think was the far bigger failure with the 2011 platform). With 4 cores and 8 threads you get much better bang-for-your-buck and more performance and multithreading than you need, so the 2011 platform is completely unnecessary for the 95% of us, even as enthusiasts. Therefore the argument is far more simple...

Is the module design, favoring cores over threads (with 256bit FP the 8 core bulldozer is just a 4 core 4 thread chip), better than intel's hyperthreading with fewer cores? If you take into account how long that bulldozer pipeline is as a result, the answer is a very resounding and a very clear no. Then there's the price, the power consumption, the fact that software generally doesn't utilize that many, some game designer's have had to jump through hoops to get more than 4 cores utilized and that there still isn't a good way to do it passively...

Is a core better than a thread? Yes. But currently as we scale up past 4 the answer isn't as clear. In fact, it turns out that the farther you go up in core count the less advantageous it becomes considering the drawbacks.

 

[Michaelius]

What you want me to post the street fighter IV benchmark again ?

You still do not understand that the only way to get more performance is multithreaded applications this has been the case for the last 4 to 5 years since mhz and instructions per cycle don't scale to the same amount as adding cores ....

And there is no such thing as 8 core optimized software that is needed for Bulldozer.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,685997/Street-Fighter-IV-PC-explained-in-detail/News/



Look it exists smart developers which didn't know about Bulldozer and yet the game runs fine on it ....

Great now post me a 20 more titles with scalling like this. Should be easy there are hundreds of games coming out each year

Personally I like to have best possible performance in 95% of my applications and good enough in remaining 5% than acceptable in 95% of stuff and very good in 5%.

And so far Intel didn't have trouble scalling frequency and IPC each generation.

Core 2 - 65 nm quads overclocking to 3600 Mhz
Core 2 - 2-3 % IPC increase 45 nm quads overclocking to 4000 Mhz
Nehalem 45 nm around 15% increase in IPC clock speeds toppind around 4000 Mhz
Sandy Bridge - 10-15% higher IPC quads at 4500 Mhz

 

[Impulse]

Intel basically counts on increased IPC with a new architecture every 2 years... If AMD moved at that pace they could afford screw ups like this, but who knows when we'll see a revamped AMD architecture (after all, BD was delayed and redelayed).

You can't just keep making excuses and saying Intel's bank account is wholly responsible for their pace either, at some point execution matters just as much and AMD has definitely dropped the ball in that regard. When NV's 8800 series was slapping everything around ATI/AMD didn't just throw their arms in the air and delayed their next product for a year... They made damn sure the HD4000 turned things around.

 

[delahaya]

Basically, they came out and admitted these are server processors. It all makes sense now even if its not what I wanted to hear. So, for our desktops we need to either live with a Phenom II (as its cheaper) or go for Intel's faster offerings.

 

[buttons]

The irony is strong in this one.

The fact is AMD over-promised and under-delivered, and it was way late, and then tried to cover it up with marketing hype and question evasion. They deserve a roasting.

I just don't get comments like this. Why are people getting so worked up over this topic. I bought a bulldozer and from a user standpoint I am pleased with its performance. It handles all my tasks with ease.

For $199 I got a FX4100 and crossfire 970 motherboard bundle. I suppose if you run superpi on a daily basis your shit out of luck, but if you actually use your computer for gaming, surfing the web, encoding then bulldozer is fine.

I see people ragging on power consumption too, but i am extremely impressed with it. My FX4100 is drawing (209w) 15% less watts at the wall then my AMD 955 C3 (232w)and about 35 % less then my work's Dell GX620 (306w) (intel) with same work load. Granted the dell is about 4 years old so its not an apples to apples there.

 

[fps4ever]

I just don't get comments like this. Why are people getting so worked up over this topic. I bought a bulldozer and from a user standpoint I am pleased with its performance. It handles all my tasks with ease.

