Who is buying Bulldozer and WHY?

[thebski]

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.

 

[Whomastadon]

I am planning a fresh bulldozer build but i have patience
on my side. I think i can holdout till June next year
as my current build does everything I need it to.

I always wait a couple of months before buying a new product.
Hopefully by then the radeon 7000s will be out in force and the new chipset will be impending. Should be able to compare it to IB by then and the new windows will be close.

It's a while off but it's something to look forward to.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Yup, I could expect all the negativity after reading the reviews from a Novice but from regulars at Tom's it's really disheartening. We really ought to make a wall here to scrawl on warning all the people who come to the site not to get prejudiced against any hardware until the full and final verdict is out. 'Cos most of them just seem to be jumping to the conclusion that the BD is a flop by reading the one line titles of threads. They really seem not to want to go any the further than the one liners.

dude, i read about 5 reviews all with the same outcome, BD is poop. there are a couple cherry picked reviews floating around, but when you look at the resolutions they are testing at and the fact they are using LOW detail settings for testing SC2 among other games which removes a lot of load from the CPU as well as the GPU, and their pulling average FPS of 252 which is rediculous. Some reviewers are cherry picking results to try turn the tables in favour of AMD when its is not the case in realistic scenario's.

 

[intel4eva]

We need a Moderator to look into the issue, a lot of people here are commenting on the BD in a very negative way, on other threads, we have reached a conclusion that the Benches may not be genuine or may not be what they actually are.
Is there a possibility of stopping this, the sites are doing a bad job as it is of dissing the processor and people here who aren't participating in the debate are really going a little over board by telling OPs new to the forum to switch to Intel.....
This is bad, let us first get the whole thing right and then it'd ok to tell people but not when we are faced with such contradictions ourselves.

Exactly my point..... Since there is no conclusive decision, people really need not recommend it nor diss it.[/u]
It's best that we really get our hands on one of these things ASAP.

Yup, and I ought to apologize for being rude too. But the whole web is being plastered with this hogwash which is really driving me bats.

No conclusive decision? Can't recomment Intel? Want a Tom's Hardware forum moderator to "look into" people going "overboard" by not recommending Bulldozer?

Son, have you even read the official Tom's Hardware review of Bulldozer? You want moderators to censor people parroting the official stance of Tom's Hardware on this issue? LOL!

 

[Outlander_04]

If you are gaming at 1080p [ or above] , and high details , then the cpu is NOT going to be the limitation of a gaming system .
That falls squarely on the graphics card .

I dont believe AMD ever intended Bulldozer to be as strong as i5/ i7 core for core . The intention was to build a cpu that rocked as a server chip by handling as many strong threads as possible . As a gamer its easy to find comparisons to see this approach does not work .
But many of those are based on false assumptions . Like 100 FPS being better than 80 FPS , or that being able to produce higher frame rates at lower resolutions is an advantage . Its not .

Monitors refresh at 60 Hz . That is literally 60 FPS . You can send 100FP , or 80 FPS or 60 FPS to a monitor and the monitor still refreshes at 60 FPS so what you actually see will not change .
Top end graphics card with an i5 , and i7 or an FX 8150 . Same experience .
Intel does not have an advantage .

Still BD clearly has strengths and weaknesses . I suspect there are elements of the design that didnot meet the designers expectations . I guess that should not be a surprise . Its a very new architecture and it was bound to be difficult to get it right .

The good news is that with games not highly threaded anyway the FX 4100 and/or 4170 may be excellent gamer cpu's . They are clocked high , have 4 cores that games are starting to need and should run most games as well as the expensive 8 core parts .
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx-8150--8120-6100-and-4100-performance-review/10

Crysis 2 at 1080p ,with a GTX 580 on board, the MIGHTY intel 2600K that costs nearly $200 more produces ONE more FPS than the FX 4100.
Just one

$200 for ONE FPS

Two hundred dollars most gamers will be much better off spending on a better graphics card

My next computer will be Bulldozer

 

[vSpooKy]

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.

Actually AMD next line of processors will be compatible with AM3+

 

[dontqqnub]

EDIT: For the people thinking about getting a FX-CPU PLEASE take time to read this post.

I will start off with a few quotes and my own comments.

