AMD Bulldozer FX-8120 Benchmarks

[sequoia464]

Nah, don't be hard on yourself, with computer tech the best deals are when you don't spend any money and you wait for the next round of releases. 6 months from now you'd be looking at your 2500K wishing you'd have saved the $150 to put towards an IB system.

Your probably right, unfortunately the sabertooth 990FX won't even unlock my X2's extra cores so I'm kind of in limbo now.

Hate to buy another processor for this board with Bulldozer so close - not that I'm expecting anything great from BD anyway after all the negative remarks that I'm reading.

Looks like I'm just going to have to be patient - not a good trait here.

 

[BlueBlazer]

Yeah, When they thought they were ahead of the competition. Or when they focused on a single metric to rate performance. Amd with it's 'More Cores!' approach is making the same Mistake Intel made 10 years ago with 'More Clocks!'

On the x86 front, Intel made two mistakes with Willamette (slower than Pentium-III until they got the clock speed higher) and Prescott (slower than Northwood and Gallatin). Then there's also the Pentium4 4GHz which was cancelled. I've overlocked 65nm Preslers (Pentium D 9xx) before and they can hit 4GHz with ease (with proper cooling, not using stock cooler), albeit resulting in higher heat and power consumption. I have no doubt Intel could have easily released a 4GHz Pentium4 (with high TDP) but the era of Netburst is coming to an end (Netburst was dead end, and Merom was the next replacement).

 

[StrangerGuy]

Nah, don't be hard on yourself, with computer tech the best deals are when you don't spend any money and you wait for the next round of releases. 6 months from now you'd be looking at your 2500K wishing you'd have saved the $150 to put towards an IB system.

Except...

1. We don't know how much IB will cost
2. An OCed SB is not getting anywhere near obsolete after IB launches

 

[nanaki333]

regardless if it's fake or not. performs great or terribly... i HAVE to have one of these mystical unicorns.

but seriously, i'm getting one regardless. it may not end up replacing my 2600K or my wife's 2500K as our main PCs, but i'll definitely have one in my home for guests.

 

[trollolo]

what is the nonsense i keep hearing about "unlocking" extra cores?

 

[Rhezuss]

what is the nonsense i keep hearing about "unlocking" extra cores?

If you don't know what it is, dont' call it nonsense...but i'll bite even though I'm not sure if your being sarcastic or not.

Some Athlon IIs and Phenom IIs X2 and X3 had a chance to unlock the extra cores with a simple option toggling in the BIOS of AMD 700 and later chipset series, so you could end up with a X4.

My Athlon II X3 435 unlocked to a PHenom II X4 B35 without the L3 CACHE on my current M4A77D mobo.

It's a 50/50 rate from what I see with some lucky persons having 100% unlock rate.

 

[Idontcare]

Except...

1. We don't know how much IB will cost
2. An OCed SB is not getting anywhere near obsolete after IB launches

Intel has to obsolete Sandy Bridge with Ivy Bridge...its kinda the point, otherwise the hamsters on the upgrade wheel stop making the wheel go round.

While we can argue semantics and technicalities, we all know Intel will be selling a $300 IB SKU that is going to be faster than today's $300 SB SKU.

I own an OC'ed SB, and without a doubt when IB comes out I will wish I had waited for one too, it will likely clock higher and use less power, but without a doubt it is not going to obsolete a 4.5GHz SB anymore than an i7-920 made my 3.3GHz Q6600 obsolete.

There is a difference between wanting and needing, between obsolete and still-sufficient. I was not talking about needing or obsolescence in the post you quoted. I was referring to fiscal discipline and buyer's remorse.

 

[sm625]

wouldn't it be funny if in all these leaked benchmarks the BD cores are actually running at 1.4GHz? And the bios is reporting the wrong speeds? Remember llano... there is precedence for this.


If not, then AMD needs to scrap the bulldozer, and just take 32 bobcat cores and put them all in one package. That would be faster.

 

[Arachnotronic]

He went from three cores to four, sm625.

 

[StrangerGuy]

wouldn't it be funny if in all these leaked benchmarks the BD cores are actually running at 1.4GHz? And the bios is reporting the wrong speeds? Remember llano... there is precedence for this.


If not, then AMD needs to scrap the bulldozer, and just take 32 bobcat cores and put them all in one package. That would be faster.

I remember some leaked benchies of Bobcat saying how it was similar to 65nm Core 2's IPC. Turns out it was far from that.

 

[BlueBlazer]

wouldn't it be funny if in all these leaked benchmarks the BD cores are actually running at 1.4GHz? And the bios is reporting the wrong speeds? Remember llano... there is precedence for this.

I remember some of those early Llano boards reported wrong clock speeds.

 

[tweakboy]

My points are pretty good for 2.4Ghz lol

 

[BlueBlazer]

My points are pretty good for 2.4Ghz lol

Huh?

 

[Borealis7]

Where did i put my Tweakboy Dictionary...

shame Google Translate doesnt do Tweakboyish.

 

[BlueBlazer]

Where did i put my Tweakboy Dictionary...

shame Google Translate doesnt do Tweakboyish.

He could have posted in the wrong thread (speculation). Who knows.... He could be comparing one of the benches with his Q6600 (in his signature).

 

[JustMe21]

Everything I had read about Bobcat indicated slower application performance than the Intel ULV, such as the SU4100, but better graphics performance, which is what it turned out to be.

I think AMD should have gone with something like 4 TruCore with 4 HyperCores or some such because people expect significant performance increases when they see 8-core. I expect it to scale better than Phenom II X4 but performance will possibly be slower for single core apps and slightly better for multithreaded integer apps. Current apps which are FPU intensive beyond 4 cores will probably be slower than 6-core Thubans until they implement AVX instructions within their programs. This is my own speculation, so take it as you will.