Bulldoze that Sandy Bridge

[Halk]

For server, same power and thermals, if not lower. New power management will mean very good power efficiency. I won't say anything else.
.

Cheers JF. Movieman was the first, I think, to mention efficiency specifically. But I think it's becoming more and more of a focus, or at least entering people's minds when they make a purchase.

For me I love doing upgrades when there's no real need, but I do like to at least have some kind of reason for it... The only way I can convince myself to go to Bulldozer is if I can convince myself the electricity bill will reduce!

[Manicdan]

Cheers JF. Movieman was the first, I think, to mention efficiency specifically. But I think it's becoming more and more of a focus, or at least entering people's minds when they make a purchase.

For me I love doing upgrades when there's no real need, but I do like to at least have some kind of reason for it... The only way I can convince myself to go to Bulldozer is if I can convince myself the electricity bill will reduce!

what do you usually do?

the thing is that your spending power on HDD, MBs, RAM, the cpu alone isnt draining all the energy. so if your goal is for folding@home, then having alot of cores with few accessories is the way to go. but if your just playing games and you want the lowest total power consumption while still having the highest framerate, then i think a 4 core BD is the right choice then. it really is based on what your goals are for the PC

im still debating on which i want to buy for my case (see sig), it weight over 30lbs and dropping in cpu with less cores will drastically lower power consumption (probably not by much for a game, only in full load testing), but the weight wont change, so why not make it a power house with 8 cores. such a dilemma

i wouldnt be worried about the power consumption of BD, with advanced power gating and turbo, your going to see a great increase in perf/watt over current AMD chips, most from the fact its on 32nm, but there are still features that help it out too.

[FlanK3r]

I think, Zambezi will be more OC friendly than Denebs and Thubans, will see guys. Estimate it about 4500 MHz average at AIR, maybe a bit more. Its high clock chip architecture.

[Halk]

what do you usually do?

the thing is that your spending power on HDD, MBs, RAM, the cpu alone isnt draining all the energy. so if your goal is for folding@home, then having alot of cores with few accessories is the way to go. but if your just playing games and you want the lowest total power consumption while still having the highest framerate, then i think a 4 core BD is the right choice then. it really is based on what your goals are for the PC

im still debating on which i want to buy for my case (see sig), it weight over 30lbs and dropping in cpu with less cores will drastically lower power consumption (probably not by much for a game, only in full load testing), but the weight wont change, so why not make it a power house with 8 cores. such a dilemma

i wouldnt be worried about the power consumption of BD, with advanced power gating and turbo, your going to see a great increase in perf/watt over current AMD chips, most from the fact its on 32nm, but there are still features that help it out too.

For me it's all about the idle power. I have a reasonably high spec system, but for the most part it just sits idle, or eventually goes to sleep. If I do play games it's not for a lot of time, generally. Most time I'm on the PC it's just browsing the net etc, which has a very low drain on the system.

So what matters to me isn't how efficiently it crunches through data, it's more about how little power the board, cpu and graphics card use when idle.

I'm all for having lots of power on tap, but I want it to gracefully idle at low wattage consumption when I'm not using it.

[Johnny87au]

I think, Zambezi will be more OC friendly than Denebs and Thubans, will see guys. Estimate it about 4500 MHz average at AIR, maybe a bit more. Its high clock chip architecture.

Hope your wrong and is binned a tad higher

[Sn0wm@n]

For me it's all about the idle power. I have a reasonably high spec system, but for the most part it just sits idle, or eventually goes to sleep. If I do play games it's not for a lot of time, generally. Most time I'm on the PC it's just browsing the net etc, which has a very low drain on the system.

So what matters to me isn't how efficiently it crunches through data, it's more about how little power the board, cpu and graphics card use when idle.

I'm all for having lots of power on tap, but I want it to gracefully idle at low wattage consumption when I'm not using it.

then only power up your rig when you need it ...


and problem solved ....

[zalbard]

Hope your wrong and is binned a tad higher

Same. A 200-300MHz improvement would be meh.

[Manicdan]

then only power up your rig when you need it ...


and problem solved ....

i agree here
get an SSD for faster booting and get use to powering down,

idle power of a desktop is going to be 60W or more (expect 100W+), a nettop is like 5W, meaning your saving 10$ a month if you never shut down by going with a small cheap weak system

or you boot down and save 6$ a month

[gordy]

Will there ever be a high performance GPU integrated? Like everyone else I would never use integrated graphics because I play 3D games and have huge monitors. But if I could get 6 BD cores and an HD6970 all in one chip I would be all over it!

It seems like once the GPU and CPU are no longer separate components the drivers could leverage assumptions about the available CPU resource to squeeze out more performance. Instead of SLI across the PCIe bus and potentially bottlenecking the CPU we could get 4-8way workstation boards for SLI over hypertransport and increase CPU and GPU power together.

As far as the upgrade path it wouldn't bother me not being able to upgrade the CPU and GPU separately. Hell if I had spare sockets available it would be more flexible to be able to add the latest cpgpu alongside my existing chip for maximum performance anyways.

