Real shame Bulldozer sucks so much for gaming

[Hagrid]

Oh goodie! Yet another "I hate AMD" threads. I keep saying this but we need a separate sub forum for all these troll threads.

Yes Intel is faster than Bulldozer. Yes nobody is denying that but you can still have a VERY capable gaming rig with a Bulldozer. Those Starcraft 2 @ 1024x768 benchmarks are misleading as hell. Here's a good review using more real world settings with a 7970. There are a couple games where Intel runs off and leaves AMD behind but in most games they're about the same and in no games is the Bulldozer "unplayable" and in most cases you wouldn't notice the difference in real world game play.

So yes Intel is faster. Yes its the best way to go if you're building a new system but that doesn't mean you can't have a great gaming rig with Bulldozer or any AMD proc at the helm. So if you're on an existing AMD platform like me or just like AMD better also like me, pick up a 8120 for $189 ($150 if you live near a Microcenter), overclock the nads off it and enjoy.

$150 at MC??? Ooooh, I like that.. I need to check that out.

I agree, AMD still works just fine in most cases for most users.

 

[xTrident]

Oh goodie! Yet another "I hate AMD" threads. I keep saying this but we need a separate sub forum for all these troll threads.

Yes Intel is faster than Bulldozer. Yes nobody is denying that but you can still have a VERY capable gaming rig with a Bulldozer. Those Starcraft 2 @ 1024x768 benchmarks are misleading as hell. Here's a good review using more real world settings with a 7970. There are a couple games where Intel runs off and leaves AMD behind but in most games they're about the same and in no games is the Bulldozer "unplayable" and in most cases you wouldn't notice the difference in real world game play.

So yes Intel is faster. Yes its the best way to go if you're building a new system but that doesn't mean you can't have a great gaming rig with Bulldozer or any AMD proc at the helm. So if you're on an existing AMD platform like me or just like AMD better also like me, pick up a 8120 for $189 ($150 if you live near a Microcenter), overclock the nads off it and enjoy.

But what about the extra four dollars a year you might spend on your electric bill because BD uses so much more power???

 

[Mackintire]

Trinity's GPU is 50% faster than Llano's, those benchmarks have been seen.

Another older leaked document shows piledriver's FPU is at least 12% faster than bulldozer's. The most recent rumors are that is closer to 30% faster than bulldozer's FPU when single threaded.

That's a fairly decent improvement. Still not has fast as SB, but if true it means at least now AMD can count past potato.

 

[MacLeod]

$150 at MC??? Ooooh, I like that.. I need to check that out.

Yep. $149 in store only of course.

But what about the extra four dollars a year you might spend on your electric bill because BD uses so much more power???

Well you could just pick up the change from under your couch's cushions and you should be fine.

Trinity's GPU is 50% faster than Llano's, that benchmarks have been seen.

Another older leaked document shows piledriver's FPU is at least 12% faster than bulldozer's. The most recent rumors are that is closer to 30% faster than bulldozer's FPU when single threaded.

That's a fairly decent improvement. Still not has fast as SB, but if true it means at least now AMD can count past potato.

It does look much more optimistic for PD than BD did. And PD doesn't have to beat Intel, just come in close. If PD can come in less than 10% behind Ivy but come in at or under $200 and be a Black Edition, then we've got a ballgame. If PD is less than 10% slower but $50 less, we'll have a competitive CPU market again and that's nothing but good news for us enthusiasts.

 

[JMccovery]

Oh goodie! Yet another "I hate AMD" threads. I keep saying this but we need a separate sub forum for all these troll threads.

Yes Intel is faster than Bulldozer. Yes nobody is denying that but you can still have a VERY capable gaming rig with a Bulldozer. Those Starcraft 2 @ 1024x768 benchmarks are misleading as hell. Here's a good review using more real world settings with a 7970. There are a couple games where Intel runs off and leaves AMD behind but in most games they're about the same and in no games is the Bulldozer "unplayable" and in most cases you wouldn't notice the difference in real world game play.

