AMD Gives Early Hint at Bulldozer Performance

[peterkidd]

BulldozerFTW is correct. AMD has released very little information, and a couple of sources suggest that Bulldozer is going to be compatible w/ AM3r2 or revision 2. Does this mean AM3+, AM4, or AM3 w/ a bios upgrade? We won't know until August 24 when they release more information on the Hot Chips conference.
I think it is important to consider HT upgrade, support for Llano w/ GPU integration, and quad channel ram support. These natural evolutions almost necessitates a change in motherboard hardware.

 

[jeffk464]

Ok bulldozer is the name of the cpu core architecture right, just like K10? It will come in desktop, tablet, notebook, netbook, server forms right? Personally I just want a super low power version to replace the Athlon II cpu/mobo in my HTPC. My current idle is about 60watts and I would like to get it below 20watts. The core I3 gets close at 25W + whatever my TV card uses at idle, so I think this should be doable. I will probably wait for win8 and then see who is better for this, sandybridge or fusion. It really sucks to have money burning a hole in my pocket and just having to wait.

 

[peterkidd]

I am talking about the desktop chip Zambezi above.

 

[jeffk464]

P.S. I really only need the K10 architecture for HTPC, its plenty of cpu power.

 

[demonhorde665]

[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]...and I thought Apple Funboys were bad..lol[/citation]

and i thought intel fan boys had brains ???

seriously dude , comparing amd / and amd fanboys to apple and apple fanboys , is just plain dumb

first off amd fanboys are fans of amd becuase AMD charges waaaay less money for a cpu than intel does and that cpu is only aobut 15% slower than teh intel chip it competes with. that is why amd fans are amd fans. apple fanboys just fans of apple becuase they "look" cool , further more apple overcharges for thier hardware so apple fans are still apple fans despite paying more for less.

bassically trash talking AMD fan boys the way you did , is the equivlant of trash talking some one that rents an aparment because they are too poor to buy a house , ie. you just made yourself the number one A-hole on this board


all that said i'm not a fanboy ofeither company ,yes i do own more AMD products , because they are cheaper , but i got a couplecomputers runnign intelchips around my hosue also and i'm not adverse to buying intel when they actually offer consumers a good deal. just right now 500-600 bucks for a 15-20% performance increase over teh competition is not worth it

 

[megamanx00]

Yeah yeah, show me the bench marks

 

[salimbest83]

i'm in love with u AMD...

 

[enzo matrix]

"Bulldozer will also support DDR3."
Really? I wouldn't have thought.
I'm more interested to know if they will be cutting off DDR2 support, since having both a DDR2 and DDR3 controller on the chip doesn't take up much space.
And if it doesn't have DDR2 support, I'm interested in knowing how they intend to make it pin compatible with AM3 but not AM2/AM2+ (assuming it will support AM3).

 

[Marco925]

[citation][nom]damasvara[/nom]Less cores, better performance???.. (not following)A dual core is good enough for me though... lol[/citation]
The same people also said 1,86Ghz Core 2 duo was much slower than a 3Ghz Pentium 4

 

[Guest]

The Bulldozer platform will NOT be backwards compatible with AM3 sockets, a new socket will come out to complement it, called AM3r2 (something like that), like AM2 and AM2+ (AM3 is backwards compatible with AM2+ but not AM2 except for AM2/AM2+/AM3 mobos.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]Sihastru[/nom]It is possible that the first desktop Bulldozer variants will be AM3+, with dual channel DDR3, but that won't stick, they will need the quad channel memory to get that 13% performance increase per core. So for a few months you'll be able to get a "new" CPU but not really any sizable performance increase... It should be more efficient and maybe have more cores, but they will be starved by the puny dual channel memory controller.[/citation]Actually I don't think this architecture will be as bandwidth starved as you claim even if it is "only" dual channel (DDR3 1600 or so).
[citation][nom]scook9[/nom]People keep talking about intel changing the socket....forgive me if I am wrong....but how long was 775 the socket? 4 years? that is not bad.....Now I agree that having both 1156 and 1366 was stupid....but you can easily research the parts and know what you are getting yourself into before buying a system or building one.....[/citation]There's more to it than just number of pins, you know. Just because you have a "socket 775" board doesn't mean you can run all socket 775 chips. That's fine, but they didn't label things with an "AM2, AM2+, AM3, etc" naming scheme to make it easy to understand. At least with AMD's naming patterns, I know what my upgrade path is. Of course, with both AMD and Intel, a lot of what you can actually use properly is dependent on the board manufacturer releasing decent BIOS updates.

