Anyone else disappointed with Faildozer?

[insilica]

I just can't believe what a flop this Bulldozer has been ... so gutted!

Reviews linked to the following post over at OCUK:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18328158

My computer is so old, guess I will jump into bed with SandyBridge-E

[Lanx]

oh thanks for the update lol, i wanted a new computer in september and with delay after delay of amd i gave up... time to read articles... but is there a quick summary? sounds like bulldozer didn't meet expectations? (i figured as much)

[insilica]

I'm going to say tomshardware gives a great summary and a very good review of  FX 8150

Summary:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-24.html

Step by step analysis:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043.html

[Lanx]

Since we've never had an FX-6100 or FX-4100 processor in our possession we also don't know if you'll be able to 'unlock' hidden cores or how well they will overclock.

this is what i'll wait for i guess, i love unlocking hidden stuff, just feels so cool, i have amd phenom2 dual core unlocked to 4 and running at 3.5 (i keep it low for noise). i guess once that's been fully tested i'll jump on it.

[flyball]

it sounds fine for multithreaded applications and might be good for servers but it sucks for single threaded apps and the giant icc/msvc conspiracy won't help amd's case

[Lanx]

got a link for the icc/msvc thing? put that into google and got all kinds of weird links.

[flyball]

got a link for the icc/msvc thing? put that into google and got all kinds of weird links.

http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49#49

[flyball]

got a link for the icc/msvc thing? put that into google and got all kinds of weird links.

here
http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49#49

[slueth]

It failed to meet my expectations.  It didn't even beat sandy.  I expected at least a few months of glory before ivy came but it couldn't even do that.  Oh well, it is priced accordingly.  Don't even overclock it lol, waste of electricity.

[dubkatz]

Yeah bulldozer was a messed up. Was expecting it to beat my current setup so it go inline with my upgrade before end of year, but even the top of the range BD ATM has trouble matching performance from an i7 920, and that's a 2 year old product.

[litster]

I have a i7 920 over clocked to 3.8 GHz with 8 hardware threads and 12GB of RAM.  It's been 2 years and I think it could last for 3 more years.  The CPU has never been a bottleneck for me.  Bulldozer not meeting expectation is a good thing, so we don't have to go upgrade until something truly great comes around.

[Brodie337]

Here's from a moderator's post at OCN... I don't know how much I trust it, but still:

Supposedly information that goes to the L1 cache, sometimes gets corrupt and gets resent again in Bulldozer (that's a bad thing). It could potentially increase power draw, and lower performance significantly (which we have seen). Supposedly there was an MS Hotfix released yesterday to resolve the issue. Keep in mind that the reviews we've seen were all done a week or more ago easily.

[flyball]

got a link for the icc/msvc thing? put that into google and got all kinds of weird links.

google "amd icc" i cant post links

[nar]

Wasn't Bulldozer the architecture AMD designed to have the GPU not only integrated in, but helping with normal processing?

Well now I understand what my friends who were interns at AMD meant when they said the floor that was focused on testing and designing the graphics cards where always noisy but there wasn't a single voice at all on the floor that helped with testing and benchmarking CPUs

[RickyJ]

The Bulldozer they announced years ago is not the same Bulldozer that we have now, that's been known by the hardware scene for quite a while.  I'm pretty disappointed that the FX8150 can't even beat the X6-1100T in several tests.

Oh well, there's still more life in my i7-920 @ 4.2GHz with Hyperthreading.  My pair of GTX285's aren't quite long in the tooth yet, I only game at 1920x1200.

nar, perhaps that's because the graphics floor is still staffed by the nice Canadians from ATI?

[Lanx]

FX-6100 or FX-4100, unlocked to 8cores will be the saving grace!

[Malphas]

I didn't expect it to beat Sandy Bridge at the upper levels but I thought it would be a competitive alternative in the mid range, possibly at better price points.  Instead it seems to barely keep up with Wolfdale, except in heavily multithreaded applications.  Pathetic.

[Brodie337]

I believe everyone is being too quick to hate on it. I find it more than a bit fishy that sites like Hardware Heaven and Guru3D can see the 8150 more or less matching or slightly beating a 2600K and sites like Hardware Canucks show it as a failure. Shouldn't it be consistently bad? Or consistently good?

Needs more investigation methinks

[flyball]

I believe everyone is being too quick to hate on it. I find it more than a bit fishy that sites like Hardware Heaven and Guru3D can see the 8150 more or less matching or slightly beating a 2600K and sites like Hardware Canucks show it as a failure. Shouldn't it be consistently bad? Or consistently good?

Needs more investigation methinks

i looked at the hardware heaven review and it looks like they have a bunch of metrics that dont really matter (game performance for example, where the numbers are so close that performance is probably gpu-limited) and multi-core/thread benchmarks where intel stomps it (mp3 encoding where the sandy bridge chip is ~25% faster).

and besides performance, don't forget that the bulldozer chip uses like double the power with a similar clock to the i7 and goes up to 400W when overclocked

[Brodie337]

i looked at the hardware heaven review and it looks like they have a bunch of metrics that dont really matter (game performance for example, where the numbers are so close that performance is probably gpu-limited) and multi-core/thread benchmarks where intel stomps it (mp3 encoding where the sandy bridge chip is ~25% faster).

and besides performance, don't forget that the bulldozer chip uses like double the power with a similar clock to the i7 and goes up to 400W when overclocked

Again, that could be the result of software issues. I just find it hard to believe that AMD would go so far backwards.

[flyball]

feel free to buy one and report back

[Brodie337]

Not till I know what's going on

[Internetlad]

It's a niche product, i've never favoured cores over clocks anyways. I was hesistant to believe the hype of 4.5 ghz stock when it was reported. For multithreaded apps it will be good for the price. For single thread games an i5 2500 beats it for 50 bucks less.

It's not an outright failure, it at least proves that AMD can still make a splash in the high end, as well as own the low end. It debuted with the same issue as Duke Nukem Forever, just because it didn't blow the doors off doesn't mean it was a failure. Lots of people waited a long time for it, and when it didn't do everything they'd heard over the X years of waiting, of course they'd be ticked that they didn't just go ahead and get something else in the meantime.

Either way, I picked up a 2500k, and a friend picked up an FX BD core, we're both happy with our machines so far. It's all about expectations and usage.