AnandTech.com - "AMD clearly states in its reviewer's guide that CPU bound gaming performance isn't going to be a strong point of the FX architecture"

My own comment: In a real world environment you will not be gaming at 1024 x 768. Also you won't just have a game open, you will have browsers, other games, etc. Most people that buy this $250 cpu will have a high resolution monitor(s) of 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1200, in this situation your gpu will be doing most/all of the work. ALTHOUGH this cpu is not that bad at low resolutions for example...

LOW RESOLUTION

HIGH RESOLUTION

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tomshardware.com - "Crysis 2, our first-person shooter, is indicative of the most visually-engaging GPU-bound titles currently compelling gamers to spend lots of cash on multi-card CrossFire and SLI setups. This is the sort of app AMD would most like you to associate with FX. It’s not going to matter if you buy a $250 processor or a $1000 chip—graphics potential is what determines overall performance." (READ THOROUGHLY)

My own comment: Let the CPU do its job and let the GPU do its!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Gur3d.com - "Crysis 2 is a game that is multithreaded, not optimal but it definitely can utilize up-to eight processor threads, though is proactively dominant on four of them. Hence we introduced it as a CPU test"

My own comment: Notice the benchmarks below, the fx 4100($120) performs 1 or 2 fps off at 1920 x 1080 and 1600 x 1200 as a i7 2600k, extra $200 doesn't buy much gaming performane when it comes to a cpu. (Same goes with fx-8150, hence what I am trying to prove in this post.)

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Im going to be buying an fx-8150 because I want to have multiple games/browsers open across an eyefinity monitor setup.


If you a casual gamer then get the 4100 its $120(or some intel CPU, although I am not sure how $120 intel CPU's perform) and you wont lose much gaming performance at 1920 x 1080 or other average user resolutions.(It mainly depends on your gpu)

 

[mailpranshu]

EDIT: For the people thinking about getting a FX-CPU PLEASE take time to read this post.

I will start off with a few quotes and comments.

AnandTech.com - "AMD clearly states in its reviewer's guide that CPU bound gaming performance isn't going to be a strong point of the FX architecture"

Comment: In a real world environment you will not be gaming at 1024 x 768. Also you won't just have a game open, you will have browsers, other games, etc. Most people that buy this $250 cpu will have a high resolution monitor(s) of 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1200, in this situation your gpu will be doing most/all of the work. ALTHOUGH this cpu is not that bad at low resolutions for example...

LOW RESOLUTION
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4955/41705.png

HIGH RESOLUTION
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4955/41706.png



Tomshardware.com - "Crysis 2, our first-person shooter, is indicative of the most visually-engaging GPU-bound titles currently compelling gamers to spend lots of cash on multi-card CrossFire and SLI setups. This is the sort of app AMD would most like you to associate with FX. It’s not going to matter if you buy a $250 processor or a $1000 chip—graphics potential is what determines overall performance." (READ THOROUGHLY)

Comment: Let the CPU do its job and let the GPU do its!

http://media.bestofmicro.com/L/X/310533/original/crysis 1920.png

http://media.bestofmicro.com/L/Y/310534/original/crysis 2560.png


Gur3d.com - "Crysis 2 is a game that is multithreaded, not optimal but it definitely can utilize up-to eight processor threads, though is proactively dominant on four of them. Hence we introduced it as a CPU test."

Comment: Notice the benchmarks below, the fx 4100($120) performs 1 or 2 fps off at 1920 x 1080 and 1600 x 1200 as a i7 2600k, extra $200 doesn't buy much gaming performane when it comes to a cpu. (Same goes with fx-8150, hence what I am trying to prove in this post.)

http://gyazo.com/f0a1502c253dade7266348351e208ae0.png



Im going to be buying an fx-8150 because I want to have multiple games/browsers open across an eyefinity monitor setup.
If you a casual gamer then get the 4100 its $120(or some intel CPU, although I am not sure how $120 intel CPU's perform) and you wont lose much gaming performance at 1920 x 1080 or other average user resolutions.(It mainly depends on your gpu)

The last graph especially. Using the same reasoning I guess the 4100 is a solid buy compared to everything else.

I think its obvious that reasoning is flawed here. Why would some one buy an expensive processor for a low resolution and vice versa???

