The Bulldozer Review: AMD FX-8150 Tested

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• stephenbrooks - Thursday, October 13, 2011 - link

  Not trying to argue with you about the accuracy issue - if "FMA" is defined in a certain way, that's how it's defined and an instruction that rounds differently is a different instruction.
  
  However, imagine AMD could implement a "Legacy FMA" (LFMA) instruction in their FPU - which would round as if the MUL came first. You could then fuse MUL, ADD pairs into LFMA instructions without producing bugs. Not sure whether the two types of FMA could be done on the same hardware (they are basically different rounding modes) without a large overhead though.
  
  I don't really understand why there's a big demand for not rounding after the MUL because normally these instructions show up in code like
  for (n=1000;n>0;n--) total+=a[n]*b[n];
  ...and the potential rounding inaccuracy comes in the add stage: there are often lots of adds in sequence, but not normally lots of MULs, and adds suffer more often from the problem of accumulating many small values. Anyway, I know in my code there are lots of instances of doing the "multiply add" operation, and it would be nice to have some sort of CPU acceleration for this.

• TheDude69 - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link

  The Party is over! AMD is no more! They have successfully designed themselves out of the desktop CPU business. I applied for their CEO position and they went with a Moron! You can all kiss low, desktop CPU prices goodbye! Congratulations INTEL you now have a CPU Monopoly!! We can only hope that Nvidia will come through with a Super fast Tegra that will outperform Intel in the netbook arena.
  
  I don't think AMD can pull a rabbit out of it's hat now. Guess I'll cave in and buy an i7.
  I feel like I'm going to puke........................

• policeman0077 - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link

  I am a newbie, have quite a lot of questions after reading the review of bulldozer.
  
  1. what is heavily thread tasks?does matlab count as heavily thread task？I heard matlab use a lot of FP resource? If so,how can bulldozer beat i5 with only 4 lower efficiency FPs ? Does browsing a lot of website simultaneously count?
  
  2. if single core cpu A and B have same frequency but different efficiency and work on same task without full load. They will accomplish the task in same time?
  
  3. so if single core/thread performance is very important, the situation I aforementioned(if is true) totally doesn't show the benefit of a high efficiency core? (didn't consider power consumption.)
  
  4. Does many application will let a core fully loaded and they won't split the task to another core? What kind of application suit this kind of situation? Any example?
  
  5. in the case of 2, if another application request cpu's resource, will the core with high efficiency get quicker response?
  
  6. in the case of 2, consider multi core cpus A and B. if one core of these two cpus are nearly full loaded, at the same time, another application request the source of cpu. And the operate system decide to let this application work on another idle core. Will higher efficiency core response fast?

• TheDude69 - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link

  Don't bother....I have been following this saga since AMD's first CPU and, until today, was an AMD Fan boy. Buy an i7 now before Intel triples the price for this CPU!

• GustoGuy - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link

  I am really surprised that AMD didn't at least match the i7 in a majority of the bench marks, and what is even more disturbing is that it sometimes performs worse than a Phenom II X4 on some bench marks. AMD could have tweak this processor with all the time it took and had a stationary target with the i7 so I am perplexed at why they were not able to get it to benchmark at least as well as an entry level i7. Hopefully it will be like the first generation of the Phenom x4 where AMD was able to add an l3 cache and tweak the overclocking abilities so they could rease a product that was at least competitve with the Core Duo processors. I like AMD however they have to be copetitive with Intel and can not afford to give up in some cases a 50% decificiency when compared to the i7.

• Belard - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link

  There isn't much AMD can do with this. They are "planning" on having a TICK TICK TICK 10~15% performance increase with yields, higher clocks and tweaks, which what they and intel normally do.
  
  True, we CANNOT expect AMD to compete directly with Intel. They simply don't have the resources. Not the money, not the talent, not the manufacturing abilities. Perhaps, if they were not HELD DOWN by intel during the AMD32~64 days, they'd have made the much-needed profits to afford a much bigger R&D department. There was a point at the end of the AMD64/X2 dominance in which AMD couldn't make enough CPUs.
  
  If the 8150 was marketed as it is... a quad core CPU and was across the board, no more than 15% slower than the 2600 at a price of $220 (The 2600 sells at $300) then it would be considered a GOOD buy. But its worse than that in performance and price.
  
  It takes years to develop a new CHIP. It would take 1-2 years to fix the problems with bulldog, if they could be fixed. But look at it this way, how did intel fix their P4/Netburst problem? Oh yeah, they developed a whole new design!!
  
  BD is a s flawed as the P4. Its very difficult to FIX a HUGE CPU.. and SB is about half as complex and half the size of BD! So what... AMD is going to add even more junk to the design?
  
