AMD Zambezi news, info, fans !

[informal]

1100T is the same price as a 2500K, and is slower in single threaded tasks.
If the FX was even slower in single threaded tasks than 1100T, they'd be utterly retarded to release it especially at a higher cost.

I think they will just do that. Average Joe has no idea about how fast individual core in 8150 is or whether it's slower than Thuban or i7. They will just see : unlocked!,8 cores, 3.6/4.2GHz ,water cooler bundled!1!1!. And they will buy it. Immediately. Most reviews will use MT workloads,which is fine. This is 2011/2012 after all,MT is the way to go. In such reviews 8150 will be even faster than 2500K,since even Thuban is today. But for many other tasks,individual core speed is also important. Average Joe would have no idea about that though. But we will know. The enthusiasts and well informed crowd. And excuse me AMD,but I don't need 8 bobcat level cores that clock to 4.5Ghz in my PC. I will use my Agena @ 3Ghz and be fine for another year. Then I will buy cheap Thuban and OC it to 4GHz and still be faster than 8150.

[MaddMutt]

i'd like this to happen ofc^^

btw, the people that were given away bulldozers at the event today also signed nda?

@Matt: Problem those times was the frontend, and the long pipeline was calculating irrelevant things due to wrong brach prediction. That took much power and yielded bad output...

BD has prefetcher and OoO execution, and not that long of a pipeline..

Thank you for this added Knowledge

I have not read any info about that problem before. The great knowledge some of you guys have

Thank you
For your time

[Apokalipse]

I think they will just do that. Average Joe has no idea about how fast individual core in 8150 is or whether it's slower than Thuban or i7. They will just see : unlocked!,8 cores, 3.6/4.2GHz ,water cooler bundled!1!1!. And they will buy it.

No, AMD can't rely on marketing like that. Not in the face of Intel (who has a bigger and more well known brand name)

[informal]

No, AMD can't rely on marketing like that. Not in the face of Intel (who has a bigger and more well known brand name)

But they already use it,look at the box design. I guess you (and I) just need to wait and see .

PS I hope you understand by now that I don't want this to be the case . But wishes are one thing and reality is another.

[Manicdan]

No, AMD can't rely on marketing like that. Not in the face of Intel (who has a bigger and more well known brand name)

the FX name, and extreme cooling system could help really convince people who the top dog is. nothing is set in stone when it comes to opinions.

[Apokalipse]

But they already use it,look at the box design. I guess you (and I) just need to wait and see .

They have marketing, yes. But it can't be the only thing that sells it. Facing against Intel, they need to have something about the product itself that's more desirable. That could be low cost, better performance.
In terms of marketing, Intel is already way ahead just by brand name alone.

[radaja]

With all the work and details added to the architecture, I find it hard to believe it's even possible for it to have lower IPC than K10.5.

I don't know if a new microcode will make it faster; it seems a likely possibility though. But I do think AMD is probably holding something back.
And whether it's faster than SB or not (single threaded), it at least keeps Intel in the dark.

i'm hoping they have something up their sleeve at this point,but im still not going to count on it either,from how JF turned from practically fighting and insisting IPC was going up,evolving to the new campaign over the last few months of dont focus on IPC,look at frequency as well, to his recent post saying(im paraphrasing here) "if you care about ST performance it would be better to compare the lower core count FX-41XX model because they have higher frequencies and will give better ST performance" or something to that affect.
and others posts here in this thread from people who have a BD in hand makes me think it is what it is at this point.i hope im wrong.either way they will be more than enough power and will be fun to OC the hell out of so im good

[Apokalipse]

i'm hoping they have something up their sleeve at this point,but im still not going to count on it either,from how JF turned from practically fighting and insisting IPC was going up,evolving to the new campaign over the last few months of dont focus on IPC,look at frequency as well, to his recent post saying(im paraphrasing here) "if you care about ST performance it would be better to compare the lower core count FX-41XX model because they have higher frequencies and will give better ST performance" or something to that affect.

I think it started with Intel fanboys/trolls claiming BD would have lower IPC than K10.5 just looking at the architecture alone, then shifted to whether it is higher than SB, to whether IPC by itself tells the whole story (which it doesn't).

Only now with the leaks people are questioning again whether it has lower IPC than K10.5. But I just don't think it makes sense.

And I think the argument to get the model with less cores for single threaded programs has been around for a long time.

