AMD's FX-8150 After Two Windows 7 Hotfixes And UEFI Updates

[Scotty99]

Glad i bought my 2500k last august when the whole world was telling me to wait and see how bulldozer does. Mmm, impatience paid off this time i guess.

 

[deanjo]

1/2/48/16/etc cores blah blah blah. You guys know there is no industry standard definition that is accepted to all of what a core is right?

 

[ubercake]

The unfortunate part of all this is we as consumers lose out. AMD no longer provides competition in the desktop processor space. Additionally, after the BD flop, they pretty much announced they are going to focus on the APU/mobile market.

Intel has a monopoly in the desktop space. Since everything seems to be going to finger swipes on a mobile device, we might find AMD on top (at least in sales) in the next decade. But for now, a sandy bridge processor (i3-2100 or above) on an H, P or Z would even compete price/performance wise with the best AMD desktop processors. This is not good for competition in the desktop market.

If we look at the laptop market, the mobile i3s compete price-wise with the newer mobile AMD chips.

There was a time when AMD really provided competition for Intel and sold comparable performance in a less expensive package. Can you really say you're getting a better deal at this point with AMD desktop processors? I really don't think so.

 

[Lord Captivus]

Almost 16 FPS in Skyrim at 1920 - 1080 is just too much...kmon!
Thats a game im playing and that difference is BIG!

 

[Specter0420]

"low-resolution gaming situations that no self-proclaimed enthusiast would ever want to use."

So I guess my 120 inch 1280x720 projector that I sit 12-15 feet away from disqualifies from the "self-proclaimed enthusiast" group.

I wonder how this would compare to my i7 920 @ 4Ghz.

 

[PowerHouse]

I am really feeling sorry for AMD. However, their marketing department needs a nice talking to. As if it wasn't bad enough that they acted like Bulldozer would be an Sandy Bridge killer, but then they tried to claim their design's performance would be much improved by correcting these core-parking issues only to show that they didn't make a difference at all.

I have no doubt that AMD CAN produce a better product based on this design idea, but in the mean time they need to stop placing blame on other things like software. In other words, AMD just keep your mouth shut for the time being and just quietly work on tuning Piledriver.

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]amd had to redefine what a core is to make it called an 8 core system... really its closer to 8 core but is still just a threading solution, granted one with potential, just implemented poorly.[/citation]
Most of you claiming this do so simply because the FPU is conjoined. If Orochi is 4-core, then each core is a helluva lot more complex than Sandy Bridge.

The oddity present is how Bulldozer handles AVX... And it's not like Sandy Bridge handles it in a non-odd way either. The FPU is a "twin" FPU in Bulldozer: each module's FPU can act as (typically, using SSE) a pair of 4x32-bit FP units, which has been the standard type for years, or, (when using AVX extensions) a single 4x64-bit or a single 8x32-bit FP unit.

Yes, in theory, a quad-core Sandy Bridge could handle four AVX instructions at once... But it'd suffer in a different way: by standard setup, again the FPUs only act as 4x32-bit FP units. Running AVX means that the FPUs actually take over the INTEGER units and convert them, which also entails a bit of lag. And, of course, it means that integer/logic instructions cannot be processed at the same time.

So, if Orochi is 4-core, then Sandy Bridge, by the same logic, lacks ALUs, which makes it in fact a DSP, not a CPU.

[citation][nom]Draven35[/nom]The two CPUs have the same number of floating point cores. If AMD wanted to have the kind of FPU performance we would associate with 'eight cores' then they needed to double the number of FPUs in each processor module, which they said they didnt because systems are supposedly not reliant on FPUs...[/citation]
You are wildly mistaken here. For one, I'd recommend quite pulling cockamamie explanations out of thin air to explain things. ("supposedly not FPU-heavy" never enter the minds of AMD's engineers)

When running in modern SSE, Orochi (the 8-core bulldozer) has, in fact, twice as many FPUs as Sandy Bridge. It can handle a total of 32 operand sets in the format of 8 4x32 vectors. This contrasts to 16 for Sandy Bridge, in the format of 4 4x32 vectors.