  Hence, it costs AMD about twice as much to make such a CPU compared to intel. So do the math. Intel makes more profit per CPU. For AMD to compete, they would need to reduce their price by 25~30% - which means almost NO profit.
  
  AMD is screwed. They'll really need to work with Llano a lot more... and look at burying Bulldozer with something else.
  
  If Piledriver does somehow kick butt (there are no indications that it will) - too bad, a large chunk of AMD users would have already moved on to intel. And when Piledriver does finally hit the market, intel will have already released an ever faster CPU.
  
  Did I say AMD is screwed?

• Belard - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link

  Seriously?
  
  While I won't call myself an AMD fanboy - as I own both intel and AMD systems... I've been drooling for a Sandy Bridge like AMD part. I buy and sell AMD systems for years for desktop users. In general, I prefer AMD chipsets over intels, I like your GPUs, etc... With the release of BD (Bulldozer) FX chips... the WAIT IS OVER!!!
  
  My next system will be an Intel... my next customer builds will be intels with 2300~2600k CPUs.
  
  I *CANNOT* sell my customers a sub-standard part, which is what BD is. Why the hell would I have them spend $250 for a CPU that can't constantly compete with a $150 or 2 year old CPUs?
  
  I think we know why Rick Bergman left AMD, I don't see him signing off on such a crappy CPU. Seriously, why bother? Llano OLDER Fusion design is more attractive than this insulting FX garbage.
  
  What AMD has done with the release of these BD/FX chips is created more sales for intel, nothing more. Only a fool would buy an FX 8150... just like the fools who spent $1000 on the Intel EE CPUs (okay, not quite that dumb since these AMDs are 1/4 such prices) These 8core CPUs are actually 4 core, 6 = 3 and 4 is a dual core. An enhanced version of Hyper-threading by Intel 10 years ago.
  
  There is a SEVERE problem when your "8 core" CPU can't surpass intel's $150 dual core CPUs. Why AMD, why did you take a page out of intel and Nvidia and do the SAME stupid thing? This *IS* your Netburst and FERMI all wrapped in one. A BIG, HOT, EXPENSIVE and SLooooow product that doesn't impress anyone, other than the stupidity of the design. You think WE should wait 2-3 years for you to ramp up speed to 5-6Ghz to say you're competitive with TODAYS intel CPUs? I don't think so.
  
  After an hour or so of reading this review, here is what happened. 5 sales for desktop builds have just gone to Intel i-whatever-it-is 2500 & 2600s. You make me and others LOOK LIKE FOOLS waiting for Bulldozer or Bulldog to come out and kick some intel butt. You didn't. No, we were NOT expecting you to surpass Sandbridge (SB)... but if your "$250 8150 Best CPU" was at least up against the 2500~2600 in performance, it would be acceptable. But on Newegg - this $280 CPU is slower in most benchmarks to the i5-2400 which is $180. The 8150's power usage and heat is through the roof from the faster i5-2400 which is $100 cheaper and faster in games and most productivity.
  No gamer in their right mind would spend nearly $300 for a CPU that is about 25~40% slower than the similar or cheaper priced Intels. Big deal if they are unlocked... so are the K chips, which would only pull ahead further.
  (We could use a review showing a 5Ghz 8150 vs a 5Ghz 2600K - but I would expect the AMD deficit to remain)
  
  The heatsinks on SB CPUs are tiny compared to AMD... that means less noise, less heat.
  
  If a client needs a custom budget computer, I'd go with a $100~130 AMD CPU... that is it. If AMD wants to compete with the CURRENT Sandy Bridge, the 8150 will need to be a sub $200 part (Hey, isn't intel about to drop their prices??) Their BS "4 core" will need to be $100... but we'll need to see how it performs in the real world... to see if its worth that much money.
  
  This article has over 250 posts in less than 24hrs.... and its the voices of very unhappy AMD users.
  
  I still can't believe AMD went the P4 route. They spent years trying to CHEAT performance and this is the result? Luckily there is lots of demands for cheap CPUs and ATI GPUs which should keep AMD alive.

• descendency - Thursday, October 13, 2011 - link

  The thing that bothers me most is the Dirt 3 performance.
  
  According to an AMD rep at the AMD launch press-conference, games like Dirt 3 would be able to utilize the Bulldozer's "8 cores" to deliver awesome performance. The truth is that it does worse than the 1100T (the one I already own).

• wolfman3k5 - Thursday, October 13, 2011 - link

  It's finally here! I have been waiting for one of these. It's another Hitler Video, this time it's about Bulldozer. Funny as hell...
  
  The video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SArxcnpXStE

• Artas1984 - Thursday, October 13, 2011 - link

  Hey thanks for notice! I was expecting this already!