I'm hoping later rather than sooner(Like March/April)...Bulldozer is gonna empty the coffers!
I don't mean to sound like some pampered tween who can't google their own information, but I haven't kept up with what Bulldozer is or why its such an anticipated product due to my owning a 920 making it unnecessary. Nonetheless I keep hearing how its going to be released, then it recently got delayed, and now the entire internet seems disappointed.
Could you say in just a sentence or two what's so special about Bulldozer and why it's being used in the same paragraphs with the likes of the 79X0 series, Battlefield 3, and other products on the cutting edge of desktop computing Cadaveca? (Or anyone else who has a minute to give me the Cliff Notes)
Agreed, I want one, was hoping they would have been out before BF3, but they aren't, so I will be loading out on my 6950. Didn't know about the Rambus junk, and don't care unless the price is too high, but I guess time will tell there.
I'm actually glad that the 79X0 series is being released after all the major holiday releases such as Battlefield 3 because the measurements of GPU performance on most sites needs a serious overhaul.
While of course there are many sites that review GPUs, I personally use Anandtech because I dig their PC game test suite; it's a rare site that actually measures GPU performance in Civ5, one of the most highly played and more GPU intensive games of 2010 that no one seems to mention when talking about it. However their testing suite, and some of the others around the net, are a little long in the tooth with the likes of Mass Effect 2, Dirt 2 and HAWX.
Now imagine a world in Q1 2012 where BF3, Skyrim, Arkham City, Saints Row 3rd, Mass Effect 3, Dirt 3, Dead Island, and Rage have been released and out in the wild long enough for driver releases and profiles to optimize, and where the 79X0 drops into stores. You'd better believe reviews of it are going to show performance in these games, alongside both the old-gen architecture of the 78X0 and the 69X0
and whatever nVidia has released by then to save face. That's going to be a
great review, with the most favorable cross-section on both architecture's benefits, RAM types, price wars, performance in games that actually stress GPUs again and Crossfire feasibility/benefits than we've seen in the last 2 years. If we're lucky, they'll even toss in Bulldozer vs. i7 comparisons and really set the stage for PC gaming for the next couple of years.
Can't wait for the cards, but can't wait even less for a true measure of progress made since the release of the 5800 series. It's long overdue.
On top of that, the XDR2 is a completely unproven (comercially) technology with a single supplier as of now. It stands to reason that Rambus will get greedy if there are any signs of success, and they will milk every penny out of AMD. This is not a conjecture, it was proven with RDRAM (for those of us old enough to have lived through those P4 cash nightmares.
Yikes, I'd almost forgotten about RDRAM. "Good" times. :shadedshu
To be fair to XDR2 though, the charge of "unproven commercially" can be leveled against anything that is going first, and doesn't mean too much in business. Your ability to breathe the air in the Austrailian outback is unproven until you travel there. Please try not to rip apart that analogy too much. It made the point well enough without being perfect I think.
Also, I disagree with the theory that AMD will allow itself to be milked. Both with its recent CEO shuffle and the fact that owning the only channel into the mass market spurring the development of XDR2 memory (via AMD GPUs) gives them serious leverage, AMD laying back and taking it doesn't seem too likely.