AMD FX-8150 3.60 GHz with Windows Patches

[repman244]

Another Thing.. AMD CPUs, Aren't Doing To Bad... When You Take Into Account, They're Only Using Dual Channel Memory, At The Moment & Intel, Are Using Triple Or Quad Channels, To Gain Performance...

Wait Until An AMD MB Uses Quad Channel Memory & Then See How The i7 Competes... Intel Will Fail BIG Time..

It was proven that the benefits are almost none (I'm talking about consumer desktop parts, not servers). AMD has a slow IMC and wold not benefit from more channels if the IMC is slow.


I also don't get your point about the OS, the patch was released and what's done is done, I don't get why people expect a magical 30% increase in performance, it's the chip at fault not the OS.

And if the performance is the same in Win 7 as in Linux I fail to see what exactly is MS doing wrong here.
And I don't get your point that the multi-core kernel has to be rewritten...there are 8-10-12 core chip on the market for quite a while and if I remember right Windows Server 2008 R2 is almost identical to Win 7 and has no problems running 4 CPU's with 12 cores.
There is no magical kernel for BD to shine, the only one who should fix it is AMD.

 

[nt300]

Quote:
Originally Posted by R_1
Actually Bulldozer is a very competitive server CPU. AMD should strip all those server circuits and ramp up the clock speeds for the consumer market. They will do just that with the new Trinity. I wish that transition was done a way faster.

Yea that strategy worked real well for Netburst.

I had to get back to this comment. Netburst was a pile you know what. You cannot compare such a failure to Bulldozer. That fsb was a real bottleneck and a major design flaw. AMD does not have this issue. AMD choose longer pipe stages for its design for future scalability. Bulldozer you can build on where as Netburst was a dead end.

You can always use Linux...but the performance is the same.

So I guess it was Microsoft who made the Pentium 4 slow, hot and power hungry?

No, not true the Pentium 4 problem was Intel and its useless Netburst bottleneck of a design. You cannot compare Bulldozer over P4 never...

It was proven that the benefits are almost none (I'm talking about consumer desktop parts, not servers). AMD has a slow IMC and wold not benefit from more channels if the IMC is slow.

This I agree with, AMD has to speed up its IMC. This is the reason why Intels IMC is more efficient because its faster. Bulldozer would have performed better imo if they did a better job with its IMC.

 

[repman244]

No, not true the Pentium 4 problem was Intel and its useless Netburst bottleneck of a design. You cannot compare Bulldozer over P4 never...

You misunderstood my reply, I didn't say it really was Microsoft hence the question mark at the end

 

[nt300]

You misunderstood my reply, I didn't say it really was Microsoft hence the question mark at the end

Woopsi

 

[repman244]

This I agree with, AMD has to speed up its IMC. This is the reason why Intels IMC is more efficient because its faster. Bulldozer would have performed better imo if they did a better job with its IMC.

Indeed, however BD's IMC is a lot better than the Phenom II's (OCing the CPU/NB bring you almost the same performance increase as raising the CPU frequency) but it still lacks the speed (if we compare it to SB's IMC).

On the server side BD isn't looking very bad for the future but right it's performance per watt is really poor and never mind comparing it to the 8 core SB based Xeon's (Anand did a very good review of it).

I remember a lot of people saying that AMD should of just continue shrinking Phenom II (or add 2 more cores to Thuban), but IMO that would lead you nowhere, the gains you would see would probably be only 5-7% and many people said that 8 cores wouldn't be possible with 130W TDP. The modular design gave AMD some space to try and make something new while BD didn't perform as everyone wanted it to perform it think that the future versions (Piledriver etc.) will be like the Phenom -> Phenom II gain.

 

[Super XP]

Great point, Though I believe Piledriver has a much better chance for improvement over Bulldozer versus Phenom II over Phenom I by a larger %. The issue for Phenom I was the current process, they would not clock high enough and performed poorly.

AMD revised/respun the silicon with some process modifications which gained them higher default clock speeds. I believe AMD will actually refine the Bulldozer design for Piledriver. So we should easily see a 20% performance boost clock for clock over Bulldozer IMO.