[BeepBeep2]

Will there ever be a high performance GPU integrated? Like everyone else I would never use integrated graphics because I play 3D games and have huge monitors. But if I could get 6 BD cores and an HD6970 all in one chip I would be all over it!

It seems like once the GPU and CPU are no longer separate components the drivers could leverage assumptions about the available CPU resource to squeeze out more performance. Instead of SLI across the PCIe bus and potentially bottlenecking the CPU we could get 4-8way workstation boards for SLI over hypertransport and increase CPU and GPU power together.

As far as the upgrade path it wouldn't bother me not being able to upgrade the CPU and GPU separately. Hell if I had spare sockets available it would be more flexible to be able to add the latest cpgpu alongside my existing chip for maximum performance anyways.

What would require radically different motherboards and sockets...

[jeremyshaw]

What would require radically different motherboards and sockets...

And really big sockets, lol...

[Johnny87au]

Same. A 200-300MHz improvement would be meh.

Especially being a 6 core you'd expect it to be run @ stock higher then the current SB chips, surely..

[dood001]

Will there ever be a high performance GPU integrated? Like everyone else I would never use integrated graphics because I play 3D games and have huge monitors. But if I could get 6 BD cores and an HD6970 all in one chip I would be all over it!

.

yeah but they want to sell you two items, instead of one!

[Halk]

then only power up your rig when you need it ...


and problem solved ....

That only goes so far. It does power down automatically, after about half an hour of not being used, I've found that's about the best setting. However I do use it for several hours a day.

If I'm not at work, and not sleeping then the PC is on.

I have SSDs in this PC now, and no hard drives - the server up the loft has the hard drives in it.

[Manicdan]

That only goes so far. It does power down automatically, after about half an hour of not being used, I've found that's about the best setting. However I do use it for several hours a day.

If I'm not at work, and not sleeping then the PC is on.

I have SSDs in this PC now, and no hard drives - the server up the loft has the hard drives in it.

then it sounds like you want a micro-atx board for reduced power, just 2 sticks of ram (dont worry about overclocking/over-volting them since perf change will not be much), 80+ gold rated psu can shave off 10% of the power right there, and a 4 core BD should be good for all your needs without sucking up to much power (id go with a 65W variant), for a gpu the latest offering all have insane idle consumption compared to older cards.

[Th-I3riG02]

If i understand it wont be as efficent as two 'real' cores but instead of the 20% performance gain that HT gives intel with 20% more die space, AMD is hoping for more around 60-80% performance but with only around 40% increase in die space.


The front end on all chips is the lightest area used so hopefully by sharing it between core it will benefit performance/mm2.

I was just thinking the same thing. Hoping it'll be as efficient as i anticipate. I read awesome reviews and hope Zambizi kicks SB in the berries as i am disappointed in Intel... They better start releasing some AM3+ boards soon or im gunna start chopping up kittens!

No. No. I kidd, but seriously though im gunna start chopping kittens.
No joking again but seriously though.... where are the boards... and kittens?

[JF-AMD]

Will there ever be a high performance GPU integrated?

Not in this round.

[TheBlueChanell]

Dozer needs to best Sandy Bridge IMO and compete with LGA 2011 and it's CPU ecosystem.

[shoota]

Dozer needs to best Sandy Bridge IMO and compete with LGA 2011 and it's CPU ecosystem.

don't hold your breath, amd hasn't outdone intel for quite some time now. remember the socket 939 athlons? i do.. good times, good times..

[ChanceCoats123]

Just because they haven't in a while doesn't mean they can't ever.

I think that from Phenom I to Phenom II was a huge jump that not a lot of people were expecting. Maybe this will be similar.

[TheBlueChanell]

don't hold your breath, amd hasn't outdone intel for quite some time now. remember the socket 939 athlons? i do.. good times, good times..

It doesn't have to beat it clock for clock but it should be able to compete especially if they are planning on reviving the FX moniker.

[demonkevy666]

Not in this round.

what happened with llano I though it would came out before bulldozer
now it says June for Llano ? :/ that puts bulldozer ahead of it.

[Glow9]

Just because they haven't in a while doesn't mean they can't ever.

I think that from Phenom I to Phenom II was a huge jump that not a lot of people were expecting. Maybe this will be similar.

Bartons awesome, 939 awesome, Phenoms and their stupid name garbage. Phenom II good, Thank goodness AMD is still in business, they had a good jump but I am hoping they can finally kill this 2007 technology and move on to 2011. I want bulldozer in my next rig.

[JF-AMD]

what happened with llano I though it would came out before bulldozer
now it says June for Llano ? :/ that puts bulldozer ahead of it.

I have no idea, I am a server guy.

[Halk]

then it sounds like you want a micro-atx board for reduced power, just 2 sticks of ram (dont worry about overclocking/over-volting them since perf change will not be much), 80+ gold rated psu can shave off 10% of the power right there, and a 4 core BD should be good for all your needs without sucking up to much power (id go with a 65W variant), for a gpu the latest offering all have insane idle consumption compared to older cards.

That'd be ideal if I also wasn't power hungry too :p

I have a Crosshair IV, 1090T, 4x2GB of low voltage RAM and a Seasonic X, plus a 5870.