Dont pass judgement on bulldozer yet...

[bradley]

We’ve had months of bogus journalism, ego clashes, politics, religion and now cartoons, much less practicality or computer science. I'll stick to this review on Lost Circuits, from the ever insightful and dispassionate Michael Schuette.

http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=102&Itemid=1

“Of course, this begs the old question, how predictable is performance on a new design? Apparently, it is hit and miss and in so far, my argument still stands, even if it is against the personal religion of some of the decision makers at AMD. This is at the end of a frustrating week, trying to find that one application that would justify buying an FX processor.”

BD isn't an unmitigated failure, as much as it lacks any tangible successes, it's a wash. Looks like Chicken Little was finally right to be concerned. This has been a slightly sad week for fans hoping for a spirit of the competitive marketplace to perpetually drive innovation.



Member callouts are insults, and they are a violation of the forum guidelines.

Administrator Idontcare

EDIT: Too bad AMD isn't a person then. I've actually held back my real feelings for a long time, but point well taken. I'm just tired of those pretending not to be part of the very fanwars they start. You know who you are.

 

[bradley]

Anyhow, I decided to stick with my 2600k and 1055T and wait for the fallout. The upgrade options are lackluster ATM. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t being completely truthful. Now to once again disappear into the background waiting for the next iteration.

 

[thilanliyan]

100% this

BD will work on AM3 mobos, Lie # 1

Didn't they say AM3+ motherboards? Which is not a lie...BD works in AM3+ motherboards.

 

[Maximilian]

Didn't they say AM3+ motherboards? Which is not a lie...BD works in AM3+ motherboards.

They originally said it would work for AM3 but then later backtracked and said only AM3+. Although i still think this is a moot point as i wouldn't see BD as any kind of upgrade.

 

[SickBeast]

Anyhow, I decided to stick with my 2600k and 1055T and wait for the fallout. The upgrade options are lackluster ATM. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t being completely truthful. Now to once again disappear into the background waiting for the next iteration.

The upgrade options don't even exist.

I'm on an X4 Phenom II and I don't see anything compelling to upgrade to.

I only upgrade when I gain an order of magnitude in terms of performance. If you're going to upgrade every time there is something 20% faster out there, you're going to run out of money pretty fast.

 

[TemjinGold]

Why are people still arguing, "Wait! It doesn't suck because it might be better in the future!"? Face it, BD sucks. Bad. Very bad. Supporting it because AMD isn't Intel, simply encourages this kind of failure. I want AMD to succeed and will NOT buy BD because of that. Because buying BD is telling AMD, "It's okay to suck because I will still buy it anyway." If that's the case, what incentive do they have to actually put out a good product? If you had a choice between throwing out a crappy product that sells faster than you can make it versus a great product that sells faster than you can make it, you would choose the crappy one every time because the R&D on the crappy product is a lot cheaper if you set out to make it crappy.

My 2500k is way better value AND performance. Even if they manage to fix BD later, I still would have no regrets with my 2500k.

This reminds me of people who buy games that have major bugs, then sit and hope that those bugs will get fixed with patches.

 

[SickBeast]

You know what, I have a feeling that old people will buy Bulldozer in droves. I can just see them:

"ooh...it has 8 brains!"
"oh and look at that, it has fast graphics built in"
"4ghz...wow"

I can see these things selling like hotcakes to ignorant consumers in stores like Best Buy.

We'll probably see Bulldozer in laptops at some point. The one real problem they will have is the battery life spec. In fact, I'll bet a lot of OEMs won't even touch Bulldozer until they can make it energy efficient (if that's even possible at all).

 

[Rifter]

Didn't they say AM3+ motherboards? Which is not a lie...BD works in AM3+ motherboards.

They only said AM3+ a year after they announced it would work on AM3. Now in hindsight it was a obvious ploy to get people to buy motherboards and CPU's then at the time to fund respins of BD and boost short term sales just to completly screw those people over later.

Specifically because of that announcement im in possesion of 2 AM3 systems(htpc and gf's comp) and im left in the cold with no upgrade path. But whatever, im going intel for a while and i really hope someone who knows how to actually run a company buys AMD and puts a end to the BS AMD has been up to for the last 2 years.

