AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer finally tested

[SKYMTL]

You are wrong about BF3.

Check back again when you get the final build.

[informal]

I don't understand how a Zambezi 8C (or 8T if you like) is scoring 26Gflops at 4Ghz when Deneb X4 @ 4Ghz scores 45-47Gflops. Just crazy. Is there a throttling mechanism employed because one 256bit FPU cannot be slower than one K10 FPU,makes zero sense.

[Hornet331]

I wont give much about the linx run, the other guy also had problems running it, for me it seems its a problem with the compiler... duno with what linx is compiled but if it is compiled with ICC the worse fall back SSE2...

[sviola]

Now we're splitting hairs over what Bill Gates said or not? Come on. For your information, there is no proof he DIDN'T say it....

With that being said, the progression of this thread is pathetic.

Lab501 posts results they claim are indicative of Bulldozer performance and the responses go....

1) That SUCKS

2) Oh wait, those can't be right!

3) Where did the processor come from? Was it paid for by Intel?

4) There must be something wrong with the benchmarks since they aren't properly loading the CPU!

5) Wait a sec, there is a BIOS setting that will somehow improve performance

6) Forget about the BIOS setting....there's a PATCH!

7) No no! The current way of benchmarking processors just can't show the true power of Bulldozer

8) You're holding it wrong


And prepare for this all to get rehashed in the thread holding launch day reviews in under 12 hours... At least at that point we'll see whether any of those hold water or if they're all just meaningless excuses to justify the poor results of a highly anticipated architecture.

One hint: at least TWO of the above statements are correct.

1 and 6? If it was hardware from a certain company I would have gone for no. 8, but I digress...

[FlanK3r]

I don't understand how a Zambezi 8C (or 8T if you like) is scoring 26Gflops at 4Ghz when Deneb X4 @ 4Ghz scores 45-47Gflops. Just crazy. Is there a throttling mechanism employed because one 256bit FPU cannot be slower than one K10 FPU,makes zero sense.

Informal, I have answer for you, LINX dont stress FX CPUs, maybe at 25%, what I tried....

[informal]

One guy at coolaler forum measured 318W of power draw when running c11.5 on 4.5Ghz Zambezi....

[BababooeyHTJ]

Now we're splitting hairs over what Bill Gates said or not? Come on. For your information, there is no proof he DIDN'T say it....

With that being said, the progression of this thread is pathetic.

Lab501 posts results they claim are indicative of Bulldozer performance and the responses go....

1) That SUCKS

2) Oh wait, those can't be right!

3) Where did the processor come from? Was it paid for by Intel?

4) There must be something wrong with the benchmarks since they aren't properly loading the CPU!

5) Wait a sec, there is a BIOS setting that will somehow improve performance

6) Forget about the BIOS setting....there's a PATCH!

7) No no! The current way of benchmarking processors just can't show the true power of Bulldozer

8) You're holding it wrong


And prepare for this all to get rehashed in the thread holding launch day reviews in under 12 hours... At least at that point we'll see whether any of those hold water or if they're all just meaningless excuses to justify the poor results of a highly anticipated architecture.

One hint: at least TWO of the above statements are correct.

My gripe is the way that most websites benchmark cpus. Hardware canucks is one of the worst offenders.
Do you guys really feel that you did a good Sandy bridge review?
I have seen you make so many comments about timedemos and canned benchmarks on this very forum while the site that you review for does the exact same thing in their sandy bridge review.

Do you really feel that a GTX280 that was about two and a half years old at the time was a good choice to show off what a brand new $300 cpu does for a gaming rig?
Windows Vista Service pack 1? You have got to be kidding me.
An old ass 320GB HDD?

Is this what I should expect from your Bulldozer review? If so it will be just as useless to me.

[Sentential]

I find the responses in this thread to be borderline hillarious; the number of people with buyer's remorse for waiting for bulldozer is incredible. Just let it go and buy a an i7; I just got one last night after reading this thread. The gig is up; to be frank I wouldn't be shocked at all if this is in large part why Chew* is taking a break; he probably knew there'd be a ton of people groveling at AMD's alter. That they'd spin and say anything to get a piece of the action when AMD does better another chip or two down the road.

Also semiaccurate had a interesting article that sums up what I'm seeing here:

Back to Bulldozer. Optimistically speaking, if the designers did right, each core in a module will have no worse performance than a hypothetical single discrete Bulldozer core, but take up less area than two of those. Best case, each core will have 2x the resources of a single discrete core at no ‘cost’. The FP unit is a good example of this concept, it could really shine under certain workloads.

If those crystal ball gazers didn’t do their work, the worst case is one side bottlenecks the other, stealing resources, thrashing caches, and destroying performance for both cores. Per core performance/mm^2 from a shared architecture could range from amazing to horrid, the end result depends on so many variables that it is almost hard to fathom.

To me that looks like exactly what is happening. AMD wanted to try something novel and got bit in the ass by it. Unfortunately for them they don't have the capital to be behaving this way. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they are bought out or bankrupt by the end of this coming year.

[naokaji]

Unfortunately for them they don't have the capital to be behaving this way. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they are bought out or bankrupt by the end of this coming year.

Don't worry its bailout season, tax money will fix it.
So unlike with Phenom we don't even have to buy it cause we feel sorry for the poor underdog, they will get our money even if we buy something else.

[InCredible]

To me that looks like exactly what is happening. AMD wanted to try something novel and got bit in the ass by it. Unfortunately for them they don't have the capital to be behaving this way. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they are bought out or bankrupt by the end of this coming year.

this isn't true at all, for one they make a lot of money else where, servers, gpus,mobile markets etc..also like someone else mentioned that the average user/customer hasn't a clue what actually performs..so for the average person to walk into a store and talk to a best buy person who also knows nothing..they compare specs...intel 2600k quad core at 3.4 @ 3.8ghz with turbo ..OR amd fx 8 cores at 3.6 with turbo to 4.2ghz...amd is cheaper as well....customer goes home with their new 8 core machine and probably brags to friends about it who could be potential customers...

