AMD Bulldozer

[amd-dude]

Well since intel released the sandy bridge (crappy name to me for a architecture ) I not hearing anyone including AMD saying or talking about the upcoming architecture that suppose to revolutionize the chip market aka Bulldozer (much better name ). So as the title states what are your expectations for the new architecture.

For me I hope they make serious improvements to:

1. Performance - Get close to the i7 2600k
2. Price - Be sub $300US to give intel a run here too
3. Have serious overclocking overhead or at least high out of the box clocks
4. Be sub 100watt or even 80watt in power consumption

These are just a few things that i hope that bulldozer will bring to the table later on this year...so what about you all?

[W1nTry]

The unfortunate truth atm is that bulldozer is a bit late and they need it NOW, not later. By the 2nd half of 2011, Intell will move Sandy Bridge to Ivy Ivy Bridge aka 22nm fab, which will further the power advantage and OC advantage that Sandy bridge has brought to the table. 4.5 on air... 5 with exotic... imagine that on a 22nm node...

Don't get me wrong, we NEED AMD to excel and compete, otherwise back to 12k PCs for 'ok' performance. Because Bulldozer will do things in a different way (SMT, etc), depending on workloads, the results will vary. Only time will tell now. I just don't expect miracles esp after the Phenom debacle. AND they've fired their CEO Dirk... who was responsible for making them profitable, but not invested in the mobile space.

We'll see.
PS ou can put ur PC specs in our details (see left, space under our handle).

[Spazosaurus]

I doubt a man diss Sandy Bridge name dey. If marchitecture name should be reminiscent of its performance, I think a more appropriate name for AMD's effort should be 'Put Put' rather than Bulldozer.

In response to the question the title of this thread posed,

1) I expect Bulldozer to once AGAIN make Intel look REALLL good for the performance enthusiasts meanwhile appealing to the budget minded folks.

2) To be impressed as much as one can be by watching paint dry.

We haven't seen anything really groundbreaking since a64 days.

Come on AMD, its time to step up your game.

Are you seriously happy with just doing well in the mid and low end markets and just not even bothering to rival Intel's top dogs? Seriously?

[TriniXaeno]

lol @ watching paint dry.

AMD's efforts in the high end space has been as effective as those "Enter your birth date to verify your age" security models on website. lol

Don't get me wrong. I've been a big fan of AMD ever since the Athlon and only changed teams when the Core 2 Duo dropped. Very anxiously awaiting a quad core 3ghz variant on the cheap....(hence my love for the 2500K sandy bridge)

But the reality is they just don't have competitive products at the top end.

Maybe they don't need them. Processing power isn't exactly the bottleneck it used to be.

The low and mid market might really be where the action is (profit wise)....and AMD has always been known for delivering good value there.

[W1nTry]

To be fair guys, only until Westmere was AMD not as competitive in the high end, just our interpretation of high end was lob sided to desktops. AMD was still a top end competitor in the multi-socket High density server space with Magny cores. However as I said Westmere changed that, and that was only very recently.

On the desktop side of things, yes, the Phenoms have been holding down the forth way too long now imho, but they still are very good price/performance parts esp when you consider that they can run on both DDR2/3 which works REALLY well for saving some cash. If you notice in my specs, I am running DDR2 with my X6! Can awesome or wyatt say they gonna upgrade from Core 2 to iAnything withouth a COMPLETE system change?

What AMD really needs badly in addition to the architecture change is a process shrink, and unfortunately I believe they won't be making the drop to 32nm until this year, which keeps intel a whole year ahead. THAT is a big problem.

We'll see if Bulldozer can keep things competitive and AMD's market and profits away from the green. Shame they didn't jump on the ARM/Ultra mobile device bandwagon early. If they did develop a bobcat core for the netbook/tablet they could have been ahead of Intel at least in 1 market.

[TriniXaeno]

that's just the thing....do you think they need to be ahead of intel?

Some business's may adopt a strategy to be second.

Is that AMDs strategy? That's the question really.

Trying to be #1 against intel may be a fools errand at this stage, if good money can be made being the "value" alternative.

[W1nTry]

that's just the thing....do you think they need to be ahead of intel?

Some business's may adopt a strategy to be second.

Is that AMDs strategy? That's the question really.

Trying to be #1 against intel may be a fools errand at this stage, if good money can be made being the "value" alternative.

