AMD Bulldozer Thread

[jeanjean15]

...where are the interlagos benches and products already? i mean i know cray got the first batch but...shouldn't they have made more by now?

Interlagos/valencia is normally scheduled for 11/11/11 but it is not an official date.

[bamtan2]

I personally am interested in what the hell they did with all those transistors? As I understand it, the whole point of CMT was to create a very flexible design that was lite on resources to allow for massive parallel expansion. Seems to me that they just created the opposite instead. As a biomed with a minor in EE, I just find the circuitry to be intriguing

current bulldozer chips are definitely broken, of that you can be sure. the transistor budget has not been spent as they intended.

[BrowncoatGR]

AMD's Open64 compiler tends to noticeably increase the performance overall for many applications/benchmarks running on their FX-8150 Bulldozer, but it was not the clear winner. Depending upon the workload, GCC and LLVM/Clang can still deliver a competitive advantage. Next up is a look at these compilers with various compiler-tuning options for the first-generation AMD Bulldozer processors.

Source
In some cases the improvements are huge. Should be interesting to see how Bulldozer will turn out in the long run

[duron]

any truth in this?

After our own reader-base flagged the matter in comments last week, we began to investigate a rumour that there was a registry patch in the works that could offer a 40 per cent performance increase for AMD’s Bulldozer CPUs.

http://quinetiam.com/?p=119

[The Coolest]

The issues brought up by the article are true, but I'm not sure if a simple registry patch will be enough to fix it.
Windows 8 employs a new scheduler to better optimize for Bulldozer, and from the developer preview, we can only see a few percent boost in performance at most.
It'd be great if this was true, but I highly doubt it will happen, otherwise AMD would have worked with Microsoft to get the patch out in time for the release of BD.

Source
In some cases the improvements are huge. Should be interesting to see how Bulldozer will turn out in the long run

The increases are truly impressive, but not across the board for the AMD compiler. Furthermore, it may be feasible to recompile your applications when running on a server dedicated to a specific task, thus optimizing the application for the hardware it will be running on and get great performance. But you can't achieve the same thing when you're running Windows with a bunch of closed source, unoptimized games and applications. So as much as the potential performance of Bulldozer is great, it's still not utilized to the fullest due to the lack of OS and compiler (of current apps) support.

[STaRGaZeR]

I still remember JF-AMD's last post, almost a month ago just before this crap was released:

Sorry, your math is not right.


And for the other guys talking about 256-bit AVX, here is an extenisve list of all of the client apps that I am aware of that will utilize 256-bit AVX (please update if you know of some):

We are used to this guy's arrogance. He knew about BD's perfomance, and he just played with the fanbois for months. In the end, you get what you deserve.

Funny thing is that people are still looking for magical fixes and other bullcrap. Just let it go guys, BD is a complete failure and you won't change that.

[hyc]

Furthermore, it may be feasible to recompile your applications when running on a server dedicated to a specific task, thus optimizing the application for the hardware it will be running on and get great performance. But you can't achieve the same thing when you're running Windows with a bunch of closed source, unoptimized games and applications. So as much as the potential performance of Bulldozer is great, it's still not utilized to the fullest due to the lack of OS and compiler (of current apps) support.

The obvious solution is to quit using closed source software that you can't recompile when you wish.

[RedBull78]

It's official. All those 2012 doomsday theorists are AMD fans.

[Hornet331]

Source
In some cases the improvements are huge. Should be interesting to see how Bulldozer will turn out in the long run

And in the end this isn't rally iteressting for the people here anyway... most common compiler for the windows platform is the MSVC. Its nice that you can gain some gain, but if you can't get them in 95% of the apps out there what is it worth it?

Intel on the other hand still managaes to get ~5-10% avg ipc increase each generation compared to the previous one in the same apps, so if you run the same apps you actually gain something and you don't have to hope that one dev decides to recompile there programm and also with the right compiler.

[Splave]

Im going to buy one just for cpu-z benching

[Olivon]

Open64 Compiler Tuning On AMD Bulldozer FX-8150 - Phoronix

[cold2010]

AMD FX-8150 Multi-GPU Gameplay Performance Review

November 03

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...mance_review/1

[Hornet331]

No suprise there, once you remove the gpu bottleneck (tri sli) BD only sees dust from SB.

[RedBull78]

AMD FX-8150 Multi-GPU Gameplay Performance Review

November 03

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...mance_review/1

Dreadful to say the least. Acts as an Athlon 64 single core. Pathetic. What were they thinking?

[kl0012]

Another SLI benchmark set:
http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/ar...#axzz1ceA1SgT8
The BF3 result is especially interesting since the game was chosen by AMD to present BD as an "enthusiast CPU".

[freeloader]

We all know the design is broken. It's just literally a matter of what Redbull78 said, "What were they thinking?". They must have known for at least a year that the design was broken. Having said that, I own an 8120 and it's not such a bad CPU.

Give the CPU some time to mature and we'll see how far it can stretch it's legs.

[behrouz]

BD with different compilers in linux :



Link : AMD Bulldozer With GCC, Open64, LLVM/Clang Compilers
Published on November 02, 2011

Now compare to Sandy Bridge



Link : AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer On Ubuntu Linux
Published on October 24, 2011

Also See : Open64 Compiler Tuning On AMD Bulldozer FX-8150

[AKM]

Yeah, if gaming is your top priority Bulldozer with it's very weak cores is the worst buy for the price. And it's further exacerbated by the fact that most games today are compiled with ICC.

[Manicdan]

AMD FX-8150 Multi-GPU Gameplay Performance Review

November 03

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...mance_review/1

clock speeds are crap in that review, 4.6ghz on an FX-8100 would be a complete waste, and someone would rather disable some cores or go with a 6100 and overclock it higher. it wouldnt be enough to beat a 2500k, but it would bring the gap up way closer is some titles.

[Olivon]

AMD FX-8150 Multi-GPU Gameplay Performance Review

November 03

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...mance_review/1

Waow, that's really weak

Marketing about a real gaming processor failed completly

[gallag]

Seeing alot of talk about bd being buged and not running a lot of games, even bsoding on some titles.

[radaja]

looks like AMD is cutting 10% of its workforce,according to the Associated Press.
AMD to cut 10 pct of workforce as PC weak

maybe they can put that extra $10 million to good use?

[Stukov]

looks like AMD is cutting 10% of its workforce,according to the Associated Press.
AMD to cut 10 pct of workforce as PC weak

maybe they can put that extra $10 million to good use?

The layoffs and other actions are expected to save $200 million in savings in 2012

[Stukov]

double post, and I only hit the button once...

[radaja]

The layoffs and other actions are expected to save $200 million in savings in 2012

yea it said,10m this quarter and 118m next year but........
but now it looks like they changed the article to show estimates of how many employees will go and the new estimate of 200m?

i sure hope JF-AMD doesn't get cut from AMD