Rumour: Bulldozer 50% Faster than Core i7 and Phenom II.

[busydude]

The technical part I am not too sure but if AMD can sell a new product that can SLi they can use that as a reason to get consumers to change their motherboards to the 9xx chipsets.

If they were to enable the 8xx chipsets just with a DRM key then the 9xx boards would not sell. Sort of like there is nothing to distinct the 9xx chipsets from the 8xx chipsets in terms of features.

There is nothing technical.. 8XX can do SLI if Nvidia provides AMD with the DRM key. I would not even consider buying a 8XX series chipset to pair it with Zambezi. Also, its not the decision of AMD.. only Nvidia decides which chipset to support or not.. as JFAMD said.. its between board partners and Nvidia.

 

[dma0991]

There is nothing technical.. 8XX can do SLI if Nvidia provides AMD with the DRM key. I would not even consider buying a 8XX series chipset to pair it with Zambezi. Also, its not the decision of AMD.. only Nvidia decides which chipset to support or not.. as JFAMD said.. its between board partners and Nvidia.

Well if Nvidia are the ones deciding then it is fine as well. Doesn't matter if they released for the 8xx chipsets as well because I'm definitely getting the 9xx chipset motherboards.

 

[flexcore]

I remember reading that all the NON-IGP chipsets will have IOMMU capabilities. Now remember that just because AMD has the capability built into the chipset doesn't mean that the MB manufacturer has to support/implement it. I was hoping the 980g/x had IOMMU also.

 

[Voo]

All of these "AM3+ Ready" motherboards require a new revision of the board, right, since the physical sockets differ by one pin?

Well nobody's saying that the vendors aren't already selling AM3+ boards as "AM3+ Ready", because that's the only way I can make sense of that advertisment too.
Because what else should "AM3+ ready" mean if not you can use that specific board for AM3+ CPUs? But then it's marketing, so maybe they came up with some clever trick to fool people

 

[Elixer]

All of these "AM3+ Ready" motherboards require a new revision of the board, right, since the physical sockets differ by one pin? Has there been any indication as to when we'll see these new boards?

My concern is that people could buy up these boards thinking a BD will drop in only to find out they got the older, unsupported rev of the board instead.

No.

All major players have announced or will annouce that BD *will fit* into (some?) AM3 socket boards and only need a BIOS update. (Asus, MSI, and I think I read about Biostar as well)
That means there is no extra pin on BD that will prevent it from fitting into a AM3 board.

There has never been a official AMD annocement about how many pins the BD has/is using, or if it will fit on AM3 boards.

AMD will not make a official annoucement for another ~2 months or so.
ASUS & MSI have made official annoucements, so they know something we don't.

 

[SickBeast]

I will be thrilled if I can drop a Bulldozer into my MSI 770-G45 board.

 

[SparksIT]

No.

All major players have announced or will annouce that BD *will fit* into (some?) AM3 socket boards and only need a BIOS update. (Asus, MSI, and I think I read about Biostar as well)
That means there is no extra pin on BD that will prevent it from fitting into a AM3 board.

There has never been a official AMD annocement about how many pins the BD has/is using, or if it will fit on AM3 boards.

AMD will not make a official annoucement for another ~2 months or so.
ASUS & MSI have made official annoucements, so they know something we don't.

But the whole thing is the neither Asus or MSI specifically mention Bulldozer by name. They just say they will work with future AM3+ CPUs.

Hot Hardware explains this the best:
http://hothardware.com/News/Mud-In-The-Water-Asus-Claims-Existing-Boards-AM3-Compatible/

 

[bryanW1995]

No.

All major players have announced or will annouce that BD *will fit* into (some?) AM3 socket boards and only need a BIOS update. (Asus, MSI, and I think I read about Biostar as well)
That means there is no extra pin on BD that will prevent it from fitting into a AM3 board.

There has never been a official AMD annocement about how many pins the BD has/is using, or if it will fit on AM3 boards.

AMD will not make a official annoucement for another ~2 months or so.
ASUS & MSI have made official annoucements, so they know something we don't.

most likely, as has been mentioned previously, BD will just run BETTER on a new socket. However, if you can get a drop-in upgrade on your 890 series mobo with just a bios update then that would be awesome... If that's the case then I'll probably grab a new BD chip just to benchmark it and run DC on my asrock system.

But the whole thing is the neither Asus or MSI specifically mention Bulldozer by name. They just say they will work with future AM3+ CPUs.

Hot Hardware explains this the best:
http://hothardware.com/News/Mud-In-The-Water-Asus-Claims-Existing-Boards-AM3-Compatible/

yuck, this is far more likely...

 

[Anarchist420]

I doubt that BD will be 50% faster than Core i7, since they aren't going to increase L3 cache clockspeed that much.

 

[podspi]

I doubt that BD will be 50% faster than Core i7, since they aren't going to increase L3 cache clockspeed that much.

BD is supposed to have 100% more cores than the 2600K :biggrin:

I think BD is going to be a throughput monster. But I doubt it'll be 50% faster w.r.t. singlethread.

 

[Abwx]

I think BD is going to be a throughput monster. But I doubt it'll be 50% faster w.r.t. singlethread.

Single thread doesnt mean a lot if the task is not specified...
In single threaded task heavily FPU dependant, BD should
really shine provided the soft is sufficently optimized..

 

[Diogenes2]

How soon, if ever, do you think we will see mainstream software that has been optimized for BD ?

 

[RobertPters77]

Maybe AMD plans on selling none BD AM3+ cpus?