If I'm wrong and it does have lower IPC than K10.5, that would be a failure, and I wouldn't want to move to it from my 1090T.

[PerryR]

Yes, it doesn't make a bit of sense. As you stated, why bother even releasing a failed product, particularly one that is no better than its predecessors (which were already lagging upon release)? It doesn't seem logical.

I guess we'll see shortly.

[Oese]

perfect tension omg xD

[PerryR]

Also, isn't this architecture supposed to last up until 2013?

[dess]

Conclusion: overall FX4110 is 32% slower than Deneb X4 @ 3.7Ghz stock vs stock and 49% slower when both are at 4.2GHz. Either all these tests are failure of the platform bugs (or something else) or Bulldozer is much slower than Deneb with the same "thread" count. All above tests utilize the "world's first 256bit FPU" and it fails hard versus "old 128bit" Deneb FPU,even in single thread mode... Imagine the OC you have to reach to just match Deneb,it has to be sky high (think 5.5-6Ghz on air to match 4Ghz Deneb). How is AMD going to charge 140$ for this chip is beyond me.

There are some possibilities...
1. They've gone totally nuts.
2. They think people are nuts.
3. They know something we don't...

It could be something simple like new microcode enabling certain features, we'll have to wait and see.

Absolutly possible. But...

In any case, I don't think AMD wants to spread FUD about bad performance. They want it to be unknown, to keep Intel in the dark.

Right, they've kept Intel (and the rest of the world) in the dark for quite some time. But, just why they hold on until the very last day before launch? What depends on a few days?

To me, it looks like the engineers desperately trying to find a solution (in microcode) for some quirk that now hinders performance, but in the meantime the management has lost patience and said just let it go.

Or...

If it was supposedly designed to deliver 30-50% more performance and if Mr Taylor stated this in the context of very parallel workloads (which is legitimate ) then we can say Bulldozer failed since it can't overall outperform Thuban by more than 20%,let alone 30% or now astronomical 50%. In order to achieve this ,the Bulldozer that John Taylor talked about must be the same one from this slide (and no,this slide was not fake). What happened in the meantime ? How from this 30-50% throughput machine we ended up with barely faster than Thuban?

Well, perhaps what is called a "reality check"... You know, AMD is not a single person, but a firm with many people. What if some people deceived some other people in-house...? But then, the moment of the truth has came, when it was about to test or present the actual chip... Then "heads were falling", most notably Dirk Meyer's.

[MaddMutt]

Also, isn't this architecture supposed to last up until 2013?

Question....

Didn't someone or AMD state they were going to compete against INTEL on the TICK/TOCK making of cpu's???????

[Oese]

Well, perhaps what is called a "reality check"... You know, AMD is not a single person, but a firm with many people. What if some people deceived some other people in-house...? But then, the moment of the truth has came, when it was about to test or present the actual chip... Then "heads were falling", most notably Dirk Meyer's.

nightmare, but not unlikely

@madd: they needed to do both same time. Originally, bd was supposed to come on a mature 45nm process. But i think it wasnt ready and too slow maybe.. So now tick and tock same time^^

[Opteron146]

@madd: they needed to do both same time. Originally, bd was supposed to come on a mature 45nm process. But i think it wasnt ready and too slow maybe.. So now tick and tock same time^^

Yes, and both, GF's process and the processor are f***ed up. That's why you should not do that, it doubles your risks ...
Well, to be fair, so far we only know about the process, a few day are left, just then we know 100% about the processor, too.

Also funny, the next step is probably neither a tick nor a tock. After BDv1@32nm there will be BDv1b@32nm. Well, officially it is called BDv2, however, there is obviously the possibility that BDv2 might just be a bug-fixed BDv1, hence BDv1b. In the last days/weeks I learned to always think about the worst case *g*

Short: To me, the appropriate comparison is not intel, it is nvidia. They got equally f***ed with Fermi and TSMC's 40nm process problems. Nowadays, GTX500 aka GTX400_1b runs nice. Let's hope that it will be the same for AMD and BDv1b ;-)

[tifosi]

...and the processor are f***ed up. ...

Seriously, do you work for AMD? Do you have access to the benches under NDA yet? I believe the answer to both my questions is negative, just like you.

If you have some information please do share, if not, i don't see a need to spread fud.

