Windows 8: Does AMD's Bulldozer Architecture Benefit?

[Crashman]

Shortly after AMD's Bulldozer architecture launched, AMD had us anticipating a couple of hotfixes that were supposed to improve FX-8150's performance. But Windows 8 was the ultimate goal. Now that the operating system is out, does it help FX-8150?

Windows 8: Does AMD's Bulldozer Architecture Benefit? : Read more

 

[agnickolov]

Of particular interest to me is that compilation with Visual Studio does slow down a bit on Windows 8. Not what the story was about, but still a valuable tidbit...

 

[boogien8]

LOL awesome! the last line of this review is epic!

 

[mayankleoboy1]

O MY GOD ! 2% win for AMD ! I knew Win8 would be the holy grail of BD/PD.

/s

 

[DjEaZy]

... gonna get me a FX 8350 anyway... it's cheep as dirt and i have the platform...

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]boogien8[/nom]LOL awesome! the last line of this review is epic![/citation]That last line is the result of AMD creating unrealistic expectations for Windows 8. Things have gotten somewhat better for AMD since Piledriver launched, it's too bad that this article was written before that launch

 

[amuffin]

!Hype!

 

[silverblue]

I wouldn't mind seeing if, with Windows 8 and the 8350, hardware can take full advantage of the software instead of the other way around. I was a little dubious about blaming Microsoft in the first place - this isn't quite the Vista scheduler and Phenom all over again.

Good article. It does seem that the patches create more problems than they solve, so I'd be inclined to ignore them if I had an FX on Windows 7.

 

[esrever]

Nice to see this finally tested, looks like the performance boost isn't significant enough to matter but at least there is a 1% increase. AMD can use all the minor performance boost they can get at this point.

 

[belardo]

Throw in the Intel i5-3550 and 3570K CPUs with Win7 and Win8 and see what the numbers say... wouldn't that be fair to see the difference as well?

[citation][nom]DjEaZy[/nom]... gonna get me a FX 8350 anyway... it's cheep as dirt and i have the platform...[/citation] Yeah, if you already have the board and memory, its mostly logical. But for someone going for a rebuild... it is not, especially if you live near a Microcenter.

I paid $190 for my i5-3570K CPU, $90 for my Z77 gigabyte motherboard which out-does AMD 900 Series boards. Z77 have native USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, PCIe 3.0... AMD doesn't have PCIe 3.0 until 2014. And unless you get an A-Series CPU, you don't have native USB 3.0 either.

This, an AMD boards are a bit more costly and more complicated.

The OTHER AMD problem is that they are packaging clean CPU coolers with their CPUs... they are loud!! So add $25 for a good replacement. The extra costs for electricity doesn't help.

 

[Guest]

Nice to see this finally tested, looks like the performance boost isn't significant enough to matter but at least there is a 1% increase. AMD can use all the minor performance boost they can get at this point.

The Emperor's New Clothes

 

[ohim]

[citation][nom]belardo[/nom]Throw in the Intel i5-3550 and 3570K CPUs with Win7 and Win8 and see what the numbers say... wouldn't that be fair to see the difference as well? Yeah, if you already have the board and memory, its mostly logical. But for someone going for a rebuild... it is not, especially if you live near a Microcenter.I paid $190 for my i5-3570K CPU, $90 for my Z77 gigabyte motherboard which out-does AMD 900 Series boards. Z77 have native USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, PCIe 3.0... AMD doesn't have PCIe 3.0 until 2014. And unless you get an A-Series CPU, you don't have native USB 3.0 either.This, an AMD boards are a bit more costly and more complicated.The OTHER AMD problem is that they are packaging clean CPU coolers with their CPUs... they are loud!! So add $25 for a good replacement. The extra costs for electricity doesn't help.[/citation]
USB 3.0 might make a choice difference but for now PCIe 3.0 makes no difference.

 

[SteelCity1981]

what i see shows that Windows 8 has no advantage over Windows 7 with applications, which is another reason to add to the other reasons why i'm not upgrading to Windows 8.

 

[qbsinfo]

The Emperor's New Clothes

:lol:

Is anyone going to tell AMD they need to start over?

Any patching or hot fixes is the same as giving someone who is crippled a pair of crutches. And as the article pointed out; it is asinine to expect software to fix a hardware problem. If you think it should or can, then you are not qualified to give an opinion.

Just calling it the way I see it.

 

[The_Trutherizer]

"I eventually talked the programmer into fixing the hardware problem, rather than doggedly looking for a never-quite-finished software solution. AMD, do you see where I’m going with this?"

Then how do you explain the remarkable performance increase with OpenCL compression? Sometimes the software has to meet the hardware halfway.

 

[vitornob]

I remember AMD claiming their cpus are ahead of time. Then some W7 updates was necessary. Then more softwares need update. Then we need piledriver. Then need W8. Now need W8 power-altering updates. All that to make the cpu work properly?
I'm really uncomfortably with that.