Like Athlon X2's and Athlon X3's to round out the bottom end of the market? Intel did the same with G6950 pentiums on lga1156.

 

[gdansk]

How soon, if ever, do you think we will see mainstream software that has been optimized for BD ?

It supports AVX, so any application that uses those should be available right off the bat... Though, if I remember correctly GCC notes that two 128-bit SSE operations are preferable to a single AVX operation. So, some optimizations have already been made (at least in compilers).

 

[AtenRa]

But the whole thing is the neither Asus or MSI specifically mention Bulldozer by name. They just say they will work with future AM3+ CPUs.

Hot Hardware explains this the best:
http://hothardware.com/News/Mud-In-The-Water-Asus-Claims-Existing-Boards-AM3-Compatible/

http://emm.msi.com/display.php?List=43&N=1029

Worldwide renowned graphics card and mainboard manufacturer MSI is pleased to announce its mainboard compatibility with future AM3+ multi-core processors. AMD’s brand new AM3+ multi-core processors are based on AMD’s Bulldozer technology and feature up to eight cores and large amounts of cache memory. With MSI’s AMD 800 series mainboards with AM3+ CPU support everyone can enjoy the benefits of the new 32nm processors with 2nd generation Turbo Core technology.

I don't say its 100% certain that those Mobos will be able to use the BD cpus but MSI clearly talking about the Bulldozer chips.

 

[Abwx]

It supports AVX, so any application that uses those should be available right off the bat... Though, if I remember correctly GCC notes that two 128-bit SSE operations are preferable to a single AVX operation. So, some optimizations have already been made (at least in compilers).

AMD said that BD will have significantly higher perfs using
current softs without ressorting to AVX optimizations..
They claim that each core is capable of 4 integer issues/cycle
compared to 3 for K10, but i still didn t see any technical
explanation about this in any site.
It s just awsome considering the execution ressources displayed
in the vague slides we were fed with after Hot Chips.
By the way, a video which is before april1, with what
seems a cinebench 11.5 multithreaded showing stellar
performances, somewhat overoptimistic, but who knows ?...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evHbi5puOcs

 

[Mopetar]

By the way, a video which is before april1, with what seems a cinebench 11.5 multithreaded showing stellar performances, somewhat overoptimistic, but who knows ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evHbi5puOcs

Seems a little too good to be true.

 

[Elixer]

How soon, if ever, do you think we will see mainstream software that has been optimized for BD ?

We can count on Intel's "optimizations" on their compiler to bring out the true performance for BD ! :biggrin:

 

[The J]

No.

All major players have announced or will annouce that BD *will fit* into (some?) AM3 socket boards and only need a BIOS update. (Asus, MSI, and I think I read about Biostar as well)
That means there is no extra pin on BD that will prevent it from fitting into a AM3 board.

There has never been a official AMD annocement about how many pins the BD has/is using, or if it will fit on AM3 boards.

AMD will not make a official annoucement for another ~2 months or so.
ASUS & MSI have made official annoucements, so they know something we don't.

Gotcha. Gigabyte's announcement here seems to suggest that you need one of their "black socket" boards to get AM3+ compatibility. All of the boards on that page have "(Rev 3.1)" next to them, which suggests to me that only revision 3.1 of those boards have the black socket and therefore only that revision is AM3+ compatible.

The HotHardware article has a picture of a supposed AM3+ black socket, which shows an extra pin over the white AM3 socket pictured next to it. This combined with Gigabyte's suggestion that you need one of their black socket boards is what confused me.

 

[videoclone]

2 more months now until we can buy 32nm AMD Bulldozer CPU's i hope it was worth the wait

 

[Abwx]

Seems a little too good to be true.

That s what i thought at first look , unless it was 16 cores
Interlagos, but the slide say FX.
Moreover, the only other info, wich could be also a fake ,
point to a score of 11 in this very bench, and it s already
a stunning performance.
Hope we ll have some infos soon, as the web is running
totally wild unfounded speculations.

 

[Topweasel]

Gotcha. Gigabyte's announcement here seems to suggest that you need one of their "black socket" boards to get AM3+ compatibility. All of the boards on that page have "(Rev 3.1)" next to them, which suggests to me that only revision 3.1 of those boards have the black socket and therefore only that revision is AM3+ compatible.

The HotHardware article has a picture of a supposed AM3+ black socket, which shows an extra pin over the white AM3 socket pictured next to it. This combined with Gigabyte's suggestion that you need one of their black socket boards is what confused me.

Here is my guess if we infact get AM3+ support in AM3. Originally AMD developed the CPU to be very close electronically to AM3, but they decided during the development process that they needed to reconfigure some stuff that would potentially eliminate AM3 socket support. They then added a pin that eliminated support for AM3 sockets. Eventually AMD found away to integrate this support or tweak a few things so that AM3 socket support would be allowed. They then removed the pin. Gigabyte probably started producing AM3 boards with the AM3+ socket prior to AMD shipping out test chips compatible with the AM3 socket. The AM3+ socket also would allow AMD to create in the future a BD based chip that was only compatible on AM3+ boards and reintroduce that original pin.

 

[Drakula]

There goes my hope of upgrading to a Bulldozer. Oh well the current system should be able to do whatever needed till couple more iterations of AMD's CPU.

 

[Ajay]

Wow, 1500 post in this thread! And we don't really know much more than when it started

 

[grimpr]

Wont be long for the Chinese rumour tsunami, give it another 2-3 weeks.