 

[alyoshka]

hmmmmmm

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/315805-28-bought-bulldozer-inside

 

[vSpooKy]

My head been spinning between the bad and the good at this point im def waiting for piledriver

 

[iam2thecrowe]

i have an idea about these odd benchmark results with AMD cards. Maybe AMD's drivers for their cards take more advantage of more cores and show different results. Wile nvidia has probably had no chance to test their cards with AMD 8 core cpu's to make better drivers to suit. Just a thought.... but still, it takes 8 amd cores to keep up with an intel quad core and twice the power consumption. so all intel has to do is add a couple more cores and they will take a huge leed and less power consumption. You think intel has just had its 2600k on top and doesnt have any reserves? i think they have some serious processors to be released that will stomp anything AMD has to offer, they have just had no reason to release them until now.

 

[torque79]

dontqqnub:

Would you summarize your post/thoughts this way? :
If you're planning to play games that are well multithreaded such as metro and crysis 2, bulldozer is a reasonable alternative choice.

my thoughts:
If you play any games that are not well multithreaded, you'll likely be disappointed (I have seen horrible disappointing benchmarks for Starcraft 2 for example, which I LOVE).

I'd rather be wrong. I'd rather there is some bios update, bug fix, etc that solves all this and makes bulldozer competitive the majority of the time. Unfortunately, software developers are just not where I want them to be.

 

[ern88]

Yup, cherry pick the benckmarks all you want. It's still draws the power like there is no tomorrow!!!!

 

[ozzy702]

Lots of denial in this thread. Plain and simple IPC per core sucks on bulldozer. Yes, in perfectly threaded tests it's close to the SB i7 but in anything that uses four cores or less it's getting stomped.

Want to know why they only used one 580 instead of SLI? Because it would have shown how weak bulldozer really is by removing the GPU bottleneck.

I'm a huge fan of AMD and I want competition with Intel as much as anyone else but the numbers don't lie. Bulldozer is a power hungry, poorly optimized pig and software optimization is only going to give us 5-10% increases in best case scenarios and zero in worst case.

Stop the conspiracy theory talk and cherry picking benchmarks already. AMD send out the press kit, I'm sure they didn't send out a combo that performs horribly. And as far as NVIDIA vs AMD is concerned I'm sorry but a SB plays nicely with both so why can't bulldozer? Stop making excuses and just accept it for what it is. A disappointment to die hard AMD fans and unfortunately more sales for Intel.

Is bulldozer horrible? No. Is it giving the consumer the same price/performance that AMD is famous for, not at all. The $150 1090T gives the same average performance as the $280 bulldozer. The $200 i5-2500k not only beats it in most benchmarks but draws significantly lower power, especially when both are overclocked.

In the future this architecture may see serious improvements just like phenom vs phenom II and I really hope it does, but for now it's a dud.

Edit: With twice the transistors of SB and over twice of Thuban bulldozer should be performing a whole lot better than it does. AMD followed the mistakes of Intel with the P4 and used a super long pipe and all that's done is open it up to issues if you're branch prediction isn't up to par which apparently BD isn't.

 

[Chef_Boyardee]

Why someone would buy a bulldozer is beyond me. With the economy the way it is, why would you invest your money in something that is outperformed by something priced less? I need a justifiable answer for that.

The defense that I've seen up to this point has been on a seriously lacking amount of results. A Photoshop win and six game benchmarks (showing only one setting) does not cut it. And claiming it's architecture is ahead of it's time doesn't mean it will eventually be adopted.

 

[phatbuddha79]

We need a Moderator to look into the issue, a lot of people here are commenting on the BD in a very negative way, on other threads, we have reached a conclusion that the Benches may not be genuine or may not be what they actually are.
Is there a possibility of stopping this, the sites are doing a bad job as it is of dissing the processor and people here who aren't participating in the debate are really going a little over board by telling OPs new to the forum to switch to Intel.....
This is bad, let us first get the whole thing right and then it'd ok to tell people but not when we are faced with such contradictions ourselves.

So 18 out of 20 hardware sites are wrong?

 

[ozzy702]

What I find funny is people who ignore the horrible performance on lightly threaded apps and tout the multi-threaded results saying "but but but it's as fast as an i7-2600k in these three benchmarks".

Using that logic AMD should release a 16-core desktop CPU that has half the IPC per core of bulldozer and it would be fine. Guess what fan boys, IPC per core does matter and gimping your per core performance to add a few more cores just doesn't cut it.