 

[dertechie]

[citation][nom]scook9[/nom]People keep talking about intel changing the socket....forgive me if I am wrong....but how long was 775 the socket? 4 years? that is not bad.....Now I agree that having both 1156 and 1366 was stupid....but you can easily research the parts and know what you are getting yourself into before buying a system or building one.....[/citation]

LGA 775 was introduced in June 2004 and superseded in November 2008, this is true. However, in June 2006 it had a major redesign to support Core 2 Duo. This completely broke backwards compatibility, most LGA 775 boards from before June 2006 simply do not support Core 2 processors at a hardware level. They kept the same socket for 4 years in name only.

I was foolhardy enough to buy a Dell XPS in early June 2006. I don't actually fault Dell here, I'm actually fairly impressed with the thought that went into cooling it. Upgraded tower HSF for a 95W CPU (not even one of the 130W monsters) instead of the reference one, and it's even braced to keep from straining the motherboard. The guy who decided to use a proprietary power connector can rot in hell though.

Said motherboard is an early revision 945P. No Conroe. No Wolfdale. BTX too, just to rub salt in it. At this point, I'm just waiting for Bulldozer, AM3.5 and Southern Islands to build a new machine. Pentium D has a way of making one patient at the end of product cycles.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]dertechie[/nom]The guy who decided to use a proprietary power connector can rot in hell though.[/citation]
Well to be fair they don't ALL use the proprietary connector. Sometimes you get lucky. If you aren't lucky, you can either cut the connectors off the old power supply and solder yourself some connections (don't screw it up!), OR you can just buy a freaking adapter. Something like this one.

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std/sku=dellconverter

 

[eddieroolz]

Good to see AMD making consistent strides in developing the Bulldozer. I just hope that the socket compatibility won't negatively affect the performance.

 

[iqvl]

Not impressed.. 50% performance increase with 33% more cores (assuming same clock speeds) sounds no way exciting.. If you factor in the current performance figures then the upcoming processors would still struggle matching up to their Intel counterparts.. I guess it'd again be a price to performance ratio slogan (getting sick of it already).. And with Intel lowering prices on their current line up along with launch of sandy bridge, AMD's p2p arena looks in a spot of bother..

I agree with you on all but the statement below.

Not impressed.. 50% performance increase with 33% more cores (assuming same clock speeds) sounds no way exciting..

 

[dEAne]

This is great the dragon is awake.

 

[damasvara]

[citation][nom]Marco925[/nom]The same people also said 1,86Ghz Core 2 duo was much slower than a 3Ghz Pentium 4[/citation]
I just understand what the last line means: a 16 core Bulldozer will give a 50% increase in performance with 33% MORE cores... duh!!! (Homer Simpson idiot pose)

lol... that was very stupid indeed...

 

[irh_1974]

Benchmarks, dude, benchmarks.
Get some gaming, video encoding and compression stuff together, all based on multicore.
Until then it's all speculation.

 

[Guest]

look in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amd_bulldozer) :
-Socket AM3r2 (938pin, DDR3 Support -- retain compatiblity with previous Socket AM3

YEEES, no more change of motherboard

 

[Tamz_msc]

[citation][nom]squiggs77[/nom]So if 12 cores = 100% performance and 16 cores = 150% performance, then there is a 12.5% increase in performance per core. I don't know if that's enough to dethrone Intel in the high end.[/citation]
Interesting question.

 

[BulkZerker]

[citation][nom]squiggs77[/nom]So if 12 cores = 100% performance and 16 cores = 150% performance, then there is a 12.5% increase in performance per core. I don't know if that's enough to dethrone Intel in the high end.[/citation]

Isn't that how much AMD is lagging behind the iCore processors now percentage wise? So untill we can get a hex core Intel for under $300. I think AMD is about to kick ass and take a name, then use it on it's sh** tickets.

 

[Guest]

If the desktop version fits a AM3+ board would be nice. But if you want the quad-channel DDR3 you have to replace it anyway.

 

[dertechie]

[citation][nom]AlexTheBlue[/nom]Well to be fair they don't ALL use the proprietary connector. Sometimes you get lucky. If you aren't lucky, you can either cut the connectors off the old power supply and solder yourself some connections (don't screw it up!), OR you can just buy a freaking adapter. Something like this one.http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/ [...] lconverter[/citation]

Mine does. Only reason I would touch the PSU is to upgrade the GPU, and the CPU would bottleneck anything I'd actually want anyway. Not throwing any more money at that box, it's not worth it. The only updates I could make that I could take with me are SSDs, and again, not touching those with 25nm flash right around the corner.

 

[Guest]

Has anyone here seen this page? http://www.chw.net/2010/04/amd-bulldozer-en-exclusiva/

 

[waffle911]

[citation][nom]EXA[/nom]look in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amd_bulldozer) :-Socket AM3r2 (938pin, DDR3 Support -- retain compatiblity with previous Socket AM3YEEES, no more change of motherboard[/citation]
Right, because Wikipedia is a reliable resource for getting true information out of thin air when only speculation exists. The information there is not cited and cannot realistically be believed to be anything more than one person's speculation.