Preliminary Bulldozer and Llano Pricing Revealed

[undone]

Why do the prices seems too good to be true. I mean llano is a repacked K10.5/K11 with a integrated GPU, since in most cases a dual core with HT can come very close to a quad core AMD, a quad core Intel will wipe any llano based cpu off the map. Now comes the SNB i3 and Pentium's, the dual core i3 with HT will come very close to quad core llano performance and SNB Pentium will lag behind a bit.

What is important to find out is the clock speed llano will come out with and also how capable the integrated GPU is. From what i was told quite some time ago its not super great there are bottlenecks and in certain situations they take a tool on the GPU.

In the end one has to decide upon a SNB+ AMD/Nvidia gpu or a llano...

It seems not only me have doubt on the Llano range. But the most strange thing is, look at the A75 board below, they even use the mid-range Llano to adopt in the multi-crossfire board, I'm curious since the Llano equip legacy K10 for not-enthusiast usage but unexpectedly to use it to play with muiti graphic card. It's too odd, since everybody doubt the Phenom quad core may be a bottleneck during mainstream game, but the unofficial & official information reflect it may be way better, than expected.

[gallag]

one word for you: price range.

Fantastic!!!!!

[2good4you]

Bulldozer will beat Intel's current cpu's in singelthread and perhaps the 980x multithreading. It's quite easy to understand when you look closer at the architecture. The front-end in Bulldozer is pretty big, which says it got a lot of horsepower. Also it must have to feed the double hungry integer units in the module. In the 4 module/8core BD, up to 4 threads the front end can easy get one integer unit 100% buzy in each module with maximum Turbo, which mean very good performance in 1 to 4 threads. What happens with more threaded workload? Yeah, intel's Hyperthreading deliver at most 30% better performance, and means 130% performance per double-threaded utilized core. BD will deliver 160% per double-threaded utilized module. Here we see 640% from a 8 core BD, and 780% from 980x. However, I think the scaling will be much better on BD, and also higher clocked and more aggressive Turbo. The most inportant is what we don't know, and that is how efficient the architecure is.

Worth to notice is that we don't now if the 80%/160% numbers from AMD in multithreading is correct, we don't now how aggressive the Turbo function will be, and much depends on how optimized the software is for Bulldozer. A lot can be rewritten and better optimized for this new design.

[Skratch]

Bulldozer will beat Intel's current cpu's in singelthread and perhaps the 980x multithreading. It's quite easy to understand when you look closer at the architecture. The front-end in Bulldozer is pretty big, which says it got a lot of horsepower. Also it must have to feed the double hungry integer units in the module. In the 4 module/8core BD, up to 4 threads the front end can easy get one integer unit 100% buzy in each module with maximum Turbo, which mean very good performance in 1 to 4 threads. What happens with more threaded workload? Yeah, intel's Hyperthreading deliver at most 30% better performance, and means 130% performance per double-threaded utilized core. BD will deliver 160% per double-threaded utilized module. Here we see 640% from a 8 core BD, and 780% from 980x. However, I think the scaling will be much better on BD, and also higher clocked and more aggressive Turbo. The most inportant is what we don't know, and that is how efficient the architecure is.

Worth to notice is that we don't now if the 80%/160% numbers from AMD in multithreading is correct, we don't now how aggressive the Turbo function will be, and much depends on how optimized the software is for Bulldozer. A lot can be rewritten and better optimized for this new design.

I have a hard time believing that because AMD is pricing its fastest BD (at launch)at 320 so there is no way they would sell it that cheap if it was faster than intels chips.

you do realise that intel is coming out with 1000+ dollar sandy bridge extreme chips right? if BD will beat out 1100 dollar intel chips why would they sell them for 320.

back in the A64 days when AMD was faster than intel they put out 800-1000 FX chips becasue they had the performance lead.

also a note

the sandy extremes are only 6 core chips

I hope you are right because that will drop intels prices big time.

[Chrono Detector]

If AMD Bulldozer still can't beat Intel's current 6 core offerings that will be indeed embarrassing. Why can't they use hyperthreading like Intel does?

[DarthShader]

darth your missing his point.If BD cant compete with something that came out 1.5 years before it(depending when we can get BDs)then its a fail.

Nope. Not until Intel decides to sell that chip for 320$, to counter BD. Then it will be a fail. Or maybe a success, forcing it's competitor to sell at 1/3 of it's launch price? JF-AMD said something along the line, from memory, "we could make a chip twice as fast as Intel, but you wouldn't be able to afford it". Think about it.

I have a hard time believing that because AMD is pricing its fastest BD (at launch)at 320 so there is no way they would sell it that cheap if it was faster than intels chips.

8130P is a desktop aimed for mainstream chip. This means it has to compete in this area. In this area, there is a 2600K. The 2600K is very good at desktop tasks, which are lightly threaded. It's very unlikely BD will be able outpace an SB at these kind of workloads by such a significant amount, that would warrant an ridiculous price. Therefore, it will be priced reasonable. Why is it so hard to believe?

