Who is buying Bulldozer and WHY?

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thebski

thebski

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Today is a pretty big day as many people have been waiting a long, long time for Bulldozer to arrive. There seems to be a lot of disappointment with what Bulldozer has to offer. I, for one, am not too terribly disappointed because I can't say I expected much more. I pretty much lost all confidence in AMD as a competent competitor to Intel a long time ago. With that said, some people will obviously buy Bulldozer. As a PhD student in applied economics, drivers behind decisions that people make are something that I deal with everyday. I'm very curious as to the drivers behind people making the decision to purchase Bulldozer.

With all that said, I bring you the question that this post is about. What reasons are you going to purchase Bulldozer for? Even though the reaction has been largely negative, I know you future Bulldozer owners are out there. Tell me what draws you to it.

Edit: This is NOT intended to be an AMD vs. Intel or bash on Bulldozer thread. This thread is simply to poll the drivers behind the decision to purchase Bulldozer. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
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I will buy it. Reasons are very simple:
I don't need it for gameing, but for work and for what I need it it's better than an i5. SQL server allways running on my pc with a few databases needed on the network, Virtual PC, Visual Studio, 3DS Max, Photoshop and video conversion. Benchmarks are allmost never real world performance, since you allmost never run just one thing on your pc. For instance, on my pc sql server is allways running, I run video conversions it the background while programing in visual studio.
Last, but not least it will be a simple upgrade, no need to buy a new mbo.
 
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I will buy it (The FX-8120) because :

1. It's a huge upgrade over my 4 years old Athlon X2 6000+
2. the 230$ price tag is good for the performance it offers
3. Someone needs to help AMD or they will go bankrupt (and that means intel will charge us whatever they want)
4. Intel is evil and threatens stores to buy from them or bribes companies like Dell and were charged for unfair practices. I don't give my money to crooks. AMD is a company that is trying hard to get back on track and I want to help them do it.

Also, having a FPS of 70 instead of 80 is not such a big deal...the games will still be playable.
 
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Lol have you ever heard of the economic train of thought known as rational self-interest?

And yeah, if I were doing something such as 3D rendering, I'd be on it.
 
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I'm not buying BD, but I think I would if need a new machine for Photoshop CS5.
I'm saying thinking, and not 'for sure', cause: Yes, in this software it's faster, but indeed pricier than i5 2500. Maybe it scales linear with the price? Don't know..
 
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I will buy Bulldozer/Zambezi because:

1. It is an upgrade over my current system AMD X2 system

2. Intel is a multi-time convicted criminal corporation who I would never financially support

3. AMD needs customer support or we lose all choice in the x86 CPU market

4. Few people need bleeding edge, max speed CPUs. AMD has plenty of cost effective FX CPUs to meet most people's needs

5. I can move from Zambezi to it's replacement in the future should I desire, without replacing the mobo
 
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Man, At time. Maybe 8 out of a 100 benches. I wouldn't buy the FX8150. The FX-4100 is better and a lot cheaper!!!!!
 
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Alright guys, thanks for the responses! I'm recording all of this. This kind of stuff is totally outside of my research area right now, but someday I'm interested in researching the build-it-yourself PC industry. I'm really interested in what users as a whole value the most and what drives their purchasing decisions. Just a lot of different economic factors to look at. I may be a nerd, but I think it's cool stuff.

Keep the responses coming!
 
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the question is, what the hell are AMD doing? they could have done this with minimal R&D and just added 2 extra cores, some additional instructions, faster cache/memory controller and a die shrink to their phenom core and have better performance and the same aweful power useage and actually have released it on time. Instead, they stuffed everyone around with delays and gave us a pile of steaming crap, that is in no way better than a phenom for any of the purposes listed in above posts, it just has more cores.

yours truly, 1 disappointed ex AMD enthusiast.
 
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i plan to get bulldozer (eventually...when i can afford it)
The reason? cost effectiveness...i don't like changing motherboard everytime i change the processor.
Oh and i use pc for gaming purpose...
 
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I'm not buying an FX CPU until Piledriver is out. I'm somewhat disappointed with AMD. The price vs performance ratio doesn't fit it ($280 for a FX-8150 yet it is slow than the $220 i5 2500K). I hope Piledriver will correct whatever AMD did wrong. Not necessarily an enthusiast class CPU, but an upgrade for those with older systems. I'll hold off until PD or IB.