Edit spelling

 

[dbigers]

We'll probably see Bulldozer in laptops at some point. The one real problem they will have is the battery life spec. In fact, I'll bet a lot of OEMs won't even touch Bulldozer until they can make it energy efficient (if that's even possible at all).

I would imagine that you would need the battery from a real life Bulldozer to operate a laptop with this CPU for any amount of time.

 

[3DVagabond]

They originally said it would work for AM3 but then later backtracked and said only AM3+. Although i still think this is a moot point as i wouldn't see BD as any kind of upgrade.

I think what they actually said was that BD wasn't "supported" on AM3. IIRC MSI and Asus said were going to offer bios updates for older boards. Anyone else remember this?

 

[mikeymikec]

I think what they actually said was that BD wasn't "supported" on AM3. IIRC MSI and Asus said were going to offer bios updates for older boards. Anyone else remember this?

The ASUS page is still up:

http://bg.asus.com/News/6GsoHtkyUhPfSr8p/

However the CPU support list for my board (M4A89GTD PRO/USB3) hasn't been updated beyond Ph2.

There's a beta BIOS dated May:

M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 3017 Test BIOS
For testing AM3+ CPU Function only, do not update this BIOS while using AM3 or previous type CPUs!

http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3/M4A89GTD_PROUSB3/#download

 

[dingleberrydorkbutt]

You know what, I have a feeling that old people will buy Bulldozer in droves. I can just see them:

"ooh...it has 8 brains!"
"oh and look at that, it has fast graphics built in"
"4ghz...wow"

I can see these things selling like hotcakes to ignorant consumers in stores like Best Buy.

Here's hoping that they do.

If these people can buy enough to keep AMD going, and there is a much-needed management shakeup at AMD, then maybe, just maybe, they can pull a rabbit out of their hat and at least get the price and power consumption down.

May just be a pipe dream, but a management shakeup is needed either way. That's a given.

 

[jhu]

We’ve had months of bogus journalism, ego clashes, politics, religion and now cartoons, much less practicality or computer science. I'll stick to this review on Lost Circuits, from the ever insightful and dispassionate Michael Schuette.

http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=102&Itemid=1

“Of course, this begs the old question, how predictable is performance on a new design? Apparently, it is hit and miss and in so far, my argument still stands, even if it is against the personal religion of some of the decision makers at AMD. This is at the end of a frustrating week, trying to find that one application that would justify buying an FX processor.”

BD isn't an unmitigated failure, as much as it lacks any tangible successes, it's a wash. Looks like Chicken Little was finally right to be concerned. This has been a slightly sad week for fans hoping for a spirit of the competitive marketplace to perpetually drive innovation.



Member callouts are insults, and they are a violation of the forum guidelines.

Administrator Idontcare

EDIT: Too bad AMD isn't a person then. I've actually held back my real feelings for a long time, but point well taken. I'm just tired of those pretending not to be part of the very fanwars they start. You know who you are.

Actually, because it's a corporation, AMD is actually considered a person.

 

[PowerYoga]

Bah, i'm done talking to Intel fan boys, sure lets hope intel takes amd out of the x86 market and you can laugh all day long and we all can buy overpriced cpus.

I try to defend BD says its not SO BAD like people say it is, because it really isn't, people read 1 review and take it for granted, i've seen about a dozen review and they all are a little bit different, SB wins in FP calculations but BD win integer.

I game at 3240x1920 and at that res SB or BD will perform just a like.

Bye now i'll play some BFBC2 and kill some intel fanboys/ amd haters.

why pay money to downgrade to a BD? I don't understand this line of thinking amongst fanboys. It's like you WANT to build an inferior computer for the same price despite all evidence, almost seems stupid to me.

Not about being an intel fanboy, it's about making smart decisions on what to do with your money.

 

[bryanW1995]

Why are people still arguing, "Wait! It doesn't suck because it might be better in the future!"? Face it, BD sucks. Bad. Very bad. Supporting it because AMD isn't Intel, simply encourages this kind of failure. I want AMD to succeed and will NOT buy BD because of that. Because buying BD is telling AMD, "It's okay to suck because I will still buy it anyway." If that's the case, what incentive do they have to actually put out a good product? If you had a choice between throwing out a crappy product that sells faster than you can make it versus a great product that sells faster than you can make it, you would choose the crappy one every time because the R&D on the crappy product is a lot cheaper if you set out to make it crappy.