Remember, Trinity at this point is more important than none APU Desktop CPU's which is why Piledriver has to be much better.

 

[Aquinus]

Great point, Though I believe Piledriver has a much better chance for improvement over Bulldozer versus Phenom II over Phenom I by a larger %. The issue for Phenom I was the current process, they would not clock high enough and performed poorly.

AMD revised/respun the silicon with some process modifications which gained them higher default clock speeds. I believe AMD will actually refine the Bulldozer design for Piledriver. So we should easily see a 20% performance boost clock for clock over Bulldozer IMO.

Remember, Trinity at this point is more important than none APU Desktop CPU's which is why Piledriver has to be much better.

BD was the first revision of a very new, very revolutionary architecture change. You can't expect them to get it perfect with the first revision. With that said, never get the first revision of a new architecture (hence why the Core Duo and Core Solo were crap)... but Intel has been working off that design since with their smaller pipeline, they replaced the FSB with QPI and the IMC, and ever since have just been making improvements to the same architecture.

With all of this said, Piledriver has a lot of wiggle room to improve the architectures IPC, where SB/IVB are starting to top out their IPC because of all the improvements that have been made to the platform over the last 6 years.

I've always been pretty happy with both AMD and Intel as far as performance for their processors, and because Bulldozer is a first revision chip, I didn't go with it. Also for all of those who said "the 2600k is cheaper than bulldozer," well, quite frankly my SB-E 3820 is cheaper than the 2600k and I was able to hit 4.75ghz without too much of an issue and it still has some OC headroom, in fact plenty of it with load temperatures never exceeding 60*C.

AMD's goal is different than Intel's and with all the architectural changes even comparing SB/IVB to BD is almost a stretch.

Just keep in mind that BD's single thread performance is a bit on the poor side, but at least each logical thread can do the same amount of work, which makes it scale extremely well. Intel's HyperThreading doesn't result in that much performance improvement, so as AMD improves the IPC and shoves more "modules" on the CPU die, multi-threaded performance will go through the roof.

Finally I will end my tirade by saying, software isn't going to always be single-threaded.

 

[nt300]

but Intel has been working off that design since with their smaller pipeline, they replaced the FSB with QPI and the IMC, and ever since have just been making improvements to the same architecture.

With all of this said, Piledriver has a lot of wiggle room to improve the architectures IPC, where SB/IVB are starting to top out their IPC because of all the improvements that have been made to the platform over the last 6 years.

Now this is interesting. AMD and its Hyper Transport with IMO off the Athlon 64 is what push Intel into coming out with QPI and IMC.

The way I see this is AMD already had a first Bulldozer CPU several months before the launch which failed to impress AMD so they further postpone that Bulldozer in favour of a more refined version which we have today. So it could be that Piledriver may be 3rd refinement. I also heard AMD was working on Piledriver to correct current Bulldozer deficiencies about 4 months prior to todays Bulldozer release. This is evident due to Bulldozers timing and release by TSMCs 32nm manufacturing.
AMD thought the Bulldozer they releases was good enough to release for now, does stand up well against the competition, and while feeding this version to people, they continue to refine the design in time for Piledriver.

This is of course speculation on my part with what Ive taken from the press releases, awkward release dates and TSMC's weird 32nm manufacturing timings.

Bulldozer is not at all a bad CPU, just hyper hyped years before its launch. Before I upgrade I am going to stick it out until Piledriver them make choice between AMD and Intel. But I like AMDs cheaper overall platform pricing and they do just fine with gaming.

 

[Aquinus]

Bulldozer is not at all a bad CPU, just hyper hyped years before its launch. Before I upgrade I am going to stick it out until Piledriver them make choice between AMD and Intel. But I like AMDs cheaper overall platform pricing and they do just fine with gaming.

I agree, it's not a bad platform at all. It's just benefits server-like applications more because of the IPC, which makes Interlagos a beast of a server CPU. Plus, with the acquisition of ATi, AMD has video card sales helping them which gives them time to improve BD without going bankrupt.

