Real shame Bulldozer sucks so much for gaming

Status
Not open for further replies.

Shark974

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 4, 2009
Messages
378
I like supporting the underdog, buying something different etc, so I'd consider the 8150 now that it got a price cut to $220 on newegg, putting it in line with a 2500K.

So I go check out Anand's review to refresh my memory, and the 8150 actually hangs well with the 2500k. Wins 7 and loses 8 of Anand's Windows 7 application tests vs 2500k. It sucks in single thread (which I can live with for generic CPU tasks) and shines in heavy threaded apps.

But then there's gaming...in which it's just miserable. No buy.

So yeah, not much to this post but that. I always though AMD should carve out a market by being the best gaming CPU's even if it meant sacrificing general performance. Bulldozer is the exact opposite.
 
Last edited:
Yes, you're right. The only games I can get to run are the Hello Kitty series of my 352 Steam games. If I want to get the rest of them to run I have to put a hamster in my power supply to generate enough juice to power Bulldozer.

Off to pretend to play BF3 and FRAPS it at the same time. Then pretend I can encode the first video while I FRAPS more video of BF3 and surf the web at the same time. I'm so delusional about Bulldozer; one day I shall accept it just can't do anything with it.

I might install my old Q6600 for better frame rates. :)
 
Yeah, still sucks for gaming.

41701.png
 
I like to support the underdog....but not when it's actually the underdog. I just like to wait until it has proven itself to be as good as or better than the competition, and then I start supporting it, while still referring to it as "the underdog". Because then I can go on forums and make posts that start with "I like supporting the underdog, buying something different etc..."
 
It is a shame. I have an 8120 sitting here right now, but I stayed with my 1045T.
 
It is horrible that the 8 core is worse than the 6 core Phenom 2.
Here hoping that there will be a next gen for that socket that actually does something right for gaming.

Then again, new socket might bring quad channel memory and a new CPU that doesnt compair to Cyrax.
 
But then there's gaming...in which it's just miserable. No buy.

So yeah, not much to this post but that. I always though AMD should carve out a market by being the best gaming CPU's even if it meant sacrificing general performance. Bulldozer is the exact opposite.

Holy crap!

Why didn't you post this two months ago when I bought my BD and motherboard? I could've saved a couple hundred bucks. Now I find out my rig can't game.

Someone please, help a brother out! If you have a used Sega Genesis please send it to me so I can have something to tide me over until I can kick this power-sucking whore of a cpu to the curb - and bed myself with classy a i5 biatch.

Wait maybe my sweet Deneb will take me back... shoot... it has no game either.

I feel so dirty... but it had 8-cores. Come on 8 cores... 8 cores. Then I heard they weren't real - but they felt real...
 
Not saying bulldozer is great but why bother posting a benchmark from game released 3 years ago running a low resolution that nobody uses?

Lower resolutions convey how well a CPU performs at gaming.. You've been here how long?:rolleyes:
 
It is horrible that the 8 core is worse than the 6 core Phenom 2.
Here hoping that there will be a next gen for that socket that actually does something right for gaming.

Then again, new socket might bring quad channel memory and a new CPU that doesnt compair to Cyrax.

The six core thuban doesnt have to share resources and has shorter processing pipeline. With that said I had NO trouble gaming with my FX4100. my fps wasnt as high as my Athlon 631, but so what it was still above 100
 
It is horrible that the 8 core is worse than the 6 core Phenom 2.
Here hoping that there will be a next gen for that socket that actually does something right for gaming.

Then again, new socket might bring quad channel memory and a new CPU that doesnt compair to Cyrax.

Yeah, what is amazing to me is that as far as I can tell, AMD could have just shrunk their Phenom II cores to 32nm, put 8 of them on a die, maybe upped the clock a bit even with the 32nm headroom, saved a few billion $ and years of R&D, and been way ahead of Bulldozer. Would have been a smaller/cheaper die too IIRC based on Thuban/Phenom II size.

Here's hoping they start to get get straightened out with piledriver. I guess good news for them is that Ivy Bridge wasn't exactly a big leap, that should give them some more time.
 
Yeah, what is amazing to me is that as far as I can tell, AMD could have just shrunk their Phenom II cores to 32nm, put 8 of them on a die, maybe upped the clock a bit even with the 32nm headroom, saved a few billion $ and years of R&D, and been way ahead of Bulldozer. Would have been a smaller/cheaper die too IIRC based on Thuban/Phenom II size.

Here's hoping they start to get get straightened out with piledriver. I guess good news for them is that Ivy Bridge wasn't exactly a big leap, that should give them some more time.

Obviously you don't know how long it takes to create a new CPU design.