With the example above VERY few desktop apps would run worth a darn on a 16 core, low IPC per core machine but in your eyes it's somehow software's fault instead of placing the blame on AMD's engineers and CEO's product vision (or lack thereof).

 

[ozzy702]

AMD built a CPU architecture that can be used in both servers and PC, hence the horrendous single core performance while adding even more cores to the CPU. they touted the BD as a performance gaming CPU and its not, it gets beat by similar priced phenom II CPUs. if AMD wants to stream line cost so R&D will be even cheaper, so be it. all I can say is as someone who prefers AMD CPUs, its been far too long time since I have seen a good PC CPU from AMD.

Agreed. If the following prices were set by AMD bulldozer would be fine and I would have no problem recommending them. Current pricing though is WAY off given it's performance relative to Sandy Bride and Thuban/Phenom II. AMD simply CAN'T charge the same amount per performance as Intel, they don't have the reputation and they need to gain market share any way possible.

FX-8150 - $195

FX-8120 - $170

FX-6100 - $140

FX-4100 - $110

 

[noob2222]

guru3d : You have been able to see that the FX 8150 mostly is competing with the Core i5 2500k - asus crosshair @1866 mem
Benchmark reviews : Final Score: 8.60 out of 10. asus crosshair @1866 - pretty much tied with 2500k, one game test
Hardware haven : There are two areas where the FX-8150 excells though, those are gaming and overclocking.(only tested vs 2600k) - asrock @1866
Legit reviews : The FX-8150 is very competitive with Intel’s upper-mainstream Core i5 processors - Asus Croshair @1866

Neoseeker : Considering the FX-8150 is priced at $245, only slightly higher than the i5-2500K which performed worse in the majority of the newer applications, the new chip is a viable option. - Asus @1600
Hothardware : fastest amd processor to date The FX-8150 is very competitive with Intel’s upper-mainstream Core i5 processors - asus crosshair @1600
Lost circutis: Looking back at the numbers we got out of the FX-8150, it is clear that at least the high end models of the Zambezi lineup are somewhat competitive with the older generations of AMD CPUs - asus @1600 - 1 game test
Anandtech : In many cases, AMD's FX-8150 is able to close the gap between the Phenom II X6 and Intel's Core i5 2500K. Given the right workload, Bulldozer is actually able to hang with Intel's fastest Sandy Bridge parts. auss @1600


hardware canucks : When compared to AMD's previous flagship four-core Phenom II X4 980, the FX-8150 obviously comes out looking quite rosy, except for the few instances, solid loss to 2500k - Asus crosshair @1333 mem
Toms : If it’s me, I’m going with the Core i5. - asus@1333

Last and most interesting test methods
Rage3d : it's head to head with the 2500K, and in that context AMD's Scorpius platform is a solid buy. Stock - asus @1333, OC 4.5GHZ @1333, OC2 @2000
charts are flash player so http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/cpu/amd_fx_8150/index.php?p=9
Notice how the memory speed CAN add 10% or more to the results, especially minimum frames? (MOH, BF, CIV 5) Minimum framerate nearly DOUBLED in civ 5

where is your 18 to 20?

The big problem right now is the 8150 is running $280, not $250.

The choice for me was easy, $350 for 8120+gigabyte mb. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.739465 I already have water cooling so I will have no problem reaching 8150+ stock performance.

 

[realneil]

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.

~My~ best reason for buying into Bulldozer is that I want to support AMD as much, and as often, as I can. I do this because I shudder at the thought of where Intel's prices would go without AMD being in the mix.
I already have a low cost FM1 board with a A8-3850 APU in it and have added a XFX Radeon HD6670 1GB discrete card to it in a "poor man's crossfire" configuration. It is surprisingly robust for the low cost of ownership. It's well worth the money. It plays the games that I love the most without problems at good resolutions.
Bulldozer will be more of the same low cost performance, and I believe it will improve with BIOS updates and better, more compatible motherboards being introduced over time. Bulldozer may not be the fastest game in town, but it too has great performance to offer.
At this point, Intel is the undisputed 'master blaster' when it comes to gaming performance, but AMD gets the job done at a very acceptable level as well.

 

[noob2222]

That's your arguement?

