AMD Zambezi news, info, fans !

[freeloader]

That'd actually be a smart thing for AMD to do if their chip was indeed a monster, delaying it and posting false benches showing crippled scores lulling everyone including Intel into a false sense of security. That'd be a brutal sucker punch.

And losing customers in the process. Sounds like a sweet plan to me.

[xsecret]

PS : I corrected the logo non displayed on the validation page.

[undone]

Chew, BENCHMARK PLEASE!!!!!

[freeloader]

Then f*** off then...............

Who pissed in your Corn Flakes this morning? For the majority of us, this is inconsequential. So a cheery picked sample can run 8.4Ghz? We still don't know how this thing performs under air or water for the average enthusiast.

[Particle]

If you aren't excited by the extreme fringe, you might not be in the right community truth be told. Yes, it's significant what people will see on air and water and there is a reason to discuss that, but this place's name even makes it clear this community's focus isn't on the mainstream. I guess my point is if you aren't excited by the news that's fine, but don't start getting mad at other people who are.

[informal]

Don't expect nothin' and you won't be disappointed

I guess you can't go wrong with above. It's always safer to be a bit pessimistic and get positively surprised in the end .

About this OC, keep in mind this is with only one active core. There is still no news about how much it can reach with 4 cores enabled ... and the power needed.

Seems the new Netburst beat the old Netburst, anyway

Well it's one active module,not one core. Still the OC result is impressive. And Anand said around 4.8GHz is achievable with 8120 model. Not bad.
As for performance,let's wait a bit more. We have waited so long anyway. If it sucks it will be priced accordingly.

[freeloader]

If you aren't excited by the extreme fringe, you might not be in the right community truth be told. Yes, it's significant what people will see on air and water and there is a reason to discuss that, but this place's name even makes it clear this community's focus isn't on the mainstream. I guess my point is if you aren't excited by the news that's fine, but don't start getting mad at other people who are.

I'm not mad at anyone, I'm simply not impressed. Mongoled told Radier to off because he thought it was boring.

[Smartidiot89]

We over at NordicHardware got a short interview with Sami Mäkinen, while it doesn't tell alot - it does tell what to expect from overclocking even on air and water cooling solutions!

http://translate.google.com/translat...srekordet.html

[Olivon]

I guess you can't go wrong with above. It's always safer to be a bit pessimistic and get positively surprised in the end .

The only thing I see is ppls who don't want to understand ...
xsecret brings real infos and told us before that the way how AMD communicates around Bulldozer : Big frequencies and that's all ...
That's really nice, especially for overclockerz on LN² and He, and non coldbug feature is really great, for sure. Extreme overclocking seems really fun on it.
But for an H24 rig, I won't bet BD will be the SB killer many has wanted here.

[freeloader]

................I won't bet BD will be the SB killer many has wanted here.

I would be happy if it was just on par with SB.

[ah_khoo]

to be honest, i never expect BD to be SB killer, all I want is awesome ram oc mileage & 4.xGHz 24/7 cpu clock, guess AMD exceed my expectation this time...

[FlanK3r]

Congratulations AMD team+Chew*, awesome and make me happy for my long day . Ufff, will be better stil my Xigmatek Dark Knight with UK3000rpm or I can to buy H100 from Corsair?

[informal]

The only thing I see is ppls who don't want to understand ...
xsecret brings real infos and told us before that the way how AMD communicates around Bulldozer : Big frequencies and that's all ...
That's really nice, especially for overclockerz on LN² and He, and non coldbug feature is really great, for sure. Extreme overclocking seems really fun on it.
But for an H24 rig, I won't bet BD will be the SB killer many has wanted here.

Well the only issue with what xsecret said ,that I see, is that he confirms that Chinese(VRzone) leaked numbers are true or close to what he has seen under NDA. Mind you that those numbers show 8120 @ 3.1Ghz scoring lower than Deneb X4 in 3dmark06 CPU subtest ,for instance. IMO this is hard to believe since even on paper,those 4 FPUs inside Zambezi are much more powerfully than 4 Deneb FPUs. Similar goes for Cinebench,wprime etc. The design has to be seriously borked in order to perform worse than quad core Deneb at similar clock(8C Bulldozer vs QC Deneb).

