Windows 7 Hotfix Promises AMD Bulldozer Performance Boost

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I smell some new benchmarks coming.... would be amazing if much changed though... I've lost my faith in AMD... used to love them... we will see though
 
Why would people not understand why Microsoft is making this fix? Microsoft is in the business of making the best OS possible. You can't exactly have the best OS when you fail to adopt new technology because a competitor is doing it just fine. Considering the increase in performance on Bulldozer using Windows 8, it should be clear that AMD has been working with Microsoft on making these chips.
 
[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]Why the hell should Microsoft do anything? Intel CPUs work just fine with Windows 7. Windows 7 was out LONG before Bulldozer came to market. Just another blunder for AMD. The fact you say M$ shows you're an AMD Fanboy. I'm sorry AMD lost the CPU battle..deal with it.[/citation]


What he is saying is that AMD should have been testing on Windows 7 platforms when they were developing Bulldozer. With the benefit of already having the OS they should have known there were issues before they released their new processor. They should have gone to Microsoft and said, "We know there is xxx issue between our new processor and your OS. Will you test and release a patch for this before we release our processor? Here are a couple of engineering samples to get you started."


Unless AMD can convince MS to test and release a patch before Bulldozer is released, there is absolutely no guarantee that they can convince MS to release a working patch after the Bulldozer release.
 
Its important we have competition between intel and AMD. AMD dropping out blows. Competition is what keeps prices down for us. A shame we don't have several operation systems to choose form that we can game on.
 
the patch has arrived,
yay! the patch has arrived!
now all the performance woes will be gone,
the power efficiency will increase...
*wakes up from daydream*
yawn.
i hope microsoft spends more time developing the patch and giving amd some more deserved attention. afaik a scheduler is quite deep into the os, effectively changing that would be a tough task.
 
[citation][nom]CaedenV[/nom]Could we get a re-review? I may be an Intel fanboy (admittedly), but I was really surprised at just how bad bulldozed did, it really didn't seem right. I still think the i7 will beat it, but maybe it will outshine the i5 like it should?[/citation]

take a look at the p4 era when they introduced hyperthreading, they had problems than, and amd is just learning of them now, the difference is, applications now take advantage of threads, when back than, they didn't. so amd will have to learn by fire where intel was able to pull threading till it got its crap together.

[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]Why the hell should Microsoft do anything? Intel CPUs work just fine with Windows 7. Windows 7 was out LONG before Bulldozer came to market. Just another blunder for AMD. The fact you say M$ shows you're an AMD Fanboy. I'm sorry AMD lost the CPU battle..deal with it.[/citation]

you know, ground up, windows 7 was built to take advantage of intels threading solution? i thought it was common knowledge.

amd is going with a different solution, where intel made threading work on one core, amd is trying to make more or less a half core... if that makes any sense, and windows has no idea how to deal with it right now, because i think it fills them like they are full fledged cores, and not threads.

this is the reason i keep, and many other, saying that windows 8 will be the proveing ground for bulldozer, and a revision of bulldozer will show if single core can be fixed or not.

that said, i still think we should move away from single core in most aspects and force threading, but winzip and itunes hold onto single core for some... really stupid reason, and benchmarks are lower than they should be because of them.

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]otacon72, you remind me of game developers that stubbornly refuse to support multicores, insisting that hardware companies should design around software, not the other way around.[/citation]

it depends, if the hardware is a misstep, dont, but if its in the right direction, go for it... bulldozer is in the right direction, but it sufferes from being the first mainstream of its kind, im sure in labs cpus were already built like this at some point.

[citation][nom]pale paladin[/nom]You are all fools if you don't think that at a root level intel helps M$ optimize W7 for their architecture. The way data is passed and what instruction sets are used for different applications is based on what the x86 chip giant tells them it should be. So in turn Intel's own architecture always has the leg up. That isn't to say AMD should not try to be competitive, it only means that when they are innovative they suffer for it. ie: bulldozer. Then again that is the price AMD, VIA, ... pays for licensing someone else's architecture. They will always be two steps behind even if the innovation they strive for might be better overall it won't be properly optimized. I'm sticking with Intel for a while guys & gals.[/citation]

yes and no. its not the instruction sets themselves that are to blame, but its the implementation i beleive, intel has its own compilers that make things better on theirs and im sure amd does too. but to some extent it needs implementation in the software when something as big as what bulldozer is trying to do happens, where its not just a simple compiler to fix it.

 
too bad AMD couldn't find a copy of Windows 7 to test on during development
 
[citation][nom]crazypcman[/nom]too bad AMD couldn't find a copy of Windows 7 to test on during development[/citation]

its a new method for threading, as in NEVER DONE BEFORE, you have to understand that, but for some reason people just dont get it.

it may have been done this way in labs and such, im not sure, but consumer, this is the first.
 