Bit tech .... lol at best. Take the worst amd benches available, (4 only for multithread testing!) And a game that somehow only they could get to crash and include it as valid .... ya, ok, still that only gives you one more fail review for BD. All they did was focus on cinebench.

Techpowerup didn't even test anything

Kit guru gave it a worth buying stamp.

I already included toms and anandtech.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

techpower did sum up the reviews of 20+ sites like you but unlike you they did not put the AMD fan boy ball-washing on their reviews that you are so talented at doing....

all the sites listed above had serious issues with BD including the anandtech amd Tom, you did list but neither gave over all positive review you claim they did. you simply took snippets out of the review to make a false and inaccurate statement.

+1million

 

[noob2222]

techpower did sum up the reviews of 20+ sites like you but unlike you they did not put the AMD fan boy ball-washing on their reviews that you are so talented at doing....

all the sites listed above had serious issues with BD including the anandtech amd Tom, you did list but neither gave over all positive review you claim they did. you simply took snippets out of the review to make a false and inaccurate statement.

Then again maybe some people are capable of analyzing all the data and seeing patterns with all the bad reviews and someone capable of making my own decision instead of listening to the rantings of the intel propaganda.

Check the results yourself instead of listening to all the intel fandom about why amd sucks. Most of the conclusions are turning amd's namong against them. Amd calls it an 8 core cpu so all the conclusions are asking why 8 = 6 and calling it a fail without exploring why 4 fpus can't kep up with the 6 fpus found in phenom X6.

Bd is only a fail if you ignore the actual architecture and only concentrate on the "8" core aspect.

 

[AbheekG]

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.

I absolutely agree with you and it's the exact same way I feel. That's the precise reason I don't like Intel, they're 5 times AMD's size, but still bribe people to use their products and threaten them, they're legal track record shows that, not to forget the largest anti-trust law-suite. I also feel that they come out with chipsets too fast forcing ridiculous upgrades. Not to forget Core ix series incorporates numerous technologies designed or influenced by AMD's. That's why I truly find AMD a better company, a more innovative & customer friendly one. My 3yr old 780G board can still house a Phenom II X6 and without holding it back. You can't dream of that with Intel. That's why I prefer AMD.

 

[intel4eva]

I also feel that they come out with chipsets too fast forcing ridiculous upgrades.

Really? A steady cadence of well-planned and publicized in advance releases are "forcing" people to upgrade? Would you rather they choked on their releases like AMD did with bulldozer and be years late to their own estimates?

Not to forget Core ix series incorporates numerous technologies designed or influenced by AMD's.

If you're referring to X64, then yes it was a technology pioneered by AMD. Other than that, the idea that the core ix series uses AMD technologies is beyond laughable. As far as I remember, it's AMD that produces X86 processors under license from intel.

That's why I truly find AMD a better company, a more innovative & customer friendly one.

To say AMD is a better company is a subjective statement, so I won't argue with that. But innovative? Customer friendly? Take a look at the newegg reviews for chips like the 1090T and 1100T and see how many people received dirty chips (literally, with smudges on them - are they even new???). See the hassles people had to go through to RMA an AMD product.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

I was seriously considering BD last summer, until all the negative rumors about performance started leaking out, AMD remained tight-lipped on performance with some silly excuse about not wanting to hurt sales of their Phenom II products, Bergman left, GF's yields on Llano went up in smoke, the 8150 rumored prices dropped from $315 to $275 and finally to $245, the delay from Q2 to Q3 and finally Q4, and several other things 😛.. Anyway, while I agree that BD performance has only one way to go - up, I also think people who are hoping for some magic Win8 or SW sauce to fix all its problems are going to be disappointed. Again. It might get up to 2600K performance a year from now, but no guarantee.

From what I've read about what went wrong, the rumors are that AMD took some design shortcuts from the ATI team, and didn't hand-tune the critical speed paths for optimum performance as that takes time and $$ for all those engineers to work on them. So the estimated performance loss right there is around 20%. I provided some links over on the BD and SB-E threads if anybody wants to read them.

Another issue is the L1 cache write speeds, which are extremely low compared to anything else - Phenom II or Sandy Bridge. Again, links over on the BD thread.

Anyway, point is that these issues - if true - are not curable with a SW patch or OS patch - they'll take a redesign of the hardware would be my guess..