I will be looking forward to Piledriver though. I want AMD back on top like they use to be 5 years ago, but it just doesn't seem likely any time soon. Piledriver can still be a competitive CPU, so I hope for the best. However, the 4-core BD looks nice and offers decent performance. Same price range as the i3 2100, and I believe it beats it (have yet to see a bench of the 4 core vs an i3). I'll look into that.
 
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you have an AM3+ motherboard? if you dont, then go with intel. Their current z68 gen 3 motherboards will be compatable with their next CPU release. Its also likely that AMD's next CPU will need a different socket.
 
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I admit that the FX 8150 is somewhat of a letdown, but I will probably buy a bulldozer or whatever they're calling the next batch of CPU's coming in the first half of next year.
What AMD has done is come up with a new architecture that is ahead of its time. Windows 7 doesn't know how to schedule correctly, and this should be fixed in Windows 8. But I'm not going to explain all the ways that the current chip is being held back by current technology. All everyone cares about is IPC, and Intel is definitely winning on that front.

For me, the reasons listed above for healthy competition are very valid. I will be adopting win8 early, so I will see first hand if the new OS will show some gains for BD. I used the 7 Beta and RC for 7 months, so I may as well move to 8 earlier than expected.

I also believe that by this time next year, software will continue to scale better for more cores. This is a trend I see as a linear slope, although not as quick as I or anyone else would like.
What does BD have for me? Well, higher overclocks will be good for my pet project. I had to go down to a triple core for daily use, so 8 cores will be good too. I already invested in a 990FX motherboard, so it seems silly to put a AM3 X6 in there.

I won't have money for an upgrade until January anyway, so I'll have some time to think about all this. I suppose the main problem is AMD has over-innovated, under-achieved as far as current software is concerned, and over-prepared for the server market. If all I cared about was gaming, I'd already have a core i5. So I don't see any reason why I shouldn't go forward with my bulldozer plans. I just need to readjust my thinking to appreciate bulldozer for what it is, and hope that software will catch up quickly and I can hit 4.5+ Ghz.
 
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I will only adress a few points:

2. Intel has never been convicted. Just fined. Fines do not mean conviction.

3. AMD needs to also trust their customers more and not keep them in the dark, hype a CPU then release one thats meh.

5. You can also move from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge. No mobo change needed.



The Gen 3 is only needed if you want PCIe 3.0 on a Z68 mobo. If you don't care then you can get a Gen 2 Z68 and IB will work on it.

As for the OP, I would not buy BD if I was doing a new build. For $250-$300, which is what I spend on a CPU when I build a system I would make the choice between a 2500K and 2600K. BD just is not worth it.
 
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I may buy it...when I can afford a solid +1000 USD gaming rig.

1) I will mostly use it for FSX,( if I can get a response form someone over its perf.)

2) F@H. Seems like a legit SMP and bigadv- system CPU

3) AMD pricing/perf. It may not be the king of all processors, but it beats my Intel dual core 775 CPU!

4) Potential seller. If I can figure out how to sell computers I build, this will be one of my main attractions,( as well as Ivy.)
 
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I am going to buy it, just because I want to move from a 4 Cores to 8 Cores.
I'm pretty happy with their performances until now, I don't see why I wouldn't want to spend some more on their products.
It'll certainly be helping me Fold, games aren't going to be necessarily the primary objective, although if they were, I'd still go for the AMD and OC it. Cos my folding doesn't go off when I game....

There was a lot of fuss about the Hyped AMD product, people feel really let down. But what really surprises me is I have checked all the benchmarks from nearly 30 Sites and it seems to me that they are all identical.
Something still makes me believe there a mess up somewhere, so, I'll go ahead and buy one and check the damn thing for myself and see which of these sites were paid to do what they did.
Although, still waiting for Toms to rewrite their articles after the FX8150 floods the market.
 
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WTF is that, it shows totally different results to what we have seen across the board from reputable reviewers.
 
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I'll be buying Bulldozer for gaming. If you pay attention to benchmarks (and take a look at several reviews, not just the Tom's Hardware one) 8150 is faster or on par with 2500/2600 in most modern games. And it can only become better, because games become more mutli-threaded not less. In current games with light threading it still achieves more fps than you could possibly need.
I will be playing a lot of BF3 and the beta benchmarks favour 8150.

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I know 2500k is also a perfetcly good choice, but none of the Z68 motheroards really appealed to me. For AM3+ I will be getting Asus Sabretooth. In addition, everyone and his (gamer)dog owns a 2500k/2600k machine now (I just built one for my brother) and I find it terribly uninspiring to just hop on the SB train like everyone else.
 
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