[Skratch]

Nope. Not until Intel decides to sell that chip for 320$, to counter BD. Then it will be a fail. Or maybe a success, forcing it's competitor to sell at 1/3 of it's launch price? JF-AMD said something along the line, from memory, "we could make a chip twice as fast as Intel, but you wouldn't be able to afford it". Think about it.


8130P is a desktop aimed for mainstream chip. This means it has to compete in this area. In this area, there is a 2600K. The 2600K is very good at desktop tasks, which are lightly threaded. It's very unlikely BD will be able outpace an SB at these kind of workloads by such a significant amount, that would warrant an ridiculous price. Therefore, it will be priced reasonable. Why is it so hard to believe?

IM not talking about the 2600k,you guys are thinking that that is the only chip its supposed to go against.What is the point of BD if its ment to only go up against a 2600k?

I was talking about it being better than the 6 cores that were out way over a year ago.

AMD needs to start making faster chips as intel made 8 billion in the server market with there monsters that sell for 1200 each.

by the time BD is out there will be cheaper 6 core 22nm sandys that will be in its price rance and intel just listed the a new I3 to fit int he low 2 core market and that chip will have hyperthreading.

IM not hating but BD needed to come out 1.5 years ago to compete with intel first gen I5s and I7s

With this price list it looks like AMD is again right where they have always been compared to intel.An ok cheaper alternative that is good for normal use,but that is not going to make AMD any money.

[2good4you]

I have a hard time believing that because AMD is pricing its fastest BD (at launch)at 320 so there is no way they would sell it that cheap if it was faster than intels chips.

I don't believe the prices. At least, the performance we think it'll deliver does not match the price (or AMD is very friendly to us deliver new super cpu's for good price). Because of what I wrote above, it must really shine in singelthreaded workloads, and also be great in multithreaded workloads. We have so many powerful news in the BD design, and what we can see, all the weaknesses from K7/K8/K10 is gone. The first thing I see is branch fusion and the massive front end. AMD had always earlier very powerful execution engines, but bad utilized. Also, we don't have to forget:

according to AMD, Bulldozer is designed to be nothing less than "the highest performing single and multi-threaded compute core in history".

back in the A64 days when AMD was faster than intel they put out 800-1000 FX chips becasue they had the performance lead.

also a note

the sandy extremes are only 6 core chips

I hope you are right because that will drop intels prices big time.

The 6-core Intel's have SMT and theoretically gets more performance than 8 core BD. But we'll wait and see.

Many things we don't know yet. One thing is for sure, and it is that BD will be quite cheap to produce relative to it's performance thanks to it's high-density-design I think.

If AMD Bulldozer still can't beat Intel's current 6 core offerings that will be indeed embarrassing. Why can't they use hyperthreading like Intel does?

SMT is a great feature, and is proven in heavy parallell server workloads. One great example is the IBM Power 7 with 32 cores and 128 threads. Anyway SMT/CMP becomes more and more important in personal computing also, and the design of AMD's multithreading is a great combo of SMT and CMP and creates the best solution of both worlds.

Intel's SMT (HT) uses about 5.5% extra transistors in the cpu and delivers at most 25-30%. Also it can perform worse sometimes because of the nature of SMT. A CMP or AMD's design will never perform worse because of a branch misprediction. AMD's design will use 12% more transistors and perform 80%, which means 160% from one core/module. If Bulldozer can perform this good with the shared front-end, then we have a new better chip-design for parallelism/thoughtput.

[Hornet331]

by the time BD is out there will be cheaper 6 core 22nm sandys that will be in its price rance and intel just listed the a new I3 to fit int he low 2 core market and that chip will have hyperthreading.

Now your in fantasy land... there wont be any 22nm hexacores before the end of Q3 2012. When we are lucky we will get 22nm qudcores at the beginn of 2012

[Skratch]

Now your in fantasy land... there wont be any 22nm hexacores before the end of Q3 2012. When we are lucky we will get 22nm qudcores at the beginn of 2012

sandy E will be 6 cores no? I think you are thinking about ivy bridge and by AMD time line I would say that intel could easily put out those chips if they wanted too,they are waiting for AMD to put something out.

[informal]

The problem SB-E will face on desktop market is that not many applications will utilize that many cores/threads.So what if SB-E comes just 10-15% on top of Westmere 6C? That would also mean it will be 15-20% faster than 2600K. Is that a failure in itself then? What if top model Zambezi 8C is just 10-20% slower than 6C SB-E while costing 3x less?
Also in well threaded code I think 8C Zambezi will really shine ,so it won't be one trick pony(high Turbo core).

[Skratch]

this road map shows sandyE 6 core for late 2011

[jjj]

@ Skratch: SB-E is not on 22nm.

[DarthShader]

by the time BD is out there will be cheaper 6 core 22nm sandys that will be in its price rance

Wow, you need to seriously sort your Intel roadmaps correctly, or soon some of you will start claiming Intel is going to have graphene CPUs by the time Bulldozer comes out.

SB-E = 32nm, Q4 2011
IB = 22nm, H1 2012
IB-E = 22nm, H2 2012 (?)

