AMD "Zembezi

[illfindu]

Hey im looking towards the future and I'm eyeing the AMD 8 core bulldozer CPU'S coming down the line. I'v seen some source say there going to use a AM3+ Socket and im wondering if that means youll be able to toss one in a current AM3+ compatible board?
Will my current http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130297&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Motherboards+-+AMD-_-MSI-_-13130297 msi 870A Fuzion work i noticed just now that its a AM3 not a AM3+ I'm guessing that means ill need a new mother board cause the sockets are comparable?

 

[amdfangirl]

I'll tell you when I receive it . It's to be received. I know it beats my friend's D410 Atom and I lived with that netbook for a month in Paris.

From using that netbook the performance very slow, but just usable for educational stuff like English-French dictionary or Google maps, but that's all you need in a netbook. I'll tell you later how it performs I guess. I was just too excited about buying it. I paid for it on the 3rd of March so any day now.

 

[barrymobiel]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20110313163718_AMD_Aims_to_Fight_Core_i7_Sandy_Bridge_with_Bulldozer.html
This can be interesting

 

[jimmysmitty]

anyone still watches the animated Jackie Chan show?

I watched all the seasons. I just love Jackie Chan. he and Jet Li are tied in second only to the greatest of all, Bruce lee.

Actually comparing performance/die size is really immaterial. Performance/price is the right comparison. Die size is not a good indicator because as a consumer you pay the price, which has little or no correlation to actual price.

Yep.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20110313163718_AMD_Aims_to_Fight_Core_i7_Sandy_Bridge_with_Bulldozer.html
This can be interesting

And thats why I hope this isn't true.

 

[g00fysmiley]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20110313163718_AMD_Aims_to_Fight_Core_i7_Sandy_Bridge_with_Bulldozer.html
This can be interesting

i doubt they's price consumer products that high... unless they really can beat SB by leaps and bounds... and even then they need to compete in the 100-250 rane as i'd say thats where most enthusiasts are going to spend our money.

they have a few hard sb chips to beat in the price range and those prices would result in a loss of their bread and butter market

 

[fazers_on_stun]

i doubt they's price consumer products that high... unless they really can beat SB by leaps and bounds... and even then they need to compete in the 100-250 rane as i'd say thats where most enthusiasts are going to spend our money.

they have a few hard sb chips to beat in the price range and those prices would result in a loss of their bread and butter market

That seems to be the "system" price - not the CPU price.

If true, what this 'AMD document" leaked by Xbit seems to suggest is that BD 8-core will compete against the SB 2600X in price and performance, with software that can take advantage of the "more cores". So that would mean that it probably has lower IPC than SB when compared core-to-core.

IMHO, seeing as how most DT software still has trouble taking advantage of 4 cores, this would appear to be yet another miscalculation on AMD's part - akin to the 'monolithic vs. double-cheeseburger' stuff that AMD was spouting as Barcelona's big advantage over Core2 Quads before they released Barcie. Which gave Intel a solid year's lead in selling quad-cores since AMD didn't have any during that time. Eventually the software market did catch up to the point where native quads showed signficant performance advantages over the MCM quads that used the FSB to link the two internal dual-cores, but then Intel released Nehalem.

So until we see a 16-core desktop BD, it seems the 6, 8 and even 10-core SBs will probably retain the performance crown.

Yeah, I know this is a lot to read into one leaked document, but then I had to fulfill Dogman's lengthy explanation expectations so as to 'make his day' 😀..

 

[saint19]

I will quote an interesting post:

Originally Posted by JF-AMD

Want a processor 2X faster than Intel? We could do that. You couldn't afford it

 

[g00fysmiley]

^^ yea, i read it as cpu price... i'm blaming daylight savings time and messing with my sleep schedule... that and i'm not foor at reading charts >_< yea that would seem goos then if the performance is on par for the price. and i'm assumign thats oem prices so obviously buying yourself and building as always will cut a huge amoun toff of that price

 

[kilo_17]

i doubt they's price consumer products that high... unless they really can beat SB by leaps and bounds... and even then they need to compete in the 100-250 rane as i'd say thats where most enthusiasts are going to spend our money.

they have a few hard sb chips to beat in the price range and those prices would result in a loss of their bread and butter market

Exactly. AMD needs the budget price range, because that's where they've been doing good so far.

 

[dogman_1234]

I would love to see just ONE 1000 USD chip made by AMD...and it has to perform at 1000 USD like Intel.

 

[amdfangirl]

Can you even afford either ? 😛

 

[dogman_1234]

^ I think you understand. 😀

 

[kilo_17]

AMD chips actually do..........at least the magny cours do.....

