AMD Zambezi news, info, fans !

[informal]

AMD sales team is not dumb : if you want to have an idea of performance, just look at the price tag. AMD wants to be competitive with Intel. So you will find CPUs with same performance and same price tag than Intel. About stepping, things are quite easy : there was a performance issue in B1 and previous steps. Perfs were down 10-15% than expected on SOME benchmarks. This bug was solved in B2 stepping. So, if you use a B2 stepping WITH a BIOS newer than mid-Aug, you have "shipping" performances. If not, you have ~6-7% lower than expected overall. Protip : B2 step is CPUID F.1.2.

You mean this is shipping performance? B2 stepping,even if it's 6-7% slower or even 15% slower,it sucks badly since it is slower/or barely equal to 1100T. Rumored price from AMD themselves 300$. Rumored price from one dude having them listed on his own site : 260$. Todays 1100T price :190$ (will go down after Zambezi launches). If as you say price reflects performance then you will have 1100T performance (+-10/15%) with 30+% higher price. Is this logical?

In the link above (Vr-zone),just one glance at C10 64bit single core test tells you something is off. You have a single Bulldozer core using 256bit FPU for itself and running at 4Ghz.It gets 3769 pts with some of the features turned off in BIOS(best result they managed). Now ,take a look at single Thuban core, running at 3.7Ghz in same benchmark. It scores 4103pts. That is 17% faster than what Zambezi would get at 3.7Ghz and still faster (8%) than what Zambezi gets at 4Ghz. This is the brand new,double sized,improved,SMT capable FlexFP,with free reg-reg moves(no cost instruction according to AMD), and million other improvements versus K10? Yeah,call me crazy but I don't think so.

[xsecret]

You mean this is shipping performance? B2 stepping,even if it's 6-7% slower or even 15% slower,it sucks badly since it is slower/or barely equal to 1100T. Rumored price from AMD themselves 300$. Rumored price from one dude having them listed on his own site : 260$. Todays 1100T price :190$ (will go down after Zambezi launches). If as you say price reflects performance then you will have 1100T performance (+-10/15%) with 30+% higher price. Is this logical?

I will not comment those benchmarks, but the 1100T is not a competitor for the FX-8150. AMD don't want to be competitive with their old-gen EOL CPU (ie 1100T), they want to be competitive with Intel CPUs. So it makes sense to adjust the price of the new FX-8000 series to the price of an Intel CPU with similar performance. The price is the key : get the price, check on the Intel price-list for a similar price and you should have an idea of performances.

PS : Again, the $260-$300 range is just rumor...

[BeepBeep2]

You mean this is shipping performance? B2 stepping,even if it's 6-7% slower or even 15% slower,it sucks badly since it is slower/or barely equal to 1100T. Rumored price from AMD themselves 300$. Rumored price from one dude having them listed on his own site : 260$. Todays 1100T price :190$ (will go down after Zambezi launches). If as you say price reflects performance then you will have 1100T performance (+-10/15%) with 30+% higher price. Is this logical?

In the link above (Vr-zone),just one glance at C10 64bit single core test tells you something is off. You have a single Bulldozer core using 256bit FPU for itself and running at 4Ghz.It gets 3769 pts with some of the features turned off in BIOS(best result they managed). Now ,take a look at single Thuban core, running at 3.7Ghz in same benchmark. It scores 4103pts. That is 17% faster than what Zambezi would get at 3.7Ghz and still faster (8%) than what Zambezi gets at 4Ghz. This is the brand new,double sized,improved,SMT capable FlexFP,with free reg-reg moves(no cost instruction according to AMD), and million other improvements versus K10? Yeah,call me crazy but I don't think so.

The only thing positive I see in there is the 4.7 to 5x multiprocessor speedup. Performance as a whole sucks ass, (something is wrong with these results, because Opterons would have not been handed to Cray for upgrades had the CPU's been underperforming) however it seems my hypothesis about single to multithread performance after what chew* hinted at was logical.

[haylui]

You mean this is shipping performance? B2 stepping,even if it's 6-7% slower or even 15% slower,it sucks badly since it is slower/or barely equal to 1100T. Rumored price from AMD themselves 300$. Rumored price from one dude having them listed on his own site : 260$. Todays 1100T price :190$ (will go down after Zambezi launches). If as you say price reflects performance then you will have 1100T performance (+-10/15%) with 30+% higher price. Is this logical?

In the link above (Vr-zone),just one glance at C10 64bit single core test tells you something is off. You have a single Bulldozer core using 256bit FPU for itself and running at 4Ghz.It gets 3769 pts with some of the features turned off in BIOS(best result they managed). Now ,take a look at single Thuban core, running at 3.7Ghz in same benchmark. It scores 4103pts. That is 17% faster than what Zambezi would get at 3.7Ghz and still faster (8%) than what Zambezi gets at 4Ghz. This is the brand new,double sized,improved,SMT capable FlexFP,with free reg-reg moves(no cost instruction according to AMD), and million other improvements versus K10? Yeah,call me crazy but I don't think so.

someone deleted my thread in VRFORUMS (english version). Saying that they need to clarify with AMD what's wrong with the result. Maybe some L3 prefetching and CnQ microcode issue in BIOS?
see the screen shot.