[SKYMTL]

Is this what I should expect from your Bulldozer review? If so it will be just as useless to me.

At least you read the SB review.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Who is going and buying a desktop at best buy? Those are the people that Llano is made for and for that market it does the job very well. If I were in the market for a new notebook I would be going with a Llano cpu. Bulldozer might just be a great workstation and server cpu. The niche pc gaming and high end desktop market isn't going to make or break AMD don't kid yourself.

[InCredible]

Who is going and buying a desktop at best buy? Those are the people that Llano is made for and for that market it does the job very well. .

I have definitely seen people in BB buy "high" end desktops...or compusa etc..theres more people out there that are clueless then you may think..the average person may know someone who knows about computers but they themselves know nothing nor care..just something that works and if a salesman sells them something they will eat it up even if they dont really need it...know a few people that use to work at compusa before being turning into "tiger direct" and would laugh about what people go in and waste money on...not saying this will save them cause like you said they are not dependent on desktop market but ive seen cases like this before and im sure it would happen again.

[cold2010]

@SKYMTL
Do you still use gtx 280 When testing cpu ?

[Sentential]

Who is going and buying a desktop at best buy? Those are the people that Llano is made for and for that market it does the job very well. If I were in the market for a new notebook I would be going with a Llano cpu. Bulldozer might just be a great workstation and server cpu. The niche pc gaming and high end desktop market isn't going to make or break AMD don't kid yourself.

The problem is AMD seems to be half-assing a lot of things lately. Llano isn't strong enough to run games; at least not enough to justify using it over a discrete add in card, nor does it have enough in the way of power savings to justify purchasing on the extreme other end of things. The problem is AMD has condemned itself to mediocrity and they don't appear to be making much headway in being a leader in any category other than "good enough".

[Baam]

Intel killer? At this point i will be happy if its a Phenom II killer.

[Aberration]

I guess now we know why talk of Piledriver started before this was out yet.

For some reason I see this being a short lived product, and pile driver coming out by mid year.

[rintamarotta]

I think this cpu is just cpu used to optimize process in GloFo for piledriver.

[hurleybird]

Now we're splitting hairs over what Bill Gates said or not? Come on. For your information, there is no proof he DIDN'T say it....

With that being said, the progression of this thread is pathetic.

Lab501 posts results they claim are indicative of Bulldozer performance and the responses go....

1) That SUCKS

2) Oh wait, those can't be right!

3) Where did the processor come from? Was it paid for by Intel?

4) There must be something wrong with the benchmarks since they aren't properly loading the CPU!

5) Wait a sec, there is a BIOS setting that will somehow improve performance

6) Forget about the BIOS setting....there's a PATCH!

7) No no! The current way of benchmarking processors just can't show the true power of Bulldozer

8) You're holding it wrong


And prepare for this all to get rehashed in the thread holding launch day reviews in under 12 hours... At least at that point we'll see whether any of those hold water or if they're all just meaningless excuses to justify the poor results of a highly anticipated architecture.

One hint: at least TWO of the above statements are correct.

Based on your tone and that last comment it's sounding a bit like "It's bad, but not *that* bad."

In any case, you are a very cruel man

[Sentential]

Looks like we have some more stuff in the wild: here's an 8120 http://3dmark.com/3dm11/1979782

Source: http://www.overclock.net/amd-general...fx-8120-a.html

[tajoh111]

I think those craving hope are really showing desperation, in the stages SKYMTL has shown, but in kinder words. There have been a lot of tell tail signs in the past. I.E the falling stock in the last month, the leaving executives and Intel delaying ivy bridge till mid next year. If intel was scared of bulldozers, they wouldn't have delayed Ivybridge so much. They know they can milk Sandy and its probably why the 2700k has a higher price than the 2600k.

I am not certain at this point, but with the evidence from these benchmarks, Bulldozers looks to be a failure of epic proportion. Considering the time in development, this was AMD last hope on the CPU front.

This is certainly terrible for the consumer, as the development and aggressive pricing will slow down without competition. Ever since Hector Ruiz took over AMD, AMD has been moving in a worse and worse direction. I think if AMD wanted to be a successfull CPU company, buying ATI was the worst mistake they could make. They simply didn't have the resources to develop both and it has spread itself thin. Trying to get into the mobile game on top of this is going to spread resources even thinner.


Fusion is the only thing that can save AMD, its a gamble that has shown moderate success. The problem is will it pay off in the future, the the CPU portion so crippled.

[pipoo]

I think this cpu is just cpu used to optimize process in GloFo for piledriver.

Yeah, sure! Start dreaming........ AGAIN

[rintamarotta]

Bulldozer is optimized for multi-threading and server market, and server market is where the money comes from to AMD, 16-core 8-module and 12-core 6-module server part's will be succesfull.
Will be waiting for Piledriver to show true power of Bulldozer arch.

[pipoo]

Yeah of course, keep telling yourself that! Im a huge AMD fan (never had an Intel machine, NEVER), but denying something that has peen proved by saying something that has nowhere to come from is just dumb. This time they let me downn. Sorry.

[PerryR]

The gig is up; to be frank I wouldn't be shocked at all if this is in large part why Chew* is taking a break; he probably knew there'd be a ton of people groveling at AMD's alter. That they'd spin and say anything to get a piece of the action when AMD does better another chip or two down the road.

Really?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...happened-right

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they are bought out or bankrupt by the end of this coming year.

Yeeeeaaaahhhh.........