No trying to be #1 is aiming for mediocrity, it's not that the don't want to be #1, its just the aren't able to atm. That being said, without a product to compete for the #1 place the are Forced to be budget minded, which as far as profit goes is NOT where you want to be. Look at Nvidia vs. AMD, whoever has the 'Halo' product has better margins, who wouldn't want better margins? at the end of the day it's a business and as such they aim to be as profitable as they can be. Being #2 doesn't fit that bill unfortunately.

[QuickDraw]

[TriniXaeno]

lol, good point Quickdraw

[amd-dude]

Yea i agree with Triniwyatt...AMD late to the party so all they can do now is try to socialize with the drunks, intel has so much more than them in terms for R&D and capital. Trying to go up against intel at this stage is like a 18 speed mountain bike against a 600cc motorbike.

Best they can do with bulldozer is damage control, make a decent enough chip that can maybe run with the i7's like the 950 or 980x ...then again who knows they might seriously pull a rabbit out of a hat...until we have a chip we can test all else is speculation.

[amd-dude]

Some new info on bulldozer, I don't know if anyone else has come across this but i just thought i would share with those who did not. AMD clam that bulldozer would be 50% faster than the i7 980x...if thats true well, i think we have a good fight this year...here is the source

http://www.overclock.net/rumors-unconfirmed-articles/913754-tpu-bulldozer-50-faster-than-core.html#post11993537

[Arcmanov]

Where you see 980X?  I seeing 'i7 950'. 

...but seriously...benchies, or it didn't happen.

...and who is to say that the upcoming LGA-2011 Sandy Bridge CPUs
wont wipe the floor with Bulldozer?

Lets wait until we have some proper, tangible info nah.

[Spazosaurus]

As one commenter said, and I couldnt agree more...

100% more cores = 50% more performance???

And this is from BRAND NEW tech pitted against 2.5 year old parts?

Colour me UNIMPRESSED.

[W1nTry]

Ok, first 100% more cores = 50% more performance was a comparison of what Bulldozer at what frequency to what old AMD architecture?
Secondly considering everyone has been increasing transistor count and not getting 100% gains, why does 50% more performance look so bad? I increased core count by 100% from 3-6 and saw a 80* increase in Vantage CPU score... does that translate into 80% increase across the board? NO, so I say until we see solid benchmarks I will just hope for the best.

[Spazosaurus]

Ok, hope for the best yes, but the comparison I was making was the new 8 core Bulldozer tech outperforming 2.5 year old FOUR core Nehalem by just 50%, especially as they say it was built form the ground up.

[amd-dude]

My bad...outperform the 950 but just be faster than the 980x

http://www.techpowerup.com/138328/Bulldozer-50-Faster-than-Core-i7-and-Phenom-II.html?cp=2

[amd-dude]

Some new so called "leaked info" on the "Scorpius" architecture.

http://www.overclock.net/amd-cpus/923393-leaked-vision-fx-bulldozer-performance.html

If that's all the performance out of the new amd cpu I would definitely change sides to intel and get a 2600k and crank it 5ghz+ Or if that's all the performance from that thing, i would hope that amd would price it well below the 2500 and 2600k sandy bridges.

I hope they come better than that and give intel a run but then again everything is speculation unless you have a chip in your rig. 

[Spazosaurus]

For a man who name AMD dude, you seem to be rather open minded and objective.

What next? Change ur name to 'Intel man'?

[W1nTry]

For a man who name AMD dude, you seem to be rather open minded and objective.

What next? Change ur name to 'Intel man'?

Now you're just pushing your luck Capn :p

[amd-dude]

For a man who name AMD dude, you seem to be rather open minded and objective.

What next? Change ur name to 'Intel man'?

HAHAHAHA...that one really had meh going hoss, but yea i am open minded, i have owned rigs on both sides of the pond so i can appreciate the rivalry between intel and amd i can safely say that my old P2, P3 & P4 chips worked like a charm.

Then i went over to amd to see what the fuss was about and i fell for the 'bang for the buck' line and been with amd since athlon and it never looked back. But now amd is just being ridiculous in terms of catching up with intel, i'm sure they have a core i7 950 and they opened it up and snooped around and they learned nothing.

This is why i hope that amd can catch up with the sandy bridge architecture, to be honest i don't think they can catch intel in the performance front so i hope that bulldozer has the performance of a 980x and costs like 150us lolz