So yes Intel is faster. Yes its the best way to go if you're building a new system but that doesn't mean you can't have a great gaming rig with Bulldozer or any AMD proc at the helm. So if you're on an existing AMD platform like me or just like AMD better also like me, pick up a 8120 for $189 ($150 if you live near a Microcenter), overclock the nads off it and enjoy.

I was going to say something like this, but was like "Fuck it, another crap 'AMD Suckzorz!' thread will pop up within the week..."

 

[pelo]

It does look much more optimistic for PD than BD did. And PD doesn't have to beat Intel, just come in close. If PD can come in less than 10% behind Ivy but come in at or under $200 and be a Black Edition, then we've got a ballgame. If PD is less than 10% slower but $50 less, we'll have a competitive CPU market again and that's nothing but good news for us enthusiasts.

I'm not sure why 10% is such an important figure or how to relate it to actual performance so I'm going to assume IPC? but the gains AMD has to make as far as IPC goes are in the area of 40%+, some less and some even more. This won't happen with a single generation and they almost certainly won't get within 10%. Clock speeds should be higher with Vishera but still not enough to make up for that difference. In heavily multi-threaded workloads Vishera should still compete well, though.

If you're looking for a significant increase in performance then you should be looking at Steamroller and not Piledriver. Piledriver is looking to be what Bulldozer should have been as far as efficiency and clock speed goes (maybe even IPC) but that still puts it more way than 10% behind Sandy. Apparently AMD is leaving behind the tenets of the Bulldozer architecture and keeping some advancements in Steamroller but the gains should be more revolved around IPC. They've recognized the chase for clock speeds were an empty goal.

Price is another matter altogether. Because of the chip's larger size it's not going to be cheap. AMD won't make nearly as much on each chip sold as Intel will so decreasing prices is always an iffy subject/decision. Take a look at how long it's taken them to drive down the prices on BD chips to where they should have been at release day. People still bought Bulldozer's despite the fact that they were, and still are, overpriced -- Microcenter deals aside. The 8120 should be ~$170 and the 8150 should be at ~190-200, yet AMD reduced the prices down to $165 and $205 for 1k units respectively. That's not a lot of room for OEMs to make a profit considering they're not exactly selling all that well.

 

[MacLeod]

I was going to say something like this, but was like "Fuck it, another crap 'AMD Suckzorz!' thread will pop up within the week..."

No doubt but its finally gotten ridiculous and its driving me crazy. The AMD hate on forums is insane and it bugs the shit out of me that there are newbs coming in looking for advice and they come away thinking they won't even be able to boot into Windows with a FX in their motherboard. So while I normally avoid feeding trolls, I can't help myself anymore and feel the need to take up arms. At least til Piledriver comes out. If its a flop then I'll probably join the chorus but I'm gonna at least give AMD a chance to get the ship righted.

I'm not sure why 10% is such an important figure or how to relate it to actual performance so I'm going to assume IPC? but the gains AMD has to make as far as IPC goes are in the area of 40%+, some less and some even more. This won't happen with a single generation and they almost certainly won't get within 10%. Clock speeds should be higher with Vishera but still not enough to make up for that difference. In heavily multi-threaded workloads Vishera should still compete well, though.

If you're looking for a significant increase in performance then you should be looking at Steamroller and not Piledriver. Piledriver is looking to be what Bulldozer should have been as far as efficiency and clock speed goes (maybe even IPC) but that still puts it more way than 10% behind Sandy. Apparently AMD is leaving behind the tenets of the Bulldozer architecture and keeping some advancements in Steamroller but the gains should be more revolved around IPC. They've recognized the chase for clock speeds were an empty goal.

Price is another matter altogether. Because of the chip's larger size it's not going to be cheap. AMD won't make nearly as much on each chip sold as Intel will so decreasing prices is always an iffy subject/decision. Take a look at how long it's taken them to drive down the prices on BD chips to where they should have been at release day. People still bought Bulldozer's despite the fact that they were, and still are, overpriced -- Microcenter deals aside. The 8120 should be ~$170 and the 8150 should be at ~190-200, yet AMD reduced the prices down to $165 and $205 for 1k units respectively. That's not a lot of room for OEMs to make a profit considering they're not exactly selling all that well.

