Thursday, January 13th 2011
Bulldozer 50% Faster than Core i7 and Phenom II
Here, take some salt. AMD reportedly gave out performance figures in a presentation to its partners, performance figures seen by DonanimHaber. It is reported that an 8-core processor based on the "Bulldozer" high-performance CPU architecture is pitched by its makers to have 50% higher performance than existing processors such as the Core i7 950 (4 cores, 8 threads), and Phenom II X6 1100T (6 cores). Very little is known about the processor, including at what clock speed the processor was running at, much less what other components were driving the test machine.
Taking this information into account, the said Bulldozer based processor should synthetically even outperform Core i7 980X six-core, Intel's fastest desktop processor in the market. Built from ground-up, the Bulldozer architecture focuses on greater inter-core communication and reconfigured ALU/FPU to achieve higher instructions per clock cycle (IPC) compared to the previous generation K10.5, on which its current Phenom II series processors are based. The processor is backed by new 9-series core logic, and a new AM3+ socket. AMD is expected to unveil this platform a little later this year.
Source:
DonanimHaber
Taking this information into account, the said Bulldozer based processor should synthetically even outperform Core i7 980X six-core, Intel's fastest desktop processor in the market. Built from ground-up, the Bulldozer architecture focuses on greater inter-core communication and reconfigured ALU/FPU to achieve higher instructions per clock cycle (IPC) compared to the previous generation K10.5, on which its current Phenom II series processors are based. The processor is backed by new 9-series core logic, and a new AM3+ socket. AMD is expected to unveil this platform a little later this year.
424 Comments on Bulldozer 50% Faster than Core i7 and Phenom II
However I would have to disagree that you NEED more than 4GB of RAM, and DDR3, at this stage. Those are very high end features with relativley minimal impact on performance, and if you're on a tight budget they don't make sense.
A tight budget means I cannot "dump" money at one time. It means I can dump money over a period of time as I need it.
Or, if you have lots of disposable income, buy an AM3 board now. If this is the case, however, my comments were not aimed at you.
2. I am not a client guy, I don't know about that. This is not from AMD. I don't approve leaks before launch and we also happen to be in our quiet period so this would be a major no-no.
If AMD was to let any performance information go prior to launch, it would come directly from my blog. Any other source is suspect.
It was addressed at the guy I was quoting, who was complaining of a lack of money. You would do well to notice this. He wanted to buy a part that was in no significant way an upgrade to his current PC, then buy a part that was later, by which time the first part would have been cheaper. I think that you would agree that this is inadvisable.
Furthermore, I don't think that, if you have a large amount of money to splurge, doing so on an AMD system would be a bad idea right now.
If you're someone who continuously upgrades your system as you run into performance issues, which it sounds like you are, then you are in a different situation to the guy I was originally insulting, and as such my advise is not relavent. I do this also, although it sounds like I am willing to put up with a much slower system and have much less disposable income.
Then I will by a bulldozer after that.
BTW its no ones bussiness about how or why I or anyone else plans there upgrades, keep your stupid fucking opinions to your self.
Its not a matter of money in my case, more a issue of wanting more chipset capability. I may not upgrade to BD until the FX line is out anyways.
So everybody, STFU about it already, enough is enough.
2.) A 109MB 7000x5443 Tiff. + Main Rig + Script applying 15 filters that takes roughly 3 minutes total to apply. DDR3-1600=179.9s to Complete. DDR3-800=185.7s to Complete. So doubling the memory speed yeilds a ~3% improvement in Photoshop. Of course there is also the fact that DDR2 goes up to 1200MHz, making the transition to DDR3 even smaller than what I've tested... Yeah, you WILL NOT see a large difference. And I didn't even adjust the timings when I switched to DDR3-800, I probably could have tightened them and got the difference down even smaller.
3.) I've done the transition and actually seen the difference, or lack there of. Why are you arguing like you know this for a fact and you are still using DDR2. You've never even tested with DDR3, so how can you argue that it makes a difference like you know it is fact and you've never even tested it? If you don't want to hear our opinion about why your opinion is faulty and wrong, don't post your opinion. Don't bitch about us responding to your opinions, you can take your own advice and keep your opinions to yourself if you don't want others to respond.
I may not post here alot, but threads like these are learning opportunities for me, and bickering about upgrade preferences isn't helping anyone or adding anything. To each his own, leave it at that:).
Everyone does like to upgrade differently, and that's fine, different people have different priorities. However there are some methods that are not sensible for anyone.
Other than that, I think everything's covered above :P
2. You have no idea what I have used. I was an art director in charge of 15+ artists in the past. I've used MANY configurations. Also the Phenom II does not support over 800mhz when using more then 4gigs of RAM. At 4 gigs you are fine. Anything above that is hit and miss. (8+ gigs anyone) Its a well known issue with the memory controller and as you said Photoshop loves RAM.
NT I may not know much but don't argue Photoshop with me. Thats my Dojo. I can send you .psd files that will bring a 980x to its knees.
My point is you cannot judge RAM performance on filter actions. Hell I don't even use filters. They are for armatures. (That wasn't a dig at you. I'm just saying)
Photoshop wants more ram, not faster ram.
DDR2-800 can transfer 6.4GB/s. I'm pretty sure your files aren't much over 1GB (because you would need well over 32GB of RAM to open them correctly).
Maybe you don't understand how much ram a file takes up when it is opened compared to the actual size on disk. A simple 100MB JPEG can use 3GB+ of ram. I believe your problem here is that you have mistaken that DDR2-800 is too slow when in reality windows is using up all of it's available physical memory and resorting to the page file.
You also must not understand how latency works.
The difference between DDR2-800 CAS 4 or 5 and DDR3-1600 CAS 9 is ...nothing. 1066 and 1200 CAS 5 vs 1600 CAS 7-8 is negligible as well.
Buy an AM3 CPU and you should be able to do 1200 with 16GB fine. AM2+'s will have problems with that, yes.
I understand most people don't use Photoshop to make screenprints but I do.
Now what's wrong with that?