AMD conFusion? Forget the hype!, Bulldozer, Bobcat, Fusion... explained at last. Options

[UberPenguin]

Well that is interesting and there was a fps increase with a better scheduler, even though it is only in beta stages. Clearly the single threaded performance is still not up to scratch but piledriver may even the field a bit with it's improvements combined with improved scheduler.

EDIT
Did anyone see this review? http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1285...troduction.html the results seem to contradict every other benchmark I've seen... Better in gaming and worse in media encoding --- Cherry picked tests? and 5.2ghz at 1.5v (I noticed that there were no benchmarks at that speed though)

This post has been edited by UberPenguin: Oct 17 2011, 12:55 PM

[G-relk]

For those that are going to purchase Bulldozer, our supplier at work have just got there first stock of them in, so they aren't very far off now :D

[Jeruselem]

For those that are going to purchase Bulldozer, our supplier at work have just got there first stock of them in, so they aren't very far off now :D

I assume the Aussie (and NZ) tax still appllies.

[alkahest]

Well that is interesting and there was a fps increase with a better scheduler, even though it is only in beta stages. Clearly the single threaded performance is still not up to scratch but piledriver may even the field a bit with it's improvements combined with improved scheduler.

EDIT
Did anyone see this review? http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1285...troduction.html the results seem to contradict every other benchmark I've seen... Better in gaming and worse in media encoding --- Cherry picked tests? and 5.2ghz at 1.5v (I noticed that there were no benchmarks at that speed though)

what the heck is going on here?

"Overall we were impressed by the new Bulldozer chip, it shares the same external design and build quality as previous AMD processors which of course means we can drop it into many existing motherboards creating an easy upgrade path to the latest technology. In terms of the internal design the decisions made by AMD offer a design which will see our processor perform better as more applications support its many cores. This also includes Windows 8 which AMD have indicated will offer performance enhancements over 7 due to the way the OS handles multi-threaded tasks."

slower than the 2600k, but no where near as slow as the other reviews have shown. the power consumption still remains the same. +1 to the cherry picked theory.

This post has been edited by alkahest: Oct 17 2011, 02:19 PM

[G-relk]

For those that are going to purchase Bulldozer, our supplier at work have just got there first stock of them in, so they aren't very far off now :D

I assume the Aussie (and NZ) tax still appllies.

No idea. All I know is that they have got stock. I don't even know which specific chips they got in, let alone the price. Will be posting once I get more info :D

[rs727]

but no where near as slow as the other reviews have shown.

Don't most sites use the same benchmarks/tests for each review? I don't see how that could be cherry picking.

[philo-sofa]

but no where near as slow as the other reviews have shown.

Don't most sites use the same benchmarks/tests for each review? I don't see how that could be cherry picking.

There are a lot of settings for benches (especially game benches) that one could choose in order to cherry pick results.

[Dasa]

but no where near as slow as the other reviews have shown.

Don't most sites use the same benchmarks/tests for each review? I don't see how that could be cherry picking.

There are a lot of settings for benches (especially game benches) that one could choose in order to cherry pick results.

its just another review with a gpu bottleneck nothing more

i could do a review that shows a p4 to be just as quick as a 2600k if it had enough of a gpu bottleneck in the benchmarks run

This post has been edited by Dasa: Oct 17 2011, 03:51 PM

[Jeruselem]

At least they used HD6950 instead of GTX285 like some other review.

This post has been edited by Jeruselem: Oct 17 2011, 03:59 PM

[Dasa]

At least they used HD6950 instead of GTX285 like some other review.

then they made sure they enabled 8xaa when needed to keep it close on f1

[philo-sofa]

but no where near as slow as the other reviews have shown.

Don't most sites use the same benchmarks/tests for each review? I don't see how that could be cherry picking.

There are a lot of settings for benches (especially game benches) that one could choose in order to cherry pick results.

its just another review with a gpu bottleneck nothing more

IMO its a little more than that as they're also showing the FX-8150 as being ahead in quite a few cases - they've either massaged the results or deliberately cherry-picked settings?