For $199 I got a FX4100 and crossfire 970 motherboard bundle. I suppose if you run superpi on a daily basis your shit out of luck, but if you actually use your computer for gaming, surfing the web, encoding then bulldozer is fine.

I see people ragging on power consumption too, but i am extremely impressed with it. My FX4100 is drawing (209w) 15% less watts at the wall then my AMD 955 C3 (232w)and about 35 % less then my work's Dell GX620 (306w) (intel) with same work load. Granted the dell is about 4 years old so its not an apples to apples

You traded a true quad core for a semi quad one and you are happy? Your opinion might carry more weight but a lesser processor should use less wattage anyway so I'm not seeing your point?

 

[daglesj]

I suppose if you run superpi on a daily basis your shit out of luck, but if you actually use your computer for gaming, surfing the web, encoding then bulldozer is fine.

Yep stick average Joe user (read 85% of the worlds PC users) in front of two PCs, one with a Bulldozer (hell even an Athlon II) and one with a i5/i7 in it and they wouldn't know the difference for day to day stuff.

 

[pelo]

Yep stick average Joe user (read 85% of the worlds PC users) in front of two PCs, one with a Bulldozer (hell even an Athlon II) and one with a i5/i7 in it and they wouldn't know the difference for day to day stuff.

Then why make a new product to begin with? this argument is being tossed around all the time by a lot of people but they're failing to look at the same argument from the opposite perspective.

If you can buy a processor that's cheaper that can handle the same tasks at nearly the same speed then why would you ever upgrade to something that costs more? you wouldn't. That's why people are upset with AMD and the Bulldozer.

Mind you, this has an FX connotation to it. If the average Joe wanted AMD he'd have bought an athlon

 

[fps4ever]

Then why make a new product to begin with? this argument is being tossed around all the time by a lot of people but they're failing to look at the same argument from the opposite perspective.

If you can buy a processor that's cheaper that can handle the same tasks at nearly the same speed then why would you ever upgrade to something that costs more? you wouldn't. That's why people are upset with AMD and the Bulldozer.

Mind you, this has an FX connotation to it. If the average Joe wanted AMD he'd have bought an athlon

Agreed...why buy a BD when an old Celeron will do for the majority of people...that argument gets old fast! Or why get a fake quad core when you already have a good true quad core? To save 30 watts when idling? Hech, my core Intel i7 870 sips a LOT less power at stock speed idling when I undervolt it @ 0.76v and 1.12v loaded than the 4100. I guess people want the newest shiny thing no matter what...

 

[daglesj]

Then why make a new product to begin with? this argument is being tossed around all the time by a lot of people but they're failing to look at the same argument from the opposite perspective.

If you can buy a processor that's cheaper that can handle the same tasks at nearly the same speed then why would you ever upgrade to something that costs more? you wouldn't. That's why people are upset with AMD and the Bulldozer.

Mind you, this has an FX connotation to it. If the average Joe wanted AMD he'd have bought an athlon

Because the market is also moved along by other lucrative applications such as what the other 15% need.

That 15% can be worth chasing. Nowhere in my post did I say everyone is catered for by a 3GHz dual core.

People usually end up upgrading purely by the PC equivalent of continental drift. The CPUS they had are no longer in stock, superceeded by the needs of the 15%. The average upgrade cycle of most of my customers would be 6 years. Yes thats what ordinary folks do, not us. Most folks don't specify a certain level of CPU performance when they buy a PC mainly because most don't have a clue. Case in point most wouldn't have bought those awful 3Ghz Pentium 4 single cores back around 2004/5 if they did. They go more by price and extras oh and what they have heard/seen on the TV. As AMD never advertise they plump for the Intel.

Quite frankly it's a mess.

 

[DejaWiz]

Basically, they came out and admitted these are server processors. It all makes sense now even if its not what I wanted to hear. So, for our desktops we need to either live with a Phenom II (as its cheaper) or go for Intel's faster offerings.

The sad part about them admitting they are server parts is that they still cost more, use more power, and perform less than the blue man group offerings, or even their own last gen offerings.

