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.

 

[dogman_1234]

So, change the variables in the testing?

 

[mailpranshu]

WTF is that, it shows totally different results to what we have seen across the board from reputable reviewers.

There is something rotten going on. AMD cards and non Asus mo bo's show a win for bulldozer. I have a feeling the update for RAGE for Nvidia had something to do with this. What if they purposely put a patch to hamper AMD processors? Is it really that impossible if you come to think about it?

 

[tulx]

There is definitely an error in the standard press kit being given out. The Asus Cross hair has been used on almost all sites. The numbers vary wildly across the board on other mother boards.

To be expected from a new architecture and "older" motherboards. I'm sure we'll see a clearer picture once the initial "OMFG FX didn't destroy Intel and now AMD will die!!!" frenzy calms down.

 

[mailpranshu]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/315775-28-asus-crosshair-giving-biased-results-bulldozer

Let me know your thoughts. Have a look....

 

[mailpranshu]

To be expected from a new architecture and "older" motherboards. I'm sure we'll see a clearer picture once the initial "OMFG FX didn't destroy Intel and now AMD will die!!!" frenzy calms down.

Whats really sad is that people are so quick to judge base on reviews from only 1 platform ( Asus cross hair + 580GTX). Isn't the point of building your own computers mixing and matching various parts to get the best possible performance???

Its a shame mate....

 

[tulx]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/315775-28-asus-crosshair-giving-biased-results-bulldozer

Let me know your thoughts. Have a look....

Heh, I'm usually not one for conspiracy theories, but the facts somehow speak for themselfes this time. You might have a point there. Though why would AMD include a Mobo in the press kit which doesn't utilize the processor properly? Or is it Nvidia's cards?

 

[mailpranshu]

So, change the variables in the testing?

Exactly. Use a new board with a different card!!!!!!!!

 

[admir00]

I'm getting the Quad core if the price is right for my HTPC upgrade!

 

[mailpranshu]

Heh, I'm usually not one for conspiracy theories, but the facts somehow speak for themselfes this time. You might have a point there. Though why would AMD include a Mobo in the press kit which doesn't utilize the processor properly? Or is it Nvidia's cards?

Who knows?? I am surprised no one even picked up on this till about 3 hours ago.. It is very biased though. Would the same have happened to an Intel? I dont think so..

 

[alyoshka]

Now, I guess everyone see's it. I had this feeling from the way the benches flooded the net as soon as the BD was released. They came out too soon with too many benches all of a sudden.
If you go back a little in history ( past 2 years) every one of the processors Intel or AMD, the reviews came out by the day not all at once and most of them were tested on different hardware combos. This present release is far too well synchronized for my liking, that's the main reason I really feel like getting one for my own testing, there couldn't be such a wide difference between the AMD slides from before and the actual performance that the FX8150 is giving.
Even the power seems way off.
The sad part is, it's going to come out into my market only after a month. But what the heck, I'll be trying to get one from the US ASAP.

 

[mailpranshu]

Now, I guess everyone see's it. I had this feeling from the way the benches flooded the net as soon as the BD was released. They came out too soon with too many benches all of a sudden.
If you go back a little in history ( past 2 years) every one of the processors Intel or AMD, the reviews came out by the day not all at once and most of them were tested on different hardware combos. This present release is far too well synchronized for my liking, that's the main reason I really feel like getting one for my own testing, there couldn't be such a wide difference between the AMD slides from before and the actual performance that the FX8150 is giving.
Even the power seems way off.
The sad part is, it's going to come out into my market only after a month. But what the heck, I'll be trying to get one from the US ASAP.

I have a feeling I know what happened. Tech sites do compete with each other for views. They probably benched it on the standard press kit along with a 580 GTX and rushed to publish without checking further.

Would a 6990 be a win or a loss?? I really wonder..

 

[dormantreign]

I'm totally jumped ship now, Intel all the way from here out.

 

[tulx]

I have a feeling I know what happened. Tech sites do compete with each other for views. They probably benched it on the standard press kit along with a 580 GTX and rushed to publish without checking further.

Would a 6990 be a win or a loss?? I really wonder..

I remember one of the sites said AMD advised to review with a AMD garphics card, but the site used a GTX 580 to "eliminate any bottlenecks". Can't remember which site that was.

 

[alyoshka]

The 6990 with the FX8150 will be the thing...............
Hell's I's love to see the FX with a 5970.......... I bet that be real kick for the competition......

 

[tulx]

The 6990 with the FX8150 will be the thing...............
Hell's I's love to see the FX with a 5970.......... I bet that be real kick for the competition......

I happen to have a 5870 (paired with a Phenom I 😀 ), so that makes me quite hopeful for a good combo.

 

[tulx]

I'm totally jumped ship now, Intel all the way from here out.

