Windows 8: Does AMD's Bulldozer Architecture Benefit?

[cookoy]

Very good article. Hardware issues require a hardware solution. Software fixes are at best temporary workaround solutions. Sometimes new drivers will give better performance but they seem to fix or improve inefficient software codes rather than fix hardware issues. The article's last paragraph sums this up quite well.

 

[warezme]

The answer to this multipage article could have been answered in one word... No. next

 

[BSMonitor]

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.

Yeah, that would be true if it performed significantly better for that power, but it doesn't. If you don't care about power then you overclock the i5-3570K to the same power levels of the PD, and the PD performance becomes a joke...

 

[maxinexus]

PD for comparison would be great. Was expecting better results but it is what it is. Just got $40 update Win8 and looking forward to it.

 

[spookyman]

Hmm guess I will I have to stick with my crappy Intel I5 3570k processor

 

[wilsonkf]

In the bulldozer review, Starcraft 2 and WoW were used as benchmark - and the difference is significant. Any follow up on this? I suppose this review should also find out which kind of games / applications do benefit.

 

[proffet]

[citation][nom]looniam[/nom]The Emperor's New Clothes[/citation]
:lol: that's epic...
[citation][nom]vitornob[/nom]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.[/citation]
amen..

 

[colson79]

Personally if I were building new, I would go intel without any hesitation. The platform is better in almost every way. But of of all the reasons to pick intel over AMD saving money on my electric bill isn't even a consideration. I will try and find the article, but people are talking about the power savings like it is going to be a big deal, but the numbers come out to be a couple of dollars difference in electricity cost over an entire year between the AMD and intel CPU's. Less than a buck a month.

 

[gto127]

This is off subject but I would like to see benchmarks of 4 core piledriver vs 4 core trinity at the same clock to see how much improvement the piledriver would have both using AMD 7770Vid card. I haven't seen comparison anywhere. If anyone has any links pleae let me know. I'm trying to decide between the 2 for a low end build.

 

[CaedenV]

it is one thing to buy something that will have what you hope is good software support down the road over the life of your machine, and quite another to buy a machine that will hopefully get better down the road.

AMD released 64bit CPUs for YEARS before anyone made a mainstream 64bit OS as a way to 'future proof' their chips, but by the time 64bit became available the rest of the platform was so dated that nothing came of it.

AMD released duel core CPUs years before any software (except the OS) could take advantage of it, and again, by the time games started using them these first gen attemtps were too old to be useful.

With bulldozer they tried this again, and yet again, while the architecture is truly ahead of it's time, it is simply not useful in that it had/has no real software support. But this time it was AMD's own internal issue of gutting the CPU of the cache that is needed to feed the architecture, forcing it to go back to reload information form slower caches, and slowing everything down dramatically. Hopefully they get things right going forward.

 

[designasaurus]

Okay, but when the Singularity happens, continuously evolving machine intelligences will make a Windows 9001 that PROPERLY schedules Bulldozer and gives it the 250 (million)% performance boost that it is TRULY capable of. You just have to be patient. This architecture is so far ahead of its time that it cannot be comprehended by human minds. YOU'LL SEE! JUST YOU WAIT!

 

[pcman911]

It would be nice to see a comparison with Windows 8 and a similar priced Ivy Bridge product as well.

 

[rds1220]

Our testing shows that the FX-8150’s performance doesn't change much at all in the shift from Windows 7 to Windows 8. 

Any one could have told you that. I've said it a million times already no hotfixes or Windows 8 is going to magically make Bulldozer or Piledriver a great CPU. Software can not and will not fix a hardware problem least of which a crappy slow IPC.

 

[proffet]

It would be nice to see a comparison with Windows 8 and a similar priced Ivy Bridge product as well.

why.?
but you will anyways because lots of sites said they will bench with win8 from now on as well as win7.
it's not about that however, it's about the win7 scheduler concerning FX-Bulldozer and it's poor performance.
win7 released patches/fixes but the word was (mostly by AMD and it's fanboi following) that the full scheduling fix
in win8 was going to make the (at first estimated) 10-15% performance boost with correct scheduling.

now with that being said, after reading the article, how do you feel about it now.?
Ivy in this case has nothing to do with this at all.

thanks for coming out....

 

[Reynod]

Nice work crashman ... you fanboi !!

 

[lradunovic77]

Another proof what Window 8 is pile of crap bullshit with almost no improvements over Windows 7 but rather broken UI. Windows 8 -> Windows 7 SP2 with broken UI and removed Aero among other things.