Yeah, the 12-core Opterons. I have no idea how they would perform against Intel, though.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Yeah, the 12-core Opterons. I have no idea how they would perform against Intel, though.

You ask and you shall recieve:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2978/amd-s-12-core-magny-cours-opteron-6174-vs-intel-s-6-core-xeon/4

Its a dual 12 core AMD system (24 total cores) vs a dual 6 core Xeon (12 cores, 24 threads). And the Intel system only runs 24GB of RAM and the AMD system has 32GB. That hampers Intel in some tests that love a lot of memory.

from what I saw, AMD has a lead and it should since its 24 real cores. But the lead is not as impressive as it should be, i.e. its not 2x and in server areas, they can use all of those cores.

 

[dogman_1234]

AMD for sure will crush Xeon. I always seemed to have an affinity for Opteron...even though I yet to own one processor.

 

[jimmysmitty]

AMD for sure will crush Xeon. I always seemed to have an affinity for Opteron...even though I yet to own one processor.

I think we will have to wait and see really. Can't say. Opteron pretty much plowed through 4P+ servers with Core 2 based Xeons but when Nehalem came out, it plowed back even harder and on a per core level, AMD hasn't been able to plow back. Even the review above was showing how well Xeons performed.

Plus it will be facing Nehalem EX which is 8 cores.

And in the server market, if you can use less cores to do the same job thats a big power savings and companies jump at that.

 

[dogman_1234]

^ True, but I would not really consider Magny Coures a chance to 'plow' Nehalem X chips. IMHO, the Bulldozer part to Opteron will stand.

 

[jimmysmitty]

^ True, but I would not really consider Magny Coures a chance to 'plow' Nehalem X chips. IMHO, the Bulldozer part to Opteron will stand.

To me the fact that Magny-Cours is 2x the real cores means it should perform much much better. But since it can barley beat 2 6 core Xeons its sad.

As for BD, we shall see. Depending on how BD works it might not be as great in multicore tasks. I mean a real 8 core CPU vs a 4 module, 8 core CPU..... How will it turn out if when running heavily threaded loads, it loses performance?

Who knows. We shall see. If AMD can regain the server market they can up pricing there and hopefully profit. If not I see a grimm future for them.

 

[dogman_1234]

I hope they do good as well. I am not a fanboy but I do like AMD. I guess it is a root for the underdog mentality.

 

[amdfangirl]

I like AMD for their IGPs.

I like Nvidia for CUDA.

Now if only AMD IGPs did CUDA...

 

[dogman_1234]

They could. Isn't AMD doing their own tech on QPI?

 

[amdfangirl]

QPI?

AMD uses HT.

 

[bobdozer]

To me the fact that Magny-Cours is 2x the real cores means it should perform much much better. But since it can barley beat 2 6 core Xeons its sad.

Check. The. Clockspeeds.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Check. The. Clockspeeds.

Yea still. 24 real cores vs 12 real cores with 24 threads. I don't care what you say, a clock speed advantage should not benefit that much in a market where more cores + more memory + more memory bandwidth rules.

 

[bobdozer]

Yea still. 24 real cores vs 12 real cores with 24 threads. I don't care what you say, a clock speed advantage should not benefit that much in a market where more cores + more memory + more memory bandwidth rules.

That "market" is no different from any other market. Not all software makes the best use of 24 cores - some of the tests in that link didn't even make use of 12 cores. How is a lower clocked 24 core server supposed to perform against a higher clocked 12 core server when the workloads are only optimised for 12 cores?

The result of this scaling is that for once, you can notice which CPUs have real cores vs. ones that have virtual (Hyper Threading) cores: the 12-core Opteron 6174 outperforms the best Xeon by 20%.

It has more to do with the software than the hardware. If the software is there to take advantage of real cores, Magny Cours embarrasses the best Xeon and its wannabe cores.

 

[cjl]

I think it should be on a per core/per clock level.

Just to comment on this little bit of a long (and excellent) post...

I do think that this comparison is an interesting one, and it can reveal a lot about an architecture. That having been said, It's not the one that I think is all that relevant to consumers, including enthusiasts. For them, I think the biggest issue is performance per dollar and performance per watt. It really doesn't affect a consumer if one CPU has two cores and another has four if they both behave the same in a system. Similarly, it doesn't affect them if one uses twice the clockspeed, if the power consumption and performance are the same. So, an 8 core Bulldozer will absolutely be interesting to compare to a high end 8 core Sandy when they come out, but if you can get an 8 core BD for $300, and a Sandy for $1k (just to use an example - I'm not saying that I think this is what the actual prices will be as an example), then the real competition as far as people looking to buy a CPU are concerned isn't on a per core basis. Instead, it's the 8 core BD vs a $300 2600K.