[Jeruselem]

Despite that, the 2600K still won half the benchmarks! LOL

[Dasa]

perhaps since in multiple runs of a gpu benchmark you can expect to see ~3% variance
maybe they ran it till they got one they liked but it would be easier to just cheat outright
maybe amd just got lucky in those tests
or maybe the amd platform can perform a bit better in some gpu limited situations

This post has been edited by Dasa: Oct 17 2011, 05:26 PM

[SceptreCore]

perhaps since in multiple runs of a gpu benchmark you can expect to see ~3% variance
maybe they ran it till they got one they liked but it would be easier to just cheat outright
maybe amd just got lucky in those tests
or maybe the amd platform can perform a bit better in some gpu limited situations

I'll probably be getting the 8150. If a few more get some BD chips... then us Atomicans can do a little review of our own... and we can make sure of all settings and results.

[smakme7757]

perhaps since in multiple runs of a gpu benchmark you can expect to see ~3% variance
maybe they ran it till they got one they liked but it would be easier to just cheat outright
maybe amd just got lucky in those tests
or maybe the amd platform can perform a bit better in some gpu limited situations

I'll probably be getting the 8150. If a few more get some BD chips... then us Atomicans can do a little review of our own... and we can make sure of all settings and results.

I'm looking forward to seeing some in house benchmarks. But it might be a while before more people pick one up. I remember when i got my 2600k i was pretty much the only forum member for months. But yes, in house benchmarks will be a very good idea!

[G-relk]

perhaps since in multiple runs of a gpu benchmark you can expect to see ~3% variance
maybe they ran it till they got one they liked but it would be easier to just cheat outright
maybe amd just got lucky in those tests
or maybe the amd platform can perform a bit better in some gpu limited situations

I'll probably be getting the 8150. If a few more get some BD chips... then us Atomicans can do a little review of our own... and we can make sure of all settings and results.

I've decided to go with the 8120. Should technically be able to get similar clocks as an 8150 for less dollars :D Hopefully I can pre-order one through work soon.....

[Jeruselem]

G-relk, I suspect no one is going to buy the FX-4100 unless they are really hard up for money.

[G-relk]

G-relk, I suspect no one is going to buy the FX-4100 unless they are really hard up for money.

I don't know - if they are just a cut-down 81XX, then realistically, as long as one core or whatever is cut from one of each of the BD modules, then performance could potentially be fairly good as seen earlier in that article where this was done and single and dual thread performance went up a slight amount.

[mark84]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/2...zer_Fiasco.html

Ex-AMD Engineer Explains Bulldozer Fiasco: Lack of Fine Tuning.

Engineer: AMD Should Have Hand-Crafted Bulldozer to Ensure High Speed
[10/13/2011 11:21 PM]
by Anton Shilov

Performance that Advanced Micro Devices' eight-core processor demonstrated in real-world applications is far from impressive as the chip barely outperforms competing quad-core central processing units from Intel. The reason why performance of the long-awaited Bulldozer was below expectations is not only because it was late, but because AMD had adopted design techniques that did not allow it tweak performance, according to an ex-AMD engineer.

Cliff A. Maier, an AMD engineer who left the company several years ago, the chip designer decided to abandon practice of hand-crafting various performance-critical parts of its chips and rely completely on automatic tools. While usage of tools that automatically implement certain technologies into silicon speeds up the design process, they cannot ensure maximum performance and efficiency.
Automated Design = 20% Bigger, 20% Slower

"The management decided there should be such cross-engineering [between AMD and ATI teams within the company] ,which meant we had to stop hand-crafting our CPU designs and switch to an SoC design style. This results in giving up a lot of performance, chip area, and efficiency. The reason DEC Alphas were always much faster than anything else is they designed each transistor by hand. Intel and AMD had always done so at least for the critical parts of the chip. That changed before I left - they started to rely on synthesis tools, automatic place and route tools, etc.," said Mr. Maier in a forum post noticed by Insideris.com web-site.

Apparently, automatically-generated designs are 20% bigger and 20% slower than hand-crafted designs, which results in increased transistor count, die space, cost and power efficiency.

"I had been in charge of our design flow in the years before I left, and I had tested these tools by asking the companies who sold them to design blocks (adders, multipliers, etc.) using their tools. I let them take as long as they wanted. They always came back to me with designs that were 20% bigger, and 20% slower than our hand-crafted designs, and which suffered from electro-migration and other problems," the former AMD engineer said.
Inefficiencies in Design?

While it is unknown whether AMD used automatic design flow tools for everything, there are certain facts that point to some inefficient pieces of design within Bulldozer. Officially, AMD claims that the Zambezi/Orochi processor consists of around 2 billion transistors, which is a very large number.