Almost all the benchmarks I see, Intel is ~25% ahead of Bulldozer. If Piledriver can come out with 15-20% improvements over Bulldozer like they're saying then I don't think it's unrealistic to think they could come in around 10% behind Intel. But if they do and price them at $300 then it wont matter and there wont be any reason to buy one unless you're on an existing AM3+ board. I don't know what they'll do as its all speculation for a few more months but I'm optimistic and I don't think its unrealistic.

 

[pelo]

What benchmarks have you seen? In heavily multi-threaded scenarios the 8150 gets close to the 2600K, but even then it depends on the workload itself as anything FP-based is going to mean that Bulldozer is essentially a 4-core processor.

The gap is larger than 25%, I'm sorry to say. I wish it were only 25% because then that would make a generation or two in successful architectures feasible as far as gaining ground. Unfortunately that's just not true at all

From xbit

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...e_PC_Intel_Platform_Remains_Unchallenged.html

Granted that's IB, but the jump from SB > IB isn't significant (on the order of single digit gains).

Look at that single-threaded gap between IB and BD. iTunes encoder is the single-threaded benchmark to look at here. That's more than 80%!!! The benchmarks where it does well are heavily threaded and even there it can't catch up to the 3770K despite having the better approach for heavily threaded workloads in CMT (efficiency somewhere around 80%) whereas Intel's hyperthreading is far worse (around 10-30%).

The claim that price is better now is true but so are the prices for the 2500K and 2600K, both of which are better processors for an overwhelming majority of users. Unless you've got something FMA4/AVX-based and require 8 integer cores then Bulldozer is still a pass. Piledriver needs to be at least 30%+ better in *everything* in order to be considered a good buy and that just isn't happening with the clock speed gains and the ~10% IPC bump (though it's likely still a bit behind Stars, it's certainly close, though). In short, it's not happening until they're able to refrain from socket compatibility and completely redesign their processor with different goals in mind and that's happening with Steamroller. Piledriver should be pretty good but don't expect it to catch up to SB nor IB yet.

Please don't confuse my words with anti-AMD sentiment but rather straightforward and clear anti-BD sentiment.

 

[Mackintire]

Just to add some perspective. There are no 95 watt IB chips currently. The highest wattage CPUs Intel has released are 77 watts. So don't be surprised if AMD does release something better and Intel responds by releasing something 15-20% faster than their current shipping CPUs.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Almost all the benchmarks I see, Intel is ~25% ahead of Bulldozer. If Piledriver can come out with 15-20% improvements over Bulldozer like they're saying then I don't think it's unrealistic to think they could come in around 10% behind Intel. But if they do and price them at $300 then it wont matter and there wont be any reason to buy one unless you're on an existing AM3+ board. I don't know what they'll do as its all speculation for a few more months but I'm optimistic and I don't think its unrealistic.

I can't help but wonder what benchmarks you've been looking at.

Looking at single core benchmarks factoring in turbo it looks like this.

FX-8150: For single core loads, it's going to be at its max turbo clock of 4.2ghz

2600K: For single core loads, it's going to be at its max turbo clock of 3.8ghz.

Now let's look at a common single threaded benchmarks:

Cinebench r10 Single threaded:
FX-8150: 3938
2600K: 5991

If we divide by their respecive clock, to get the per clock, per core performance we have:
FX-8150: 3938/4.2 = 937.62 / ghz
2600K: 5991/3.8 = 1576.58 / ghz

So in this particular benchmark I'm seeing SB with a 68% advantage per core per clock.

It is particularly important to look at the single threaded performance, as most processes outside of rendering/encoding still don't take good advantage of a large quantity of cores.

It is important to look at performance per clock as the two overclock differently.

Intel SB will pretty typically hit 4.6 to 4.7 on air. let's use 4.6 to err on the side of caution.

In the [H] review they got 4.5 to 4.6 stable. Let's use 4.5 to err on the side of caution.

If we use this calculation, it increases the Intel lead to ~72%

AMD could do some catching up with piledriver, but I seriously doubt they will be able to make up for this rather large deficit in per core per clock performance. They can add in extra cores all they like, but that doesn't take away from the fact that for most things we do, single core performance is still king. Rendering and encoding operations are still the exception here.