My point being, companies looking to overhaul their datacenters NOW are not going to logically choose BD and have to WAIT, possibly years, for programs and operating systems to be properly compiled for BD in order to POTENTIALLY realize any performance gains.

Hell, when software is coded to start utilizing the BD architecture in a couple/few years, it's likely going to coincide with the time intel will have 22nm Haswell out, followed soon by 14nm Broadwell and Skylake, then 10nm Skymont.

Since there's speculation that AMD is bowing out of the CPU chip segment, there will be nothing offered to combat these future intel chips, so what's the point of software developers throwing resources and money to code/compile for BD?

 

[JMccovery]

Intel basically counts on increased IPC with a new architecture every 2 years... If AMD moved at that pace they could afford screw ups like this, but who knows when we'll see a revamped AMD architecture (after all, BD was delayed and redelayed).

You can't just keep making excuses and saying Intel's bank account is wholly responsible for their pace either, at some point execution matters just as much and AMD has definitely dropped the ball in that regard. When NV's 8800 series was slapping everything around ATI/AMD didn't just throw their arms in the air and delayed their next product for a year... They made damn sure the HD4000 turned things around.

Execution is equal parts design and manufacturing. Intel's bank account ensures that they can have multiple designs running concurrently, and whichever one is ready first, they produce it. AMD doesn't have the necessary capital available to run multiple hand-designed projects like Intel, nor could AMD afford to run its own fabs.

 

[Deleted member 82943]

it's still intel > amd in terms of bulldozer and performance /end thread

 

[badpool]

Execution is equal parts design and manufacturing. Intel's bank account ensures that they can have multiple designs running concurrently, and whichever one is ready first, they produce it. AMD doesn't have the necessary capital available to run multiple hand-designed projects like Intel, nor could AMD afford to run its own fabs.

This is why anyone dropping cash for AMD's new tech has my support. I even thanked the geek at my local brick-and-mortar shop when he told me he was getting a 100% AMD system .

 

[noko]

It still Bulldozer will improve > Intel SB over time due to:
1. Microcode updates
2. Bios updates (memory optimizations)
3. OS updates (Linux and Windows)
4. Software optimizations

New hardware with some kinks that is being worked upon. Is it the best choice, one needs to decide that before buying. I am not sure at this point it was the best choice, working great for me but SB at this time would be a better performer. Motherboard for price is uber better then an Intel board for given price. Besides so far it has been rather fun tinkering with besides playing games (abeit with some Steam game issues which look like will be resolved shortly). I usually keep a system around 5 years, it becomes a backup system later so I expect to see a long term improvement from BD. Unless Piledriver blows away BD that is and BD will then get sold cheap.

 

[Impulse]

I doubt any of that well yield better than 10-20% results, and you're apparently assuming Intel will stand still while AMD optimizes, heh. At least dreaming is free...

 

[noko]

I doubt any of that well yield better than 10-20% results, and you're apparently assuming Intel will stand still while AMD optimizes, heh. At least dreaming is free...

Well it really depends on application which may see a 30% or greater performance. POV ray saw something like a 30% increase when testing different optimizations out on Linux. TomsHardware Win8 saw some good gains as well. Bios updates I've seen some significant gains. At this time who knows how well BD will perform six months down the line? I do believe it will be better then today while Intel cpus may be more flat in performance increases other then the newer Intel cpus coming out.

 

[MrRuckus]

I just don't get comments like this. Why are people getting so worked up over this topic. I bought a bulldozer and from a user standpoint I am pleased with its performance. It handles all my tasks with ease.

For $199 I got a FX4100 and crossfire 970 motherboard bundle. I suppose if you run superpi on a daily basis your shit out of luck, but if you actually use your computer for gaming, surfing the web, encoding then bulldozer is fine.

Remind me why you are posting on a hardware enthusiast oriented site again?

if you actually use your computer for gaming, surfing the web, encoding then bulldozer is fine.