 

[littleleo]

So many hoped Windows 8 would set their AMD FX CPUs free. What a utter disappointment, AMD seems to have lost the mojo it once enjoyed. Now they can only offer sub par CPUs and a cheaper price. FM1 and FM2 and FX sockets why do they need so many different sockets and there is no good upgrade path compared to Intel. None of their socket are compatible like the old days when you could go from a AM2 to a AM2+ to a AM3 to a AM3+. It's like Intel and AMD have exchanged places. With the Intel 1155 Socket you can go from a Celeron to a Pentium, to a i3, to a i5, to a i7. And from a 2nd Generation Sandy Bridge to the 3rd generation Ivy Bridge. AMD just seems lost it. I used to recommend AMD as a smart buy I don't think it's the good choice it once was. You now see huge layoffs at AMD so the public feels the same way. We may see AMD closing down in a year maybe 2 at the most if they don't right the ship fast.

 

[f-14]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]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[/citation]

what i garnered from the results yet again is AMD needs to fix their FSB memory problem more than anything else including a dual gpu video card.

AMD fell on their collective buts when they let intel take the FSB crown.

not much point in dumping more cores into a product when they aren't even fully utilized.

the smart thing to do would be capitalize on what is working and that is the FSB.

programmers are refusing to change as far as threading and scheduling making everything else wasted effort as reflected in the ToC tables.

a nice analogy would be the USAF sending F-22's in america to bomb afganistan with nothing but F-22's to stop a counter attack.
50-14,000 F-22's cant complete their missions quick enough when they are restricted to 4 very slow refueling tankers in trying to get there.

then to top it off the F-22's can only hold 4 GBU bombs. 1 B-52H or 2 B-1B's could get the job done in one mission albeit a bit slower. an EF2000 would carry 6 GBU's and have a larger fuel tank and need less refueling (2-3 times vs the 15 it would take each F-22)

 

[alidan]

question

didnt amd somewhat fix bulldozer with their newer cpu at around 200$ that is about an i5 in performance but can tangle with an i7 in some cases?

 

[nforce4max]

May as well stay with Vista and Win 7 given what little performance advantages that Win 8 brings on both AMD and Intel platforms.

 

[jacobdrj]

At this point, for laptops, and depending on budgets, for students who don't game, I tell them to get the cheapest Intel Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge system, swap in an SSD and max out the RAM. A student who games, I always recommend an AMD Quad Core APU solution, same SSD/RAM stipulations...
For desktops, those who game and are on a budget, it is still an AMD Quad Core APU... Just in case they want to run Google Earth smoothly, or are secret WoW people...

Intel, I only recommend to power users, with an articulately defined need for discrete graphics and/or more CPU juice like photo/video editing...

 

[hannibal]

Have those updates to the win7 been put on those auto updates? So is win7 now handling the sheduling better than it was 2 years ago? Or is it still having problems in utilising bulldoser cores? And those same problems remains in win8? Or they allready have them corrected in win7 and win8 just follow the trend?

But all in all this says the same as with Intel prosessors. If you have win7, there is no urgent need to upgrade, if you have winXP, it may be the time to move on...

 

[Wisecracker]

AMD is in the mid-point of a unified memory architecture and controller for CPU cores and GPU shaders, operating as a *SIMD Engine Array* in GPGPU in co-operation with the integer CPU cores.

Interestingly enough, the ol' reliable 990X-FX series chipsets include IOMMU support which, given the potential of Steamroller cores and memory-controller/UNB integration in step 4 of the HSA arch, bodes well for AMD.

This being the case, I suspect they would like a little cooperation with the hardware vendors, too, in addition to co-operation from the OS and application software programmers would be nice.

To imply otherwise in the closing line of the article is simply flinging poo, uncalled for, and questions the objectivity of the author.

Also interesting is HSA with IOMMU, in combination with a quad-channel memory controller, and its pending integration with DDR4 ...

The DDR4 architecture is an 8n prefetch with two or four selectable bank groups. This design will permit the DDR4 memory devices to have separate activation, read, write or refresh operations underway in each unique bank group.... In addition, DDR4 has been designed in such a way that stacked memory devices... with stacks of up to 8 memory devices presenting only a single signal load.

Giggity. I see what they are trying to do. Each system device has recognized, mapped address space via the controller and UNB.

 

[ohim]

[citation][nom]oxiide[/nom]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.[/citation]
Somebody willing to get 2-3 video cards in a system for sure is not in the "budget" system building and for sure he won`t be looking in the range of FX or i5 series CPU ... so that is out of the way, and this sector of consumers usually represents a small number of consumers, so missing PCIe 3.0 is not that bad for AMD for now.

 

[deanjo]

[citation][nom]ohim[/nom]Somebody willing to get 2-3 video cards in a system for sure is not in the "budget" system building and for sure he won`t be looking in the range of FX or i5 series CPU ... so that is out of the way, and this sector of consumers usually represents a small number of consumers, so missing PCIe 3.0 is not that bad for AMD for now.[/citation]

It's not only multicard setups that can use PCI-e 3.0. A single card also benefits if you are doing GPU computing where the bus can quickly become a bottleneck.