 

[MacLeod]

I'm not comparing it to the new i7. That's a $330 proc where the 8120 is $180. When you compare the 8150 (which I count as the $190 8120 because both have unlocked multipliers and essentially the same thing with a couple clicks) the results get a lot better. Intel is still running off and leaving by 25-35% in most so its still an ass whoopin'.

You are totally right though that AMD has a tall order to fill to get close enough to Intel to be a viable alternative but I don't think its impossible. The press releases (for what theyre worth) are talking about 15-20% gains over Bulldozer and that could possibly put them within a reasonable distance of Intel. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking thru fanboy colored glasses thinking AMD is gonna lay the smack down with Piledriver. I realize how far ahead of the game Intel is and I'm not looking for an Intel killer, I'm wanting and hoping for a good enough increase so we can have a competitive CPU market again. I know AMD can't touch Intel in the $300+ range but they have a very good shot at being competitive at the $200 spot.

 

[maxius]

this whole thread is troll bait to each their own cpu and platform preference. if bd fits your needs who cares if it is a little slower than sb.

 

[pelo]

I wouldn't say single-threaded is king but IPC is king. The difference is that multi-threaded applications are generally between 2-4 threads and very few reach 4-8, which is what makes Intel's hyperthreading an appealing option whereas BD's CMT approach makes less sense and caters to the more extreme end of the spectrum. It's also the reason why the 2500K despite being less expensive also laid the smackdown on the 8150 (along with the notable and massive IPC advantage).

But you're right; as a server first architecture it just doesn't perform well on desktop workloads and the massive amounts of slow cache just don't help. It's improving with Piledriver, though. In the Trinity thread stickied at the top of the AMD chips subforum I posted a collection of slides and improvements in PD collected by vr-zone. They've certainly had to address quite a bit but I wonder how much they managed. The things I'd have liked to see are there but I don't see a direct mention to the IMC :/

Improved prefetch, reduced leakage, larger L1DTLB, branch prediction (thank god, I think this was one of the things that punished BD the most), higher frequencies and more efficient L2 (that's a huge plus).

What's absent is any mention of IMC improvements which is a necessity in an APU and something that Intel has a good lead in. While AMD supports higher frequencies of RAM it also has trouble saturating the bus (which is still 128-bit). There's also no mention of a wider front end and the L1Dcache appears to be the same small size, so the improvements in the L2 cache are even more crucial.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-trinity-apu-preview-evolution-or-devolution-/15716.html

My gut instinct tells me Trinity will be great as a desktop OEM part and for mobile while Vishera will still need some serious improvements in order to catch up to the desktop Intel parts.

 

[xTrident]

I'm not comparing it to the new i7. That's a $330 proc where the 8120 is $180. When you compare the 8150 (which I count as the $190 8120 because both have unlocked multipliers and essentially the same thing with a couple clicks) the results get a lot better. Intel is still running off and leaving by 25-35% in most so its still an ass whoopin'.

You are totally right though that AMD has a tall order to fill to get close enough to Intel to be a viable alternative but I don't think its impossible. The press releases (for what theyre worth) are talking about 15-20% gains over Bulldozer and that could possibly put them within a reasonable distance of Intel. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking thru fanboy colored glasses thinking AMD is gonna lay the smack down with Piledriver. I realize how far ahead of the game Intel is and I'm not looking for an Intel killer, I'm wanting and hoping for a good enough increase so we can have a competitive CPU market again. I know AMD can't touch Intel in the $300+ range but they have a very good shot at being competitive at the $200 spot.

I wish AMD would go out of their way and make an "Extreme Edition" cpu like Intel does that they charge $1000+ for. The way you're comparing cpu's here. Price point vs. price point is fair imo, and frankly the right way to do it. But I'd just love AMD to really put all their eggs in one basket and make the best cpu they could make and go toe to toe with Intel's best rather than having to fight them at the price war point. It's more or less just because I'd like to see what AMD could deliver.

 

[MacLeod]

What can we tell about Vishera from Trinity? I know it ain't much as Trinity is designed to be energy efficient where Vishera will be performance oriented but those 26% improvement claims look good. Does that translate to Vishera as compared to Bulldozer?