AMD FX CPUs (Bulldozer)

[Chewy509]

Looks like the NDAs have been lifted, as there are a few reviews out:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/1

In short, the top end one is equivalent to an i5-2500K (despite having 8 cores running at 3.6GHz), but is priced slightly less. AMD only certify the CPU family on AM3+ sockets, but OEMs may elect to support it on AM3 boards.

I would would have thought the 8 core CPUs would have a quad-channel memory architecture, but AMD went for a dual-channel at a higher clock speed...

I was hoping AMD could get competitive with Intel and it's i7's, but looks like that it not the case this round.

 

[Mercutio]

The thing is, we don't know how much potential is in the architecture yet. They might be specifying a modest part to keep yields high or costs down. "Cheaper than an i5 and with a decent integrated ATI GPU" is still a pretty appealing product if you ask me.

 

[Stereodude]

Somewhere there are a lot of Intel Engineers giggling this morning. 2x as many transistors, a clock speed advantage and a 50% larger die and you get a part that embarrasses itself in single threaded use, and still struggles in multi threaded use. Oh, and it sucks power like a hoover.

 

[Mercutio]

Intel has some rather steep manufacturing advantages, IIRC. One might say it's a amazing that a company a tenth the size of Intel can compete at all.

 

[Pradeep]

The thing is, we don't know how much potential is in the architecture yet. They might be specifying a modest part to keep yields high or costs down. "Cheaper than an i5 and with a decent integrated ATI GPU" is still a pretty appealing product if you ask me.

The FX series doesn't have the integrated GPU of the Fusion line. Trinity will combine GPU with Bulldozer cores sometime in 2012.

Given the pricing I wasn't expecting an i7 slayer, still, think I'll wait out these first gen parts and bide my time till they have some lower power consumption versions as they get to grips with the manufacturing process.

 

[Pradeep]

Intel has some rather steep manufacturing advantages, IIRC. One might say it's a amazing that a company a tenth the size of Intel can compete at all.

Not to mention suitcases stuffed with cash to bribe OEMs like Dell with.

 

[Adcadet]

Barely faster than the Phenom II X6 1100T. Where have I seen this pattern before - oh, yeah, the P4-Netbust introduction. And we know how that went.

 

[Mercutio]

The FX series doesn't have the integrated GPU of the Fusion line. Trinity will combine GPU with Bulldozer cores sometime in 2012.

Do you really think there won't be a decent GPU integrated on the motherboard if there isn't one directly in the CPU?

Actually moving CPU and GPU into one package is kind of a neat trick no matter what. It certainly keeps Intel on its toes.

AD: You're not wrong, but the pattern with AMD is to price stuff so that it stays relevant for its performance level. Getting, say, 93% of the performance of an i3 for 75% of the price certainly (to use a made-up, imaginary example) goes a long way to being the second place player.

 

[BingBangBop]

With this generation's chip being 2x more transistors than an i7 but can only perform as well as an i5 simply means much lower profit margins. The industry is much better served with a strong AMD that competes well rather than a marginal company that can barely keep in business.

I really think this is a sad day for this chip is a sign that AMD is one step closer to the grave.

 

[sechs]

AMD survived for many years with modest performance on the cheap. As long as the chips and their ecosystem remain cheaper than Intel, they will continue.

 

[paugie]

Because AMD comes out with cheaper processors, it will have a customer as long as I am alive.

 

[Chewy509]

Because AMD comes out with cheaper processors, it will have a customer as long as I am alive.

And this is where I think AMD as a whole is targeting it's products. As being a cheaper alternative with good-enough performance for the majority of people.

For the majority of people with a desktop, how many actually play games? (The kind that actually demand top-end i7's)? Less than 20% of the home-user market? Or even less? Heck, how many AAA-title games actually need something better than a mid-level CPU? (Most are GPU bound, not CPU bound).

Couple an AMD CPU with an AMD chipset with an AMD gfx card, you tend to get a well rounded and largely bug-free/reliable platform. May not be the quickest, but bang for buck, it certainly comes out very competitive against the alternatives. (I haven't kept up, but aren't AMD gfx cards the pick to get at the moment, yes nVidia has the fastest solutions, but for a whole lot less money, you can get an AMD gfx card with close-to performance)?

And let's not forget the extreme high-end market... (And I don't mean gaming boxes, I'm talking 4 or 8-way motherboards in cluster configurations doing heavy number crunching work). The majority of these are based on AMD solutions. (The Cray Jaguar is AMD based, only beaten by a supercomputer using nVidia GPUs for number crunching, and a highly optimised SPARC system from Fujitsu. And the Cray is getting an upgrade from the 6-core CPUs to 12-CPUs shortly...).

I don't think AMD is going anyway soon... (unless they get bought out by someone).

 

[Stereodude]

Cheaper and almost as good only works long term if your chip is cheaper to make. It's got a 50% larger die than the i7-2600k and underperforms it. That means it costs more to make and they have to sell it for less. That means less money to put into the next design.

 

[time]

+1

Looks like an absolute disaster to me. The question you need to ask yourself is, "Why would I buy one of these instead of a Phenom X6?". The X6 uses less power and delivers comparable performance (if I read the article right). WTF is AMD management smoking?

And this is in a declining market, where Intel and AMD fight over the scraps.

Paugie, AMD's price advantage is not as great as it used to be, mainly because Intel has decided to go after the low-end market as well. Based on NewEgg pricing, the cheapest dual core Celeron is now $5 less than the cheapest dual core Sempron! And it's faster than the fastest AMD dual core (even Phenom) to boot.

AMD only makes sense at certain price points where there's a gap in the Intel line-up, such as the i3 range. Here, a hex-core or better AMD can perform better for the money - as long as you don't care about it using far more energy. Also, there are cheaper (and inferior quality) motherboards available for some AMD products, but this does not really apply to their new CPUs!

 

[CougTek]

A possible explanation of the Bulldozer debacle.

 

[Chewy509]

WTF is AMD management smoking?

I certainly agree that Bulldozer is a cluster-f*%k, however I think it's more a case that they've invested so much time and money into it, it had to be released.

Also reading more about the architecture, it certainly seems geared to enterprise applications and not the home user market. (Which in itself is a WTF)? But since Bulldozer kicked off 4 years ago, and a lot of the design decision made back then, I don't think they knew what Intel was coming out with today or even in the last 12 months. (Hindsight is certainly a wonderful thing).

Bulldozer is starting to smell a lot like the earlier P4s... as Adcadet has already mentioned.

 

[Chewy509]

A possible explanation of the Bulldozer debacle.

Nice article.

I was certainly wondering where all the transistors went...

 

[Sol]

The benchmarks I've seen suggest that Bulldozer can beat Sandybridge chips in a couple of really specific scenarios, so maybe they'll be good for something.

I've been getting a lot of P4 vibes from what I've been reading about bulldozer, but I'm also remembering AMDs 2900HD chips. They too were huge, hot, and not as fast as they needed to be to make up for that, but with a die shrink and some tweaks the next generation were really good. I'm not claiming that's going to happen here but it's at least possible. And it seems pretty likely that when the server parts hit the market they'll be the cheapest way to get 16-32 cores in a server, and that might count for something in some areas.

 

[CougTek]

I certainly agree that Bulldozer is a cluster-f*%k, however I think it's more a case that they've invested so much time and money into it, it had to be released.

So Bulldozer is AMD's Windows Vista : bloated, late and underwhelming

 

[BingBangBop]

I'm sorry, but I don't buy that non-optimizing as the sole argument. It is possible that that is a factor, but if I add 20% additional performance and deduct 20% size it isn't enough to prevent the chip from still being a cost ineffective dog of a chip.

If I were to speculate, my guess is that they didn't run proper performance simulations when making important design decisions. Things like cache size, cache latency, pipeline throughput. They just made assumptions like throwing more cache will make it faster without considering its latency.

Then there is management of the project. This project has been around a very long time -- Well before the i7 series. Management should have seen the writing on the wall as the project progressed. At some point, they should have a rough idea of likely chip/transistor size and performance. With that data they can then compare it to the market place and if it is going to be unprofitable tell the engineers to fix it, or shut it down and start over. Letting this continue to the end point of releasing it is just plain bad management.

 

[time]

Yup.

 

[BingBangBop]

A reasonable explanation of the causes

 

[Handruin]

AMD's bulldozer flop increases our cost for Intel chips. Thanks AMD for having such an impact with an underwhelming product.