[citation][nom]pale paladin[/nom]That isn't to say AMD should not try to be competitive, it only means that when they are innovative they suffer for it. ie: bulldozer[/citation]
hold it right there, there is nothing innovative about bulldozer. it lacks any raw power and has low FP performance. It has a rediculous transistor count for what it achieves and that is because it is not designed by people as much as it was designed by an inefficient automated program. I guess you could call that innovative, but not in a good way.
 
A 10~15% performance increase in real world applications would be great for the FX chips... if they actually do it. But it'll still be generally slower than a cheaper core i5-2600. Guess we'll wait and see.

The FX was such a disappointment (an "8 core" CPU that is slower than intel's 4 core and AMD's older 6core CPUs?!) that I no longer really care. For a $60~120 CPU, AMD is the way to go. For a power system, spend the extra $75~100 for an Intel.

Now, if AMD sold the FX-8150 sold for $200 and called it a Quad Core CPU, it would be respectable. But the i5-2500K sells for $220, its faster and runs a whole lot cooler 95w vs 125w - the FX8150 is $270, ouch.
 
[citation][nom]belardo[/nom]A 10~15% performance increase in real world applications would be great for the FX chips... if they actually do it. But it'll still be generally slower than a cheaper core i5-2600. Guess we'll wait and see.The FX was such a disappointment (an "8 core" CPU that is slower than intel's 4 core and AMD's older 6core CPUs?!) that I no longer really care. For a $60~120 CPU, AMD is the way to go. For a power system, spend the extra $75~100 for an Intel.Now, if AMD sold the FX-8150 sold for $200 and called it a Quad Core CPU, it would be respectable. But the i5-2500K sells for $220, its faster and runs a whole lot cooler 95w vs 125w - the FX8150 is $270, ouch.[/citation]

really its a 4 core cpu with threading, but the thread are more core than logical.
 
Software adapts to the latest technology, Not Technology adapts to the software.
 
[citation][nom]jacekring[/nom]So AMD fails to communicate with Microsoft to get their OS's up to snuff with the Bulldozer's new architecture. And the customers are left holding the bag, now M$ is rushing to get a fix out, months after the processor has hit the shelves.Who's fault is it? M$ for not updating their systems? Or AMD for not pushing M$ for updating their systems?[/citation]

Well, Microsoft for not knowing how to do thread scheduling for many-core CPU's (because 6 core and 8 core processors weren't available when they were making Windows 7 - not exactly their fault though), and AMD for launching before Microsoft had an optimized OS ready. It was just bad timing: too late to get OS optimization, but too early before MS could make said optimizations for the next one.

Windows 8 benchmarks already show these improvements across the board (quad-cores are even much faster on Win8), so Windows 8 scales better for these types of CPU's. The hotfix is a back-port of the scheduling system of Windows 8, so it doesn't mean that you absolutely have to upgrade to get the expected performance out of the CPU, although it's likely that not all CPU optimizations will be backported. Windows 8 has many other kernel optimizations besides just support of Bulldozer.
 
Does anybody know at what point in development does Microsoft lock down kernel (and thread scheduler) code for new OS versions?

The first "beta" is coming in February (nobody knows if there will be more than one), but do they continue doing kernel optimizations into the RC phase?
 
From MS KB about this fix/patch :"AMD and Microsoft are continually working to improve hardware and software for our shared customers. As part of our joint work to optimize the performance of “Bulldozer” architecture-based AMD processors we collaborating on a scheduler update to the Windows 7 code-base. The code associated with this KB is incomplete and should not be used."

What does it mean "incomplete and should not be used"? Rumor has it that this patch was meant to be published in q1 2012 as a 2-part fix but MS decided to publish the first part now. Some sources claim that this first part isn't effective without the 2nd part. Perhaps they are seriously working on a final fix? LOL i used to be AMD fan till this year, then i took an arrow ...
 
[citation][nom]pale paladin[/nom]You are all fools if you don't think that at a root level intel helps M$ optimize W7 for their architecture. The way data is passed and what instruction sets are used for different applications is based on what the x86 chip giant tells them it should be. So in turn Intel's own architecture always has the leg up. That isn't to say AMD should not try to be competitive, it only means that when they are innovative they suffer for it. ie: bulldozer. Then again that is the price AMD, VIA, ... pays for licensing someone else's architecture. They will always be two steps behind even if the innovation they strive for might be better overall it won't be properly optimized. I'm sticking with Intel for a while guys & gals.[/citation]

You, and anyone that actually thinks drivel like this is true, obviously has 0 idea how the industry works. ANYONE can work with microsoft to supply improvements/optimizations for their hardware. They will do anything to make Windows better. If you don't believe that then you're a moron.

Equally, Win7 has been out for the majority of the time AMD has been working on Bulldozer. AMD and Intel both receive preview builds of windows code from microsoft long before MS products hit the shelf. AMD should have seen their CPU sucked during testing and worked to make a performance patch before the CPU shipped out.

Again, if you really think there's some kind of "conspiracy to keep AMD down!" then you're a moron.
 
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