A single Bulldozer module's FPU and a single Sandy Bridge core's FPU are *not* equivalent in the slightest.

 

[elbert]

AMD screwed up trying to imitate Intels 2 threads per core. AMD should have made a 3 integer, dual independent FPU, triple independent SSE/AVX in a module with up to 3 modules on a CPU. This would give servers up to 9 threads and a massive boost to 1 to 3 threads on the consumer space. The FX design is to focused on the server space.

AMD gave up on the consumer space about 2 years ago so no big deal here. If AMD ever want a shot at my business they need to redesign their socket for 2 CPU's with 16 cores like the servers.

I want a 3GHz+ 12 core version of Magny-cours or a 3GHz+ 16 core version of Interlagos. Even the old Magny-cours would be better on the consumer space than anything AMD has at this time.

 

[jaquith]

Consumers Lose! I'm not interested in AMD vs Intel and which is better in manner that you might think. Consumers Win! when both AMD and Intel leapfrog each other because it forces both AMD and Intel to fight for a better, faster, cheaper, etc components benefiting 'us' the consumer. My fear is that now Intel can take an easy road and frankly overcharge consumers for 'performance'.

I am happy to see that at least the AMD GPU's offer outstanding performance and I look forward to nVidia's offerings over the next couple of months.

 

[quangluu96]

I bet even a Intel Quad Core still beats this thing.

 

[andywork78]

I was looking for not even 8% ,, just 2% but... fail... again...

 

[freggo]

Engineering vs. PR Department... it is a rigged game as the PR people always win.
So you end up with '8' cored (for the advertising) in 4 'modules'.
Every time a product review starts with some construction like that you know that you
are looking at build in problems from the start.
Reviewers are not dumb, they will find out that your '8' cores are just keeping up with the '4' of your competitor and bang, millions of development are down the drain.
I wish some PR guy came up with the brilliant idea of under-reporting performance so that reviewers can find out -surprise- it actually does better than advertised !

 

[amuffin]

An older 4 core i5-2500k beats out the latest and greatest 8 CORE 8150 IN RENDERING????? :lol:

 

[cookoy]

Sad to see the actual results. Try and try until the consumers lose hope.

 

[geekapproved]

Like the article says:

This is by no means indicative of the way it may perform on Windows 8.

 

[dannoddd]

I would also really like to see a multitasking suite comparing the FX4-6-8 vs the Core i3-5-7. I'm pretty sure I know how it'll turn out, but it would be interesting to see nonetheless.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]jaquith[/nom]Consumers Lose! I'm not interested in AMD vs Intel and which is better in manner that you might think. Consumers Win! when both AMD and Intel leapfrog each other because it forces both AMD and Intel to fight for a better, faster, cheaper, etc components benefiting 'us' the consumer. My fear is that now Intel can take an easy road and frankly overcharge consumers for 'performance'. I am happy to see that at least the AMD GPU's offer outstanding performance and I look forward to nVidia's offerings over the next couple of months.[/citation]

there is a bare minimum cost, which is 50k per wafer, try doing the math once, amd and intel don't pull in serious profit from their chips, intel pulls more in from the high end chips, but not as much as you think, amd sells the bad chips with locked cores, no not waste any wafer if possible.

 

[AppleBlowsDonkeyBalls]

The FX-8150 has eight integer execution engines, or cores, and four floating point execution engines. So if you're looking at an integer workload, which represents most in the computer world, it's an eight core processor. If it's mainly a FP intensive workload, it'll be more like a quad-core. The problem in integer is that each of those cores is 50-65% slower than Intel's, meaning it can only match a vanilla Intel quad-core in multi-threaded programs.