Bulldozer by the time it was released has had about 3 years or more of work, and couple hundred million invested into it. There's no way they would abandon the design, especially when they have so much room for improvement later on.
 
Yeah, what is amazing to me is that as far as I can tell, AMD could have just shrunk their Phenom II cores to 32nm, put 8 of them on a die, maybe upped the clock a bit even with the 32nm headroom, saved a few billion $ and years of R&D, and been way ahead of Bulldozer. Would have been a smaller/cheaper die too IIRC based on Thuban/Phenom II size.

the RnD wasn't wasted. having the ability to target everything from low end low power all the way to the dense core server cpu using the same modules is really great actually.
 
Lower resolutions convey how well a CPU performs at gaming.. You've been here how long?:rolleyes:

Well, yes, It shows how the CPU performs when not GPU limited.

It's just not a very good real world benchmark, as most people ARE GPU limited in most titles.
 
For most games, current BD is more than sufficient to get decent frame rates.

There are - however - a few games that it struggles to be fast enough for.

I was going to get a BD until I realized that my 1090T at 4Ghz struggled to consistently hit 60fps in Red Orchestra 2, and BD actually performed worse in all the launch reviews.

(I was notGPU limited. At the time I had two 6970's in Crossfire and they only hit ~70% utilization, showing that the CPU was the issue.)

Since this is pretty much the only game I play anymore, I was forced to skip AMD this round.

I don't particularly care to have the fastest CPU out there, as long as it plays the games I want to play well. In this case BD wasn't going to, so I got an SB-E instead.

I still follow AMD developments with interest, and hope to see them do well enough that my next CPU might be one.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038664306 said:
For most games, current BD is more than sufficient to get decent frame rates.

There are - however - a few games that it struggles to be fast enough for.

I was going to get a BD until I realized that my 1090T at 4Ghz struggled to consistently hit 60fps in Red Orchestra 2, and BD actually performed worse in all the launch reviews.

(I was notGPU limited. At the time I had two 6970's in Crossfire and they only hit ~70% utilization, showing that the CPU was the issue.)

Since this is pretty much the only game I play anymore, I was forced to skip AMD this round.

I don't particularly care to have the fastest CPU out there, as long as it plays the games I want to play well. In this case BD wasn't going to, so I got an SB-E instead.

I still follow AMD developments with interest, and hope to see them do well enough that my next CPU might be one.

I also was going to get BD, but like you saw that the thuban beat it. I hope they do well next also, so I can have a sweet AMD system as well.
 
Got an X4 980 BE. My six AMD CPU and most likely my last unless there is a huge turn of events in the next year.
 
Got an X4 980 BE. My six AMD CPU and most likely my last unless there is a huge turn of events in the next year.

The fact that IB isn't much of an improvement over SB will give AMD until Haswell to catch up a bit.

Quite frankly though, I'm not thinking that will be enough time unless they pull a major upset.
 
Llano > Bulldozer. Has a faster IPC as well.

thats why im lookin foward to trinity this month.....Need to build me a new HTPC. Trinity APU > Ivy Bridge
 
Zarathustra[H];1038665176 said:
The GPU portion of the combination may be more powerful, but to think the CPU portion will be competitive with IB is probably wishful thinking.

When your building a HTPC. The last thing you are worried about is IPC of a CPU.

Basically Ivy Bridge finally caught up to Llano in the GPU department (not even beating it in some benchmarks).

Thats why Trinity will be better then IB.

This is also why Trinity will be more successful in Laptops then IB.

Of couse this is just talking about building an HTPC. Not mainstream Desktop usage.
 
Yeah, but from what I heard... a lot of times you had i3 processors with HD 3000 trumping AMD options with integrated graphics for gaming despite AMD having a better GPU, because the CPU was just so far behind the Intel.

Is that going to happen again when looking at the integrated options on IB vs. Trinity? I guess it depends, heh.

I do hope we'll see Trinity be competitive though.
 
Yeah, but from what I heard... a lot of times you had i3 processors with HD 3000 trumping AMD options with integrated graphics for gaming despite AMD having a better GPU, because the CPU was just so far behind the Intel.

Is that going to happen again when looking at the integrated options on IB vs. Trinity? I guess it depends, heh.

I do hope we'll see Trinity be competitive though.

I don't know where you saw that because that's just not accurate. The conclusion of most of those articles was that you should just spend the extra $50 and get a cheap discrete card and a i3-2100 and you can have the best of both worlds. AMD's IGP was usually twice as powerful as the HD3000 in virtually all the tests.
 
HD4000 doesn't catch up to Llano. The Anandtech review had a 35W Llano APU against a 45W i7 mobile while the Llano had 1333mhz 6gb of ram and the i7 had 8gb of 1600mhz. Even in the article it states that the Llano would have performed ~10-20% better had the hardware been equal. Throw in the 45W A8 Llano part and Llano is still superior in the GPU department. Mind you, that i7 is substantially more expensive as well (I believe on the order of 2-3x more). On the desktop that lead is stretched and the HD4000 is about 20-30% behind.