[FlanK3r]

I hope, we will soon in performance reality. OC looks very promising. I belive, with good chip I can get 4.9-5 GHz aircoled stable. Hope, I will be happy as with my 1090T choice (still, love it 4 GHz with 1.31V )

[Manicdan]

from what i saw that i thought was intersting

AMDs old record with a PII 955 was beat by over a ghz.
when doing LN2 they just walked that chip right up to 8ghz like it was nothing and found many others that can reach those clocks
5ghz sounds very possible for those with WCing, and as macci said they saw some that did great on water, but didnt reach 8ghz on LN2
1.5v on the antec water (basically mid-high end air) would be a high voltage for thuban, so it seem that BD is not drawing the same power as thuban per voltage, or its not temp limited like thuban was. either way it should be very comfortable for us to use up to 1.5v (as long as the cpu is not degraded in a month)

so lets compare BD to SB a little with OCing. it looks like BD might have a few mhz advantage over SB, but the lower IPC (SB vs BD, not BD vs Thuban) still can hold it back, by how much we dont know. so i think for overclocking we might have an OK race, but its not appearing that SB is going to be dethroned as the best gamers chip.

[undone]

Also confirmed that the second integer core in module cannot be turned off.

FX-4000 with 2 module active and FX-6000 is 3.

FX-4000 is 3.6 core speedup, while FX-6000 is 5.4.

It will be a hard time when compare FX-4000 to other traditional\native quad core because it's not fair enough. So as to FX-6000.

[xsecret]

Well the only issue with what xsecret said ,that I see, is that he confirms that Chinese(VRzone) leaked numbers are true or close to what he has seen under NDA. Mind you that those numbers show 8120 @ 3.1Ghz scoring lower than Deneb X4 in 3dmark06 CPU subtest ,for instance. IMO this is hard to believe since even on paper,those 4 FPUs inside Zambezi are much more powerfully than 4 Deneb FPUs. Similar goes for Cinebench,wprime etc. The design has to be seriously borked in order to perform worse than quad core Deneb at similar clock(8C Bulldozer vs QC Deneb).

High raw throughput for an FP unit is nice. But in order to use this power in real-world application, you need a frontend able to feed it correctly. That means massive code optimization and a good compiler, in best case. And keep in mind the horribly slow L1 Write-Through, probably added in order to remove a bottleneck in frequency scaling. Write-Through means your writing from the frontend to the L2 "through" the L1. So, seen from the frontend, the L1 write bandwidth is as "slow" as the L2 write bandwidth. The last µarch to use that horrible trick was Netburst, with high frequencies in mind. Bulldozer comes with a L1 WT too and that point only could explain many disappointments from a performances point of view.

Anyway, Macci speaks about a 5 GHz overclocking w/ air cooler. According to the roadmap, a 4.5 GHz CPU (turbo, but turbo is there in order to stay within TDP and we don't care about that in OC) planned in early 2012, so a 500 MHz overclocking doesn't seems so extreme. Is there any leaks related to power dissipation ?

[Formula350]

So I've been in contact with AMD's N.Amer Processor Revie department, trying to procure a Llano sample (no dice, all out ), slipping in mention of getting on any list for BD in the processes, when my most recent email was hit back with this...

Thank you for your email.

I am out of the office on business September 12th through 16th. I will have email, however responses may be delayed.

Key point "out of the office on business September 12th through 16th."

"The greencoats are coming, the greencoats are coming!" At least, that's what I'm hoping that means since it's right in line with the launch date we've been fairly certain of

[Manicdan]

Anyway, Macci speaks about a 5 GHz overclocking w/ air cooler. According to the roadmap, a 4.5 GHz CPU (turbo, but turbo is there in order to stay within TDP and we don't care about that in OC) planned in early 2012, so a 500 MHz overclocking doesn't seems so extreme. Is there any leaks related to power dissipation ?

thuban gets 1ghz overclock if you look at base clocks, or 500mhz OC if you look at turbo. so why compare what you can do with 1 core stock to 8 cores overclocked. also why compare the clocks of a future cpu with current cpu overclocking. the PII 940 was pretty crappy at overclocking compared to future models
http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...nomii940/4.htm
940 got 3.755ghz at 1.55v
http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...omii_965/3.htm
965 got 3.915ghz at 1.52v

its very expected to see an extra 200-300mhz out of those models coming early 2012

[maltrabob]

From Muropaketti's article: "According to AMD, record processors were used in the test just before the mass production of manufactured B2 stepping test pieces".