You and many others. Yet if you look at the benches I posted and MailPranshu's thread, you'll see that, with the right Mobo and graphics card, 8150 beats or is on par with SB.

 

[mailpranshu]

I remember one of the sites said AMD advised to review with a AMD garphics card, but the site used a GTX 580 to "eliminate any bottlenecks". Can't remember which site that was.

All sites used the 580 GTX. Maybe there is an issue with the drivers? Or the card itself?

 

[mailpranshu]

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.

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/4715/capturehwp.png
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/6596/capture2m.png
http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/3866/capture3vj.png
http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/9777/capture4e.png
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/6399/capture5g.png
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/1585/capture6j.png

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.

+1000. Awesome benchmark finds!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks again!!!!!!!!!

 

[yumri]

what i am thinking with the bulldozer CPU of AMD's is AMD wrote its own drivers to work better with the new CPU design thus they graphics cards work better with their new CPUs because of how they constructed the driver. With a Intel CPU the nVidia 590 card would be the best for totally no graphics card bottle neck as nVidia does not optimize their drivers in the same way as AMD so nVidia's drivers work better with Intel CPUs by what the benchmarks say. In short it is how the drivers are written that make the Benchmarks say what they are for the Bulldozer CPU but if you are going to go with a nVidia Graphics Card then you should go with a Intel CPU while if you want the Bulldozer CPU then go with a AMD graphics card for the best performance the CPU can give.
With all of that the i7-2600K is only a few frames or a few points behind the AMD Bulldozer depending on the benchmark and Bulldozer sounds more like it was made more for severs then for consumer computers as a server will take advantage of all 8 CPUs in the new AMD CPU boosting its performance while most consumer applications are only able to use CPU core 0 through CPU core 3 as they are written with a quad core or below in mind. WinZip is a Single core program and thus it does not perform well with AMD since it is not optimized for single core applications a video converter will perform alot better having 8 cores instead of just 4 or 6 cores for it to use.
In conclusion it all depends on what you actually use and don't let the number of programs which you use trick you into thinking you will need more CPU cores for it to go faster as the abstraction layer does not work like that for windows vista and below. I have not had time with windows 7 and windows 8 to see how their abstraction layers work. A consumer computer will have the best price/performance with a relatively modern but low end CPU with integrated graphics since they have gotten very good now. For a gamer i suggest either Intel with nVidia graphics or AMD with an AMD/ATI graphics card. What i am wondering about is how the Bulldozer CPU design would work on a sever line of applications since that is probably where it will beat out most of the other CPUs tested in all the benchmarks shown on this forum.

 

[alhanelem]

i 'might' buy a bulldozer chip, the only reason why bulldozer doesnt perform as well as the core i5 or i7 chips is because most software only fully utilise 2 - 4 cores let alone 6 or 8. In the future when software, especially games become more multi threaded is where chips like the 8150 will get to stretch its legs.

 

[AdrianPerry]

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.

Some good points there. It's nice to think AMD might be "ahead of their time" and following future tech upgrades (windows 8 being an important one) the processor market could easily shift once more.

 

[beenthere]

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.

These are the FACTS:

Re. #2 - Actually Intel has been CONVICTED of numerous anti-trust violations in the U.S., Europe, (EU), and Asia. In addition Intel has been convicted of U.S. tax FRAUD numerous times.

Re. #3. Zambezi and Opteron 6200/4200 CPUs have a significant improvement in heavy load processing capacity so it's not hype - it's reality. As a consumer you need to understand what each CPU does best as it relates to what you use a PC for. Most people will be completely happy with any current CPU be it Zambezi/AMD or Intel.

Re. #5 - Sandy Bridge does not work on an AMD mobo. 😉

SUPPORTING a convicted criminal corporation such as Intel is NOT an option for any ethical person as Intel has tried to and continues to try to eliminate consumer choice!

 

[illusio12]

At last, a compelling and accurate assessment of gaming performance ( tweaktown), first ive read since all the intel loverboys have been doom mongering. Will actually get a bulldozer am3+ system now, not much in game performance, and all those synthetic and real world benchmarks have no relevance to my daily use of pc/laptop.

Stopped building my own pc,s a couple of years ago because of the slave to benchmarks that somehow justify your purchase, now just use laptop, but will buy into bulldozer and am3+ just to keep AMD alive. *** the useless benchmarks which have no place in my real-world-usage.

 

[billybobser]

I might look into a 4170, if it's price below an i3. The price/performance would be great. The 8150 however is pretty poop, and even where it bests the i2500k, it doesn't represent value of any kind.

When piledriver comes, Ivybridge will have been our for a year, and it will be status quo.

The only interesting thing I await is someone to make good use of the new AMD, while also wondering if AMD are very future looking (and have made a great prediction) or have just flat out bombed.

 

[alyoshka]

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.