AMD publicly said that each Bulldozer dual-core CPU module with 2MB unified L2 cache contains 213 million transistors and is 30.9mm2 large. By contrast, die size of one processing engine of Llano processor (11-layer 32nm SOI, K10.5+ micro-architecture) is 9.69mm2 (without L2 cache), which indicates that AMD has succeeded in minimizing elements of its new micro-architecture so to maintain small size and production cost of the novelty.

As a result, all four CPU modules with L2 cache within Zambezi/Orochi processor consist of 852 million of transistors and take 123.6mm2 of die space. Assuming that 8MB of L3 cache (6 bits per cell) consist of 405 million of transistors, it leaves around whopping 800 million of transistors to various input/output interfaces, dual-channel DDR3 memory controller as well as various logic and routing inside the chip.

800 million of transistors - which take up a lot of die space - in an incredibly high number for various I/O, memory, logic, etc. For example, Intel's Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" quad-core chip with integrated graphics consists of 995 million.

While it cannot be confirmed, but it looks like AMD Orochi/Zambezi has several hundreds of millions of transistors that are a result of heavy reliance onto automated design tools.
The Result? Profit Drop!

As a consequence of inefficient design and relatively low performance, AMD has to sell its eight-core FX series processors (315mm2 die size) for up to $245 in 1000-unit quantities. By contrast, Intel sells hand-crafted Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" quad-core chips (216mm2 die size) for up to $317 in 1000-unit quantities. Given the fact that both microprocessors are made using 32nm process technology [and thus have comparable per-transistor/per square mm die cost], the Intel one carries much better profit margin than AMD's microprocessor.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

The price of laziness has been paid?


http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/2..._Processor.html

Analyst Condemns AMD for Not Employing ARM amid Inability to Design Leading High-Performance x86 Processor.

AMD Has Serious Product Problems - Market Observer
[10/13/2011 09:36 PM]
by Anton Shilov

The inability of Advanced Micro Devices to address the rapidly growing market of smartphones and media tablets due to the lack of ARM-based solutions in its portfolio amid inability to design a leading-edge high-end x86 central processing unit may lead to sinking into irrelevancy, according to a semiconductor market analyst. Without competitive chips the company will be unable to meet its financial goals going forward.

"We maintain our view that AMD is being structurally squeezed by poor competitive positioning and longstanding operational struggles. AMD is on the verge of sinking into irrelevancy as ARM-based competitors gain share in low-end computing and Intel extends its advantages in performance and manufacturing,” wrote Daniel Berenbaum, an analyst with MKM Partners, reports Forbes.

AMD is concentrating around the so-called x86 everywhere strategy that dictates the company to tailor x86 architecture for all types of devices, from handsets to high-end servers. Even though the absolute majority of ultra-portable devices are powered by chips with ARM architecture due to its dramatically lower power requirements, AMD asserts that ARM is incapable of reaching performance levels of x86. At the same time, the company is risking to miss the smartphone/media tablet bandwagon as it is only beginning to design x86 chips for the latter and even has no plans for the former.

The company's latest high-performance x86 processor micro-architecture code-named Bulldozer failed to outperform Intel Corp.'s latest Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" chips in client applications, which naturally rises concerns about AMD's ability to score lucrative design wins with its latest FX-series central processing units. Moreover, if AMD's chips fail to outperform Intel's products in server applications as well, the company may not be able to regain the high-margin server market share.

One of the company's pearls is its ATI graphics processor design unit that manages to introduce competitive solutions. In fact, AMD is one of the two remaining developers of discrete graphics chips for personal computers with about 50% market share. The company can integrate its latest graphics technologies into Fusion accelerated processing units with its latest x86 Bulldozer cores to provide a decent mainstream offering. Unfortunately, AMD has been plagued by product delays for many years now and while analyst are confident in AMD's technologies, they do not believe in consistent execution.

"It’s difficult to remember the last product AMD launched on time, and it is now evident that, even aside from manufacturing challenges with partner GlobalFoundries, AMD’s technology roadmap is severely lagging. Third-party reviews indicate that the performance of new products based on the Bulldozer architecture is disappointing – this means that AMD will likely remain a bystander in the ongoing data center build cycle (which has accrued significant benefit to Intel), and will now also miss a window to compete in consumer PCs," added Mr. Berenbaum.

[nobody813]

2 very interesting articles there mark

I have to agree with that :-/

Though I will say this, Intel has oodles more money to play with. Wasn't their marketing budget almost as much as AMD's R&D budget?