My 2500k is way better value AND performance. Even if they manage to fix BD later, I still would have no regrets with my 2500k.

This reminds me of people who buy games that have major bugs, then sit and hope that those bugs will get fixed with patches.

I bought civ 5 at launch, and it was basically a bought and paid for beta for 7 or 8 months after launch. That's a totally different situation, I really enjoyed that game, and each new patch was actually kind of cool to me as it kept the game more interesting in the long run.

BD just plain sucks, it's a low end cpu with a midrange price.

 

[TemjinGold]

That game actually got patched though. I'm referring to games where the devs completely abandon support, people complain about the problems, then jump on the next game the same devs put out and the cycle starts over (Disciples III is a good example here). Because these people kept buying games from that company, the company had no incentive to actually try to fix their broken games.

 

[bradley]

Actually, because it's a corporation, AMD is actually considered a person.

LOL. I like the way you think. Maybe we can have a ruling on this.

The upgrade options don't even exist.

I'm on an X4 Phenom II and I don't see anything compelling to upgrade to.

I only upgrade when I gain an order of magnitude in terms of performance. If you're going to upgrade every time there is something 20% faster out there, you're going to run out of money pretty fast.

I have accumulated quite a few cheap 4GB DDR3 modules and wanted to upgrade from AM2 to AM3+. Especially after paying $100AR for the 1055T on launch day, I figured reselling my mobo and chip would mean a Bulldozer upgrade on the cheap. However, I became increasingly suspicious regarding AMD's lack of communication about their supposedly groundbreaking flagship product.

BTW, I still LOVE my 1055T, the best multitasker ever. :thumbsup:

 

[sm625]

The only thing that can save BD at this point is a killer app. Most likely coming from their graphics driver team. I can only guess what that would be but keep in mind all of the following things had to be invented by someone, and it was all done in software first:

normal mapping
texture mapping
occlusion
texture compression
tesselation
anti-aliasing
anisotropic filtering
mipmaps
rasterization
HDR lighting
coherent culling
deferred shading
displacement mapping

I was expecting AMD to put *something* inside BD/Trinity to help the gpu do all this stuff faster by an order of magnitude. Call it a DirectX DSP if you will. Or just a set of instructions that dramatically speed up the interface between the radeon driver, directx, the cpu, and the gpu. The bottleneck is huge. AMD is uniquely positioned to come up with something that totally redefines what we can do with an APU. Let's just put it this way: I believe with the right software, it is possible to get better than HD6970 performance out of an A6-3650. You just have to keep in mind that about 80% of what the gpu does is not even necessary or noticable by the end user. It is really an extreme brute force device. If there was some sort of feedback mechanism for the cpu and gpu to tell each other that this and that and such and such doesnt need to be done, then you could do 400% more with the same hardware.

Just think of how absurd it is for a llano chip to take a game texture, place it in main memory, load it into L2 cache, possibly decompress it, move it over a bus to the gpu, place it in gpu memory, read it back into a cache, process it, and send it out. (I'm sure I missed about a dozen steps.) Why not just take the compressed texture and give the cpu a special instruction that says to load it directly into video memory You'd instantly turn 10000 low level instructions into one SIMD command. It would process 10 times as fast. Every texture could be loaded 10 times as fast. We're talking about an order of magnitude increase in framerates here. And the gpu could conceivably tell the cpu whether or not it even needs a certain texture at the time it is loaded. Or maybe the load can be deferred or paired with another load. The gpu could be tied into the OoO engine to help optimize texture loads and many many other things. That too could increase framerates by an order of magnitude. These are just a couple simple optimizations I pulled out of thin air. I'm not paid to come up with this stuff. But the people at AMD are, and I am working under the assumption that they have at least 2 ounces of creativity.

It's been 5+ years. I believe they have something, and it is something big. I believe it for no other reason than blind optimism. Give people hardware to play with and eventually they come up with something that blows the doors off everything.