With all of this said, my 3820 is much faster than the 8150 is many cases and costs less, but on the opposite side, I paid more money for the motherboard than I did for the CPU. Cost wise, AMD is still the option to go with, but if you want the latest and greatest, Intel is the current choice. That could change in the next year or two though.

 

[symmetrical]

Other than performance issues, the problem with Bulldozer is its insanely terrible power consumption when overclocked. When I used to have the FX 8120 overclocked to a stable 4.6ghz and played battlefield 3 on my GTX 580 overclocked, I think it overwhelmed my 650w power supply and I kept getting constant crashes. I already tested for stability and no matter what I did I kept getting crashes. Not until I ran both at stock settings did I get it to run normal.

Now that I have an i7 2600k @4.4ghz with the same GTX 580 OC, I could game for hours with no issues.

 

[Daimus]

Other than performance issues, the problem with Bulldozer is its insanely terrible power consumption when overclocked. When I used to have the FX 8120 overclocked to a stable 4.6ghz and played battlefield 3 on my GTX 580 overclocked, I think it overwhelmed my 650w power supply and I kept getting constant crashes. I already tested for stability and no matter what I did I kept getting crashes. Not until I ran both at stock settings did I get it to run normal.

Now that I have an i7 2600k @4.4ghz with the same GTX 580 OC, I could game for hours with no issues.

You're not thinking about how to purchase a more powerful PSU, instead of changing the platform, no?

 

[symmetrical]

You're not thinking about how to purchase a more powerful PSU, instead of changing the platform, no?

Yes I considered it, I was looking at some 850w PSUs but I figured the amount of money I spend will be the same if I sell my mobo and the FX8120, I could just switch entirely to the intel platform.

$134 for Corsair TX850w

Or

Sell my FX-8120 setup with the mobo for $250.

i7-2600K - $279
P8Z68 - $129

Total: $408 - $250 = $158.

So yes I went with the latter and now I have the 2600K which is a bit faster and more efficient than my old FX8120.

I actually liked the performance of the FX-8120, but in my case it was better to just switch entirely.

 

[Daimus]

You could sell your PSU and buy a more powerful with minimal loss of money. In fact since it would be logical. But you want to change the entire platform. Actually FX consumes more power when overclocking, it had to be taken into account in advance.

 

[D3MoNR3N0]

8150 works for emulators great

i run dolphin at full speed plus epsxe pcsx2 mmame neorage project64 plus many others and all types of games on ultra like wow diablo 3 assassins creed aion starcraft 2 re5 re ORC street fighter x tekken dragon age secondlife i am in love with this cpu esp for the price

 

[Aquinus]

Other than performance issues, the problem with Bulldozer is its insanely terrible power consumption when overclocked. When I used to have the FX 8120 overclocked to a stable 4.6ghz and played battlefield 3 on my GTX 580 overclocked, I think it overwhelmed my 650w power supply and I kept getting constant crashes. I already tested for stability and no matter what I did I kept getting crashes. Not until I ran both at stock settings did I get it to run normal.

Now that I have an i7 2600k @4.4ghz with the same GTX 580 OC, I could game for hours with no issues.

Clearly you've never overclocked a 1366 or 2011 rig. My rig at full power (CPU+GPUs) with only a overclock of 4.5ghz on the cpu, it will draw over 500-watts, but that also doesn't mean that I would trust a 550-watt or 650-watt PSU for my rig, even though it draws under the rated maximum. Also just because your computer was crashing doesn't mean it was because of Bulldozer, but rather your overclock with it. SB over-clocking is honestly easy mode. BD you have a lot more you have to consider when you over-clock because most of the time you're not jump bumping the vcore and adjusting the multi.

Now I'm not saying all this to say that AMD has a better chip, I'm not, but I think you've over-exaggerating how bad BD is. I've never had an issue with a single AMD or Intel CPU I've had. None at all, over-clocking or otherwise.