 

[ohim]

[citation][nom]SteelCity1981[/nom]what i see shows that Windows 8 has no advantage over Windows 7 with applications, which is another reason to add to the other reasons why i'm not upgrading to Windows 8.[/citation]
why did you even upgrade from windows 98 ? windows XP didn`t had any real advantage over it at start ? or from XP to 7 ? And this topic is about something else , is not call "the reasons why StellCity1981 doesn`t want to upgrade to windows 8, we really don`t care.

 

[willyroc]

TL;DR If you have a choice between Windows 7 and 8, get 8. It's not slower nor faster. Better to be updated, eh?

 

[SteelCity1981]

[citation][nom]ohim[/nom]why did you even upgrade from windows 98 ? windows XP didn`t had any real advantage over it at start ? or from XP to 7 ? And this topic is about something else , is not call "the reasons why StellCity1981 doesn`t want to upgrade to windows 8, we really don`t care.[/citation]

Obv you cared enough to respond. lol

Um lets see for starters nothing supports windows 98 anymore and the fact that windows 98 can't use anything beyond 512mb let alone take advantage of multiple cores, USB 3.0 DirectX 11 and pci-e. I mean that should have been a no brainer question.

Windows XP can't take advantage of directX 11 and its 64bit support is weak at best not to mention Windows XP can't take full advantage of multiple cores and XP's support is being phased out etc..

Does that answer all your ignorant questions?

 

[refillable]

Throw in the Intel i5-3550 and 3570K CPUs with Win7 and Win8 and see what the numbers say... wouldn't that be fair to see the difference as well?

Yeah, if you already have the board and memory, its mostly logical. But for someone going for a rebuild... it is not, especially if you live near a Microcenter.

I paid $190 for my i5-3570K CPU, $90 for my Z77 gigabyte motherboard which out-does AMD 900 Series boards. Z77 have native USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, PCIe 3.0... AMD doesn't have PCIe 3.0 until 2014. And unless you get an A-Series CPU, you don't have native USB 3.0 either.

This, an AMD boards are a bit more costly and more complicated.

The OTHER AMD problem is that they are packaging clean CPU coolers with their CPUs... they are loud!! So add $25 for a good replacement. The extra costs for electricity doesn't help.

I disagree. Generally, yes, an i5-3570k platform is better to make a new build, Especially for a gamer who paid expensively for their electricity. But not if you want to build a workstation, has exclusively ~$200 for a CPU which can render fast and you don't really care about power and noise. I could recommend easily the PD for that user.

Perhaps a 3570k is $190 and Z77 is $90 in microcenter. But who knows that a 8350 can be lower than that or a 970 chipset can be lower. Native USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 is not important, a ~$100 M5A97 R2 has that with an aftermarket controller. PCI-E 3.0 isn't either, because no 3.0 card will be bottlenecked by a 2.0 slot. AMD board are not more complicated and costly, this has been proved by the M5A97 R2. Yes, they have loud coolers, they are not suitable for overclocks but intel stock are not suitable too. It doesn't matter if you don't care of noise.

 

[vitornob]

[citation][nom]The_Trutherizer[/nom]"I eventually talked the programmer into fixing the hardware problem, rather than doggedly looking for a never-quite-finished software solution. AMD, do you see where I’m going with this?"Then how do you explain the remarkable performance increase with OpenCL compression? Sometimes the software has to meet the hardware halfway.[/citation]

Maybe the software met the software?
OpenCL compression might just work better in W8, using whatever cpu, intel or AMD. Can confirm only after see intel cpus comparative, W7 vs W8. If intel cpus are the same using both OS, so point to AMD. If not... well, you know...

 

[ohim]

[citation][nom]SteelCity1981[/nom]Obv you cared enough to respond. lolUm lets see for starters nothing supports windows 98 anymore and the fact that windows 98 can't use anything beyond 512mb let alone take advantage of multiple cores, USB 3.0 DirectX 11 and pci-e. I mean that should have been a no brainer question.Windows XP can't take advantage of directX 11 and its 64bit support is weak at best not to mention Windows XP can't take full advantage of multiple cores and XP's support is being phased out etc.. Does that answer all your ignorant questions?[/citation]You don`t get it, at the time it came out it had no real advantage over the previous OS, XP even ran slower than 98 on old hardware, that was my point.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the review. While the numbers are disappointing at best, I have been looking forward to this review for over a year now. It's nice to finally have the results.

 

[ohim]

So what this review shows us that Microsoft solved the problem with FX chips, the only thing to wait now looking back at the FX-8350 review is that software developers should start optimizing their code for multicore chips since , some applications really get a performance boost from them.

 

[oxiide]

[citation][nom]ohim[/nom]USB 3.0 might make a choice difference but for now PCIe 3.0 makes no difference.[/citation]
Not for MOST of us, no. But for SLI/Crossfire users, 8x/8x PCIe 3.0 is on par with the bandwidth of 16x/16x PCIe 2.0. Not to nitpick, but that's not a small difference for that demographic.