 

[ohim]

[citation][nom]ubercake[/nom]The unfortunate part of all this is we as consumers lose out. AMD no longer provides competition in the desktop processor space. Additionally, after the BD flop, they pretty much announced they are going to focus on the APU/mobile market.Intel has a monopoly in the desktop space. Since everything seems to be going to finger swipes on a mobile device, we might find AMD on top (at least in sales) in the next decade. But for now, a sandy bridge processor (i3-2100 or above) on an H, P or Z would even compete price/performance wise with the best AMD desktop processors. This is not good for competition in the desktop market. If we look at the laptop market, the mobile i3s compete price-wise with the newer mobile AMD chips. There was a time when AMD really provided competition for Intel and sold comparable performance in a less expensive package. Can you really say you're getting a better deal at this point with AMD desktop processors? I really don't think so.[/citation]Actually you`re quite wrong but the masses fall for poorly made benchmarks ... in the old line only the I7 was worth buying since the I3 and I5 were only dual cores and at multitasking they were shit compared to the line of quad cores from AMD, now I3 sandy bridge is still a big crap even with the new improvements ... for me the performance starts from the I5 2500k ... the below are only intel crap. Worked on those kind of computers and they totally not worth it

 

[megamanx00]

This proves two things.

1) that two bulldozer cores on one module provide almost the same performance as two separate cores of the same design.

2) bulldozer is a crappy core 😛

 

[Guest]

I would like to know what compilers where used to build the different applications used in the benchmarks. Intel compilers disable any compiler optimizations if it detects a non-Intel CPU (AMD), so the performance of any AMD cpus will be significantly affected if the benchmarking applications were compiled with Intel compilers.

That's why many companies do not use Intel compilers if they know that their customers will use AMD cpus. Companies that use AMD computers should ask their software providers to provide software that is not built with the Intel compilers.

 

[peevee]

Actually, i7-2600 is $279.99 right now on newegg, so it is by far the closest-priced competitor to FX-8150 which is $269.99 on the same newegg. With it's higher frequency and larger cache it will increase Intel's lead in single-threaded applications, and with hyperthreading beat FX-8150 in multithreaded applications too. Plus free video (not everybody plays demanding 3D games) and QuickSync.
Unfortunately, we lost AMD as a formidable rival in desktop space.

But it is 2012 and it is the whole new game is being played in mobile space, and Qualcomm and Nvidia totally destroy Intel there. Intel is like IBM with their mainframes now. Sure, IBM won the mainframe competition...

 

[ubercake]

[citation][nom]ohim[/nom]Actually you`re quite wrong but the masses fall for poorly made benchmarks ... in the old line only the I7 was worth buying since the I3 and I5 were only dual cores and at multitasking they were shit compared to the line of quad cores from AMD, now I3 sandy bridge is still a big crap even with the new improvements ... for me the performance starts from the I5 2500k ... the below are only intel crap. Worked on those kind of computers and they totally not worth it[/citation]
See... That's what I'm saying (ignoring the fanboy rant)... When the Intel crap competes with AMD's best, we have no competition in the marketplace.

In theory and on paper is the only place AMD performance is realized. This is why they can talk something up prior to release and disappoint us all with the release. Again, we as consumers lose.

 

[ohim]

Well the consume looses because is blind , choosing i3 over competion just because is intel and that intel holds the top performance ... I3 might do pretty well running 1 application at a time but is a total disaster when applications start to add up, as for AMD as a looser ... well he`s not really trailing that far behind Intel, and if 2 -3 seconds or 5 fps (except few titles that have more than 10 fps difference about all fall under 10 fps ) the whole users go to intel ... well you deserve your fate for 1000$ future I3 cpus. And is clear as daylight that the current software doesn`t work well with that CPU, some guy even said "did you saw intel go to MS when they released I7 ? , well Intel didn`t changed the architecture that much .. still going to 4 cores with 2 logicals , and as always most of the software out there is compiled for these kind of CPUs ... read some shit around the internet that on some benchmarks when changing the CPUID from authentic AMD to Genuine Intel the scores started to differ ... so i say again .. if you chose 5 more fps and find it drasticaly unacceptable ... then don`t complain about the future.

 

[nhat11]

[citation][nom]Azathoth[/nom]Sigh* I was expecting to see small gains of maybe ~8% optimistically, but instead I see microscopic improvements.It is simply embarrassing for an eight core processor to be beaten by a quad core, even considering some apps don't support more then two or four cores.[/citation]

It's very hard to program for multi thread/cores cpu (more bugs, performance issues, etc). Having 8 core doesn't mean anything until programming takes advantage of the cores which will be a years.