If you want a processor that is just "fine" then have at it. I was waiting for Bulldozer and was looking forward to a new build with it. Looks like I'll be going back to Intel. Fanboism be damned. BD just falls too short compared to the competition. Higher clockspeed means nothing if the IPC aren't there.

 

[Impulse]

For those things Llano's just fine too, and cheaper, and more more efficient... This isn't {S}oftOCP tho, "just fine" is an oxymoron around here.

 

[eastmen]

Remind me why you are posting on a hardware enthusiast oriented site again?



If you want a processor that is just "fine" then have at it. I was waiting for Bulldozer and was looking forward to a new build with it. Looks like I'll be going back to Intel. Fanboism be damned. BD just falls too short compared to the competition. Higher clockspeed means nothing if the IPC aren't there.

For some things bulldozer is faster than anything intel has in the same price catagory right now.

Blanket statements like yours really don't work. Bulldozer has its advantages and its disadvantages to claim other wise is just silly

 

[fps4ever]

For some things bulldozer is faster than anything intel has in the same price catagory right now.

Blanket statements like yours really don't work. Bulldozer has its advantages and its disadvantages to claim other wise is just silly

Bullshit...blanket statements like yours really don't work either. Everything as advantages and disadvantages...BD just tips the scales more than most to the crappy side!

 

[eastmen]

Bullshit...blanket statements like yours really don't work either. Everything as advantages and disadvantages...BD just tips the scales more than most to the crappy side!

For what i'd use a chip for bulldozer is faster period . Its power usage is on par with the chip I currently have so for me there are no negatives, perhaps if your doing something else with your chip ... like spending your life on these forums you might want to use something as power efficent as possible. Like an arm chip.

 

[fps4ever]

So what do you use your BD for that it's so faster...I could use a good laugh! You spend a lot of your time yourself on this forum defending this junk...you mad cuz you got stuck buying one?

 

[vick1000]

Maybe AMD should get together with a console manufacturer, and make a deal with them to design their next gen software and hardware around Bulldozer. Because I think BD will be a profit leach for AMD in the desktop environment, with or without Win8 features.

 

[statikregimen]

BD is only going to fill a few small niches for heavy multithreading/tasking, 99.99% of which are going to be people who already have 900-series chipsets - not new builds. This niche is ultimately going to be a fraction of a percent of buyers. It's why I bought one, and it was mostly great. Then I discovered the issues it is having with a lot of games; many of which I play. For a CPU that's been in development for that long, such problems are unacceptable.

After fighting with it for a couple weeks, I ended up scrapping the build entirely, and started over with Intel and Nvidia parts. Now, I couldn't be happier. I'm rebuilding my AMD rig for doing my music, but shelving the BD and going back to my 1100t, instead....Majorly annoying waste of time and money, but again: would have been ok, if it weren't for the gaming problems, which I can't help but notice was asked in the original thread, but again dodged by AMD in this Q/A.

 

[oldpablo]

Just check out Tom's, Ars' or Anand's reviews... plenty of information there.

I'm looking for some good examples of multitasking benchmark software. So far I see Passmark and PCMark, but I don't see anyone running the multitasking specific benchmarks in those.

What other options are out there for multitasking benchmarks? From what I can tell bulldozer is still my best option for how I use my PC.

 

[Impulse]

How is that?

 

[oldpablo]

I could care less about how fast a single app runs on it's own, or how multi-threaded one app is. I constantly multitask almost to the point of being unproductive. VMs, multiple game clients, shitload of browser tabs (I have literally 30 tabs open right now), file copies, media center streaming to extenders in the background, etc. Almost all of these benchmarks are useless to me. What can I say, I'm an enthusiast. They aren't all the same you know. I gave up giving a shit about 10 more FPS in games years ago.

 

[Impulse]

I haven't seen any proof that BD does any better under those circumstances, compared to SB that is. Any links or even subjective observations to the contrary that you can share?