Monday, January 