Oh yes, BD was indeed supposed to come out on 45nm. Till they found out that it will be too hot. Their design targets include certain clock, which wouldn't have been possible within a reasonable TDP on the 45nm process. Since then, they've apparently broken down it into certain evolutionary steps. Intel's douchebaggery with ISA's also doesn't help much. They keep willy nilly moving the goalpost. Remember SSE5? Now they're doing the same with FMA.

[BeepBeep2]

Compatibility issues:

AMD has changed the encoding from the original SSE5 specification in order to improve compatibility with Intel's AVX instruction set and the new VEX coding scheme.

All SSE5 instructions that were equivalent or similar to instructions in the AVX and FMA4 instruction sets announced by Intel have been changed to use the coding proposed by Intel. Integer instructions without equivalents in AVX were classified as the XOP extension.[3] The XOP instructions have an opcode byte 8F (hexadecimal), but otherwise almost identical coding scheme as AVX with the 3-byte VEX prefix.

Commentators[4] have seen this as evidence that Intel has not allowed AMD to use any part of the large VEX coding space. AMD has been forced to use different codes in order to avoid using any code combination that Intel might possibly be using in their development pipeline for something else. The XOP coding scheme is as close to the VEX scheme as technically possible without risking that the AMD codes overlap with any future Intel codes. It must be noted that this inference is speculative, since no public information is available about negotiations between the two companies on this issue.

The use of the 8F byte requires that the m-bits (see VEX coding scheme) have a value bigger than or equal to 8 in order to avoid overlap with existing instructions. The C4 byte used in the VEX scheme has no such restriction. This may prevent the use of the m-bits for other purposes in the future in the XOP scheme, but not in the VEX scheme. Another possible problem is that the pp bits have the value 00 in the XOP scheme, while they have the value 01 in the VEX scheme for instructions that have no legacy equivalent. This may complicate the use of the pp bits for other purposes in the future.

A similar compatibility issue is the difference between the FMA3 and FMA4 instruction sets. Intel initially proposed FMA4 in AVX/FMA specification version 3 to supersede the 3-operand FMA proposed by AMD in SSE5. After AMD adopted FMA4, however, Intel canceled FMA4 support and reverted back to FMA3 in the AVX/FMA specification version 5.[5][6][7]

...kind of anti-competitive don't you think? A bit of a Monopoly, don't you think?

[xBanzai89]

For those not lurking the news section here is the BD Lab 501 preview. Not looking good at all.

[PerryR]

Something seems bull about that review.....Can't place a finger on it. Maybe it's the optimist in me.

[RedBull78]

For those not lurking the news section here is the BD Lab 501 preview. Not looking good at all.

At this time, I find it very difficult to believe BD runs 100fps lower compared to a cpu that has 1/2 of cores....It just doesnt make sense..but again, when you see the price on them it kind of scares you. who knows..maybe BD is just a lazy overloaded dozer.

[jakefalcons]

Why would mm recommend bulldozer for gaming if its beaten that badly doesn't seem right... guys wait till wendesday these theorys going back and forth and fud is just getting ridiculous. I've never seen it this bad here.

[radaja]

Why would mm recommend bulldozer for gaming if its beaten that badly doesn't seem right... guys wait till wendesday these theorys going back and forth and fud is just getting ridiculous. I've never seen it this bad here.

remember when MM said that he was refering to a i7-980x vs FX-8150 in gaming,stating its an easy choice and i agree

[BeepBeep2]

As it stands now from the Lab501 review:
980BE does everything this CPU does minus the high clocks but most of the performance in the same TDP on 45nm.
1100T does everything this CPU does plus better MT performance in the same TDP on 45nm though with a slightly higher power envelope.

I am literally sad...though I will buy one of these to put on LN2, I don't think I'll be replacing my Thuban quite yet for the daily machine...

[PerryR]

Why would mm recommend bulldozer for gaming if its beaten that badly doesn't seem right... guys wait till wendesday these theorys going back and forth and fud is just getting ridiculous. I've never seen it this bad here.

Not just gaming, but processing as well.

I don't want to doubt what I can't fully comprehend, but I'm not entirely satisfied with this review; particularly since it clearly violates the NDA. It also puts the BD processor at about the level of the Phenom II line. No, I'll definitely wait until the 12th.

[Blaber]

I hope some one test Fx vs I7 on Linux as well , really want to understand what is going wrong with Fx , is it equally bad under Linux as well.