APUs are what AMD seems to be doing correctly. Personally I can't wait for Trinity :) I'm waiting for the mobile i3 IB parts to come out as well as I'm going to be upgrading my laptop.
 
Llano > Bulldozer. Has a faster IPC as well.

thats why im lookin foward to trinity this month.....Need to build me a new HTPC. Trinity APU > Ivy Bridge

I love Llano, but I think trinity is going to disappoint. Especially with me running my a8 Llano @ 3.5ghz.
 
I love Llano, but I think trinity is going to disappoint. Especially with me running my a8 Llano @ 3.5ghz.

I'll be interested to see what they come up with since essentially it's a preview for Piledriver. I'm more disappointed that they changed the socket (ala Intel).
 
I love Llano, but I think trinity is going to disappoint. Especially with me running my a8 Llano @ 3.5ghz.

I wouldn't expect the CPU performance to be extraordinary but there should be some decent gains. The overclock is going to be an x-factor here as the resonant mesh technology has diminishing returns past 4ghz, which the trinity desktop parts reach with Turbo speeds anyway, so this might be a case of another Ivy Bridge where the processor is limited at higher clocks, though this time by architecture rather than transistor density -- Trinity parts will still be on 32nm so any improvements are architectural and fab side it's maturity and any other tweaking GloFo manages. The GPU performance should be increased significantly, though.

They're looking pretty good, though I'm not sure how good :p I'm hoping that a laptop with a discrete GPU + Trinity APU and a 1080p screen can be had on the cheap, if not then maybe an Intel i3. I'm looking to replace my desktop with a stationary laptop if it's feasible and it looks like we're getting closer to that point. If it can game at 1080p with decent frame rates on modern titles I'll be a happy boy.
 
I bought one when released for $240 and play bf3 at 2304x1440 all ultra except for the AA that kills performance I still think it is pretty awesome, doubt cpu makes a difference at that point. (I also fold 24/7 when not gaming and it works pretty well there too)
 
Found myself at a Microcenter on friday and had to pick up a 8120 to play with. Gonna use it side by side with my i7 860 for a while and see what i think
 
I actually bought a Bulldozer mobo in anticipation of the 8 core being the latest and greatest. No dice.

My "placeholder" phenom II quadcore at 4.2 ghz is in fact still a better gaming solution than anything else I'm likely to find from AMD. It turned into a permanent solution. Not that I'm unhappy with it, it actually performs very decently in many of the games I play, but when the time comes for a rebuild I'll be seriously considering Intel.
 
Not saying bulldozer is great but why bother posting a benchmark from game released 3 years ago running a low resolution that nobody uses?

I use it. GG. :rolleyes:


I had a Phenom II and I went to a 2500k. I don't plan on looking back.
 
Now that Ivy Bridge is an overclocking bust Intel will probably EOL Sandy Bridge just to spite everyone. Things just keep getting better and better all around. :rolleyes:
 
I actually bought a Bulldozer mobo in anticipation of the 8 core being the latest and greatest. No dice.

My "placeholder" phenom II quadcore at 4.2 ghz is in fact still a better gaming solution than anything else I'm likely to find from AMD. It turned into a permanent solution. Not that I'm unhappy with it, it actually performs very decently in many of the games I play, but when the time comes for a rebuild I'll be seriously considering Intel.

I did the same thing. Got a 990FX motherboard upon launch along with an x6 1090T. Mine didn't overclock as well though, I only got 4.0Ghz stably out of it.

I kept being frustrated that in Red Orchestra 2 (pretty much the only game I have played since its launch in September last year) my frame rates would drop into the mid 20s on occasion with this CPU even at 4Ghz. When I read on launch that BD overclocked was in many cases performing worse than Thuban overclocked, I said "fuck it" and went out and bout a SB-E motherboard and CPU. It's running nicely at 4.6Ghz, and my framerates rarely drop below 60 now.
 
I actually bought a Bulldozer mobo in anticipation of the 8 core being the latest and greatest. No dice.

My "placeholder" phenom II quadcore at 4.2 ghz is in fact still a better gaming solution than anything else I'm likely to find from AMD. It turned into a permanent solution. Not that I'm unhappy with it, it actually performs very decently in many of the games I play, but when the time comes for a rebuild I'll be seriously considering Intel.

I also bought a BD mobo in hopes that it would be better then my 1055t.
I saw reviews and it sucked, but I will wait until PD comes out. I still like AMD, and since I have the MB already, might as well. :D
 
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.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top