I am a bit lost in this translation, especially with what it says at the end of that sentence. Does it mean that B2 stepping was just a testing one and there is going to be a different one for the final production (B2.G rumored plus there is no revision shown on that CPU-Z shot)? Or is it just an imperfection in Google Translator? Anybody from Finland to shed some light on it, please?

From Overclockers.com: "In passing conversation, Brian and Sami mentioned doing 5Ghz on air running fully multi-threaded benchmarks."

So far so good ...

[v0dka]

High raw throughput for an FP unit is nice. But in order to use this power in real-world application, you need a frontend able to feed it correctly. That means massive code optimization and a good compiler, in best case. And keep in mind the horribly slow L1 Write-Through, probably added in order to remove a bottleneck in frequency scaling. Write-Through means your writing from the frontend to the L2 "through" the L1. So, seen from the frontend, the L1 write bandwidth is as "slow" as the L2 write bandwidth. The last µarch to use that horrible trick was Netburst, with high frequencies in mind. Bulldozer comes with a L1 WT too and that point only could explain many disappointments from a performances point of view.

I can only understand the basics and have no way of verifying anything related to performance based on your input. So bear with me. But logic dictates that AMD wouldn't do this if avoiding the WT would net in higher performance overall. So what is there to compain about if the increased clocks make up for it apparently?

It's another thing if they should have avoided this route from a design point of view and create a better cpu. Better as in able to keep up with thuban in single and multi thread performance. People are implying that BD will fail on both fronts, no? I just can't believe that, at all, personally.

[informal]

High raw throughput for an FP unit is nice. But in order to use this power in real-world application, you need a frontend able to feed it correctly. That means massive code optimization and a good compiler, in best case. And keep in mind the horribly slow L1 Write-Through, probably added in order to remove a bottleneck in frequency scaling. Write-Through means your writing from the frontend to the L2 "through" the L1. So, seen from the frontend, the L1 write bandwidth is as "slow" as the L2 write bandwidth. The last µarch to use that horrible trick was Netburst, with high frequencies in mind. Bulldozer comes with a L1 WT too and that point only could explain many disappointments from a performances point of view.

So you re pretty sure Bulldozer will be slower than Thuban per core? And you are pretty sure you have final platform in your hands? If this is true then the design is truly broken is some way. Still doesn't make any sense to me. AMD knew the perf. level of Nehalem by middle of 2008 probably. They knew intel will just go up from there(Westmere,SB,SB-E,IB). And you are telling me that with all this foreknowledge they opted for Netburst-like design that is actually less competitive Vs Core generation 1 (Merom) while having only 15%-20% higher frequency potential than Family 10h ? This is ridiculous.

[eXa]

We over at NordicHardware got a short interview with Sami Mäkinen, while it doesn't tell alot - it does tell what to expect from overclocking even on air and water cooling solutions!

http://translate.google.com/translat...srekordet.html

But in short (and this is just a human guess) it Likely speed to do with the design margins and similar to the Deneb and the design Thuban CPUs Appear to Be Very robust and cannabis with a tooth-even the most extreme cooling solutions. Bulldozers is a very descriptive name in this case.

Uhhhh.....

[xsecret]

So you re pretty sure Bulldozer will be slower than Thuban per core? And you are pretty sure you have final platform in your hands? If this is true then the design is truly broken is some way. Still doesn't make any sense to me. AMD knew the perf. level of Nehalem by middle of 2008 probably. They knew intel will just go up from there(Westmere,SB,SB-E,IB). And you are telling me that with all this foreknowledge they opted for Netburst-like design that is actually less competitive Vs Core generation 1 (Merom) while having only 15%-20% higher frequency potential than Family 10h ? This is ridiculous.

Was a P4 slower than a P3 ? Sometimes no, sometimes yes, depending on the software. The absolute performance is not something so important for AMD. The most important thing is money. And just money. Spending gazillions dollars in R&D to reach the performance of a CPU sold in very low quantities (and generating very low incomes) like the 990X is ridiculous. Bulldozer must solve two problems : 1/ Be able to gain performances (with frequency increases) at mid-term without spending more gazillions in another µarch 2/ Compete with Intel *mainstream* CPUs (and not Extreme CPU) with a similar price/performance ratio.

[m411b]

Awesomeness!