"cheaper 6 core Sandy's" - that's an oxymoron. :P

AMD's design will use 12% more transistors and perform 80%, which means 160% from one core/module.

Your math is wrong. It's 80% of what? It's 80% performance of the second added core, compared to the one already there, performing at 100%. So it's 180% in total. Or else, with your logic, an Intel SMT core would be tat 60%.

The problem SB-E will face on desktop market is that not many applications will utilize that many cores/threads.

That could be said about Bulldozer too.

The real problem of SB-E on dektop market will be the price of the whole platform. MOtherboards are going to be more expensive than Z68, 4 quality ram sticks, etc... it's an enthusiast platform after all.

[Skratch]

Excuse me guys Im off by a quarter.Point is 22nm is right around the corner and there is no BD out yet.

[perkam]

ive got some asus slides here, confirming the current naming scheme and the TDPs. sorry that i had to censor it.

Not a problem. I have the same slide except uncensored.

People will be quite surprised with the clock speed for the quad core.

[w0mbat]

i think most ppl here expect too much. so yes, maybe theyll be surprised---

[informal]

Now that Perkam mentioned the slide wombat posted,I don't share the enthusiasm of some posters about 3.6-3.8Ghz clock speeds for 8C. It would be great,but let's be a bit more realistic ,shall we?
As for QC Zambezi,maybe a speed in line with current X4s,around 3.4Ghz + turbo .At least that is what I expect.

[DarthShader]

Excuse me guys Im off by a quarter.Point is 22nm is right around the corner and there is no BD out yet.

You got it wrong.

BD is right around the corner and there is no 22nm out yet. And won't be for at least half a year, not quarter.

People will be quite surprised with the clock speed for the quad core.

I won't, I expected 4.0 stock, but apparently the clockspeed starts with a "3". Impossible to tell what is the second number, could be both an "8" or "9".

The price of the quad is higher than the top-bin Llano, which is going to have at least 3ghz (or so I heard) and a GPU inside, so the quad has to be clocked quite a bit faster, preferably higher than current Phenoms, if only for marketing purposes...

[Skratch]

You got it wrong.

BD is right around the corner and there is no 22nm out yet. And won't be for at least half a year, not quarter.


I won't, I expected 4.0 stock, but apparently the clockspeed starts with a "3". Impossible to tell what is the second number, could be both an "8" or "9".

The price of the quad is higher than the top-bin Llano, which is going to have at least 3ghz (or so I heard) and a GPU inside, so the quad has to be clocked quite a bit faster, preferably higher than current Phenoms, if only for marketing purposes...

I said 22nm 4th 2011 and its planned for 1st 2012,is that not a quarter off?

btw people thought bd was going to be out in 4th quater 08 and its now 2011,what makes you think BD is right around the corner when there isnt even 1 leak of any final chip.

When do you think we will be3 able to build a BD setup?next month? yeah I doubt it.

If BD comes out strong what makes you think intel cant put out 22nm a quarter early?they are waiting for AMD to do something.

[Macadamia]

I said 22nm 4th 2011 and its planned for 1st 2012,is that not a quarter off?

btw people thought bd was going to be out in 4th quater 08 and its now 2011,what makes you think BD is right around the corner when there isnt even 1 leak of any final chip.

When do you think we will be3 able to build a BD setup?next month? yeah I doubt it.

If BD comes out strong what makes you think intel cant put out 22nm a quarter early?they are waiting for AMD to do something.

I find the we in your quote beyond hilarity.
It's so obvious that you're just here to screw the thread up.

[informal]

btw people thought bd was going to be out in 4th quater 08 and its now 2011,what makes you think BD is right around the corner when there isnt even 1 leak of any final chip.

When do you think we will be3 able to build a BD setup?next month? yeah I doubt it.

No.Original Bulldozer was a different design on a different process node,45nm. AMD cancelled the project and reused the design ,improved it and targeted it at 32nm. So 45nm "bulldozer" is not the same design as 32nm one.They are similar but not the same. Oh and the launch date for that 1st 45nm Bulldozer was never 2008,it was 2009 ,probably H2.

[Skratch]

I find the we in your quote beyond hilarity.
It's so obvious that you're just here to screw the thread up.

whats beyond hilarity that the second some one brings up intel that you cant compare them to each other.

I have 2 AMD chips sitting right next to me bud.Just because Im running intel now dosnt mean I will never build something that is faster from the other camp.

The second someones tries to talk about AMD and there chips with a un baised to them they get called an intel fan boy.

[mongoled]

The second someones tries to talk about AMD and there chips with a un baised to them they get called an intel fan boy.

You are posting in the AMD section, what did you expect?

[DarthShader]

btw people thought bd was going to be out in 4th quater 08 and its now 2011,what makes you think BD is right around the corner when there isnt even 1 leak of any final chip.

Oh no, not THIS again....

While there probably won't be enough supply to saturate the market right from day one, at least we'll get hard numbers and the BS will stop.

The second someones tries to talk about AMD and there chips with a un baised to them they get called an intel fan boy.

This statement reminds me of a certain Sam from Oslo. He was so unbiased, he got banned from the News section.