AMDs FX-8150 "Bulldozer" Processor - The reviews are out!

[Arthur]

Prepare to be disappointed.

 

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

Bit-Tech: bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/10/12/amd-fx-8150-review/1

Hexus: hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/32110-amd-bulldozer-fx-8150/

TechReport: techreport.com/articles.x/21813

 

HardOCP:

Gameplay Performance: hardocp.com/article/2011/10/11/amd_bulldozer_fx8150_gameplay_performance_review

Desktop Performance: hardocp.com/article/2011/10/11/amd_bulldozer_fx8150_desktop_performance_review

[flyinghaggis]

Yeah, was just gonna post them up aswell. Really disappointed that despite all the hype it struggles to outperform the equiavlent Intel CPU. The real rubbing of salt in the wound is that it's only on a par with the Intel i7-920 in half of the benchmarks!

 

It's a sad state of affairs when AMD's latest and greatest can't even match the performance of a 3 year old Intel processor !

Edited October 12, 2011 by flyinghaggis

[featured_spectre]

Thing is, AMD will always be weaker on the CPU market due to the way they were perceived in the past.

 

One plus side is thaw they take their time with the chips and they tend to last longer than Intel CPUs in my experience.

[Arthur]

I like AMD a lot (partly because they don't do any of that artificial market segmentation BS that Intel does), but the power consumption is just crazy.

 

http://img.hexus.net/v2/cpu/amd/Dozerbull1/FX8150/PowerL.png

[mrbios]

In the age of attempting to lower energy use while increasing performance, amd have gone in completely the wrong direction in both departments. On the bright side at least i know my 2500k will last me a fair bit longer...at least until Intels release next year anyway lol

 

Complete and total flop of a release that said AMD have been pretty crap ever since their awesome Athlon XP Bartons and the earlier Athlon 64s. Did anyone else ever own the abit NF7-S motherboard? that + a barton 2500 was an overclockers wet dream

[SHimmer45]

used to have a barton 3200, iirc i thiunk i still have it kicking about.

very good bit of kit and design, with a single mided focus which i think is somewhat lacking.

in fairness my work rig is a Athlon 64 and still does the job

[Dave84]

It is interesting that AMD is blaming Windows 7 for the bad performance results. Apparently Windows 7 is not aware of the core modules and the scheduler is putting threads in the wrong cores, so it would be interesting when we see the Windows 8 benchmarks to see if it is actually true.

[ihaveaproblem]

It is interesting that AMD is blaming Windows 7 for the bad performance results. Apparently Windows 7 is not aware of the core modules and the scheduler is putting threads in the wrong cores, so it would be interesting when we see the Windows 8 benchmarks to see if it is actually true.

 

Why don’t they design their CPU's to work with the latest and greatest OS then, which currently is Windows 7. By the time Windows 8 comes out Intel would of released the new generation Ivory bridge CPU's and AMD will be left behind once again.

AMD - Excuses, excuses and a big disapointment after all the delays and hype.

[irsprint84]

I liked my AMD k2 and thunderbird but I think they ve lost it but I appreciate their contribution to get big companies to sotp being lazy like:

 

Firefox with IE (I remember Microsoft saying IE6 would be the last release!)

pentium 4 (urgh!) AMD made intel re-think

ARM and ATOM

MSE, AVG etc.. and Norton and Mcafee (I remember swearing by Mcafee)

[Arthur]

I think it might be too late for AMD to catch up with Intel. They will always be one step ahead.

 

AMD Aims to Improve Bulldozer Performance-per-Watt by Up to 50% by 2014.

The success of AMD’s execution is also conditioned by the success of Globalfoundries. The Steamroller-generation (2013) chips will be made using 28nm process technology, whereas Excavator chips will need to be made using 20nm or thinner technology in 2014. Unfortunately for AMD, in 2014 its arch-rival Intel will have 14nm process technology in its hands and therefore the Excavator@20nm may not be enough to fight the major competitor... (Source)

 

The main problem with the current Bulldozer architecture is that it's very, very late to market. AMD started working on it four years ago in 2007, which is a very long time in the world of desktop processors, so AMD have effectively released a new "old" product. The two important things that it has going for it, are that it scales well with core count and clock speed - those 8GHz overclock marketing demos weren’t completely without merit. What we need to see is AMD improving performance much more than the prediction slide they’ve released, more like 100% or more perhaps, which is not really such an unrealistic target to achieve in three years of design and process improvements. Perhaps discarding this whole architecture and starting afresh with fully discreet cores like on the Phenom might be the way forward? AMD has recently let go some of its top-level management, so perhaps their replacements can turn the company around? (Source)

 

AMDs Roadmap

 

http://i.imgur.com/8DOFi.png

 

 

Intel's Roadmap

 

http://i.imgur.com/SomgW.png

[Michael]

It is interesting that AMD is blaming Windows 7 for the bad performance results. Apparently Windows 7 is not aware of the core modules and the scheduler is putting threads in the wrong cores, so it would be interesting when we see the Windows 8 benchmarks to see if it is actually true.

 

Makes you wonder when they completed all their 'in house' testing, why this wasn't spotted when testing on a typical mainstream system we as customers would use!

 

It's like a company releasing a car and stating the tyres supplied are not suitable for tarmac surfaces. Just what surface did they expect people to drive on?

 

I've been an Intel man for quite a number of years, both desktop and server. Other than the Pentium D line which was rubbish, Intel CPUs are high quality. I've had my Intel E8500 for years now and it's still quick!

[SYNACK]

Why don’t they design their CPU's to work with the latest and greatest OS then, which currently is Windows 7. By the time Windows 8 comes out Intel would of released the new generation Ivory bridge CPU's and AMD will be left behind once again.

AMD - Excuses, excuses and a big disapointment after all the delays and hype.

 

Thats unfair given Intel's latest CPU lines. Under Hyper-V virtialisation the latest round can choke as Windows is not able to cope with the additional bits for faster virtualisation. It sees only half of them and defines them as generic crippling performance and causing instability without hotfixes which only half fix the issue.

 

They both suffer from the same limitations imposed by the current software. Designing for current software would be silly as it would just stagnate progress like continuing full compatibility all the way back to XP because people refuse to upgrade. To develop they need to push the envolope and if they dident you'd probably still be enjoying you 3GHz Pentium core cpu with no MMX and only 32bit instructions.

[Arthur]

In the age of attempting to lower energy use while increasing performance, AMD have gone in completely the wrong direction in both departments.

It gets even worse if you overclock it. At 4.8GHz, the FX-8150 is using 275 watts more than an i5-2500k at 5GHz! Admittedly this is at full load, but even so, it's a lot of electricity to waste.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Poiql.png

[synaesthesia]

I don't think it's so much a case of the Bulldozer's being weak - it's more along the lines of the Core's being so strong. They're decent machines and paired with decent graphics card will still make a great out of the box gaming machine. For anything beyond though I really couldn't recommend the 2500K more.

 

Always was fond of the Barton core chips - wiped the floor with the Pentium's of the time!

[3s-gtech]

I have a feeling that Bulldozer will be like the Phenom line, where the first iteration had some strong aspects but was let down by low clock speeds and high power consumption. I can see it becoming a good budget option as it matures - just like Phenom II. It's currently disappointing though, and I'll stick with Phenom II when budget power is needed.

[Arthur]

It looks like Bulldozer has another issue...

 

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/amd-bulldozer-can-it-get-even-worse/

 

AMD Bulldozer, can it get even worse?

A number of reviewers have reported problems with a Blue Screen Of Death on AMD’s Bulldozer, even with stock settings:

 

http://i.imgur.com/jF5gB.jpg

 

So apparently there is a problem with the multiprocessing in Bulldozer. The interrupt handling can get messed up at times.

[SYNACK]

It looks like Bulldozer has another issue...

 

AMD Bulldozer, can it get even worse? | Scali's blog

 

Thats almost the exact same error the Wetmere EX gets under Hyper-V. In intels case its because of errors on the chip that cause it to randomly spew interupts when some of the cores end up in the C1E sleep state. Its almost like it gets night terrors and can't wake up. In intels case the only way around it for the time being is to simply switch off a bunch of the power saving features making it run about three times as hot.

 

It is probably simmilar with the AMD, either a fab error or a Windows one but you can't be certain without further background on the problem.

[synaesthesia]

This isn't strictly Bulldozer related but we've been lightly testing a Llano board & processor with some impressive results. Out of the box performance was awesome (windows 7 obviously) making our usual X3 boxes look very dated and slow. The clincher, however, was installing a demo of COD Modern Warfare and watching it run at an extremely playable 1920x1080 with no slowdown (default graphical settings). It looked good - it was a mile ahead of the Playstation/Xbox counterparts but with no dedicated graphics card.

These obviously will work well with Windows 7 UI as well as things like SIMS Discover that will harness the power of the APU. The cost was hardly prohibitive either - it was the higher end CPU but ram was 8gb which costs less than a round at the pub, hard drives are pennies per gigabyte.

[Arthur]

It is interesting that AMD is blaming Windows 7 for the bad performance results. Apparently Windows 7 is not aware of the core modules and the scheduler is putting threads in the wrong cores, so it would be interesting when we see the Windows 8 benchmarks to see if it is actually true.

Microsoft released a hotfix (KB2592546) a couple of days ago which fixes the performance issues on Windows 7. I'm sure the three people who have bought Bulldozer CPUs will be very pleased.

 

This article introduces an update that optimizes the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs that are used by Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computers. Currently, the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs is slower than expected. This behavior occurs because the threading logic in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2 is not optimized to use the Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) scheduling feature. This feature was introduced in the Bulldozer family of AMD CPUs.

 

After you install this hotfix, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 fully support AMD Bulldozer CPUs. Therefore, the CPUs operate at the expected performance level.

[Arthur]

Microsoft have pulled the hotfix.

 

Update: We've spoken with an industry source familiar with this situation, and it appears the release of this hotfix was either inadvertent, premature, or both. There is indeed a Bulldozer threading patch for Windows in the works, but it should come in two parts, not just one. The patch that was briefly released is only one portion of the total solution, and it may very well reduce performance if used on its own. We're hearing the full Windows update for Bulldozer performance optimization is scheduled for release in Q1 of 2012. For now, Bulldozer owners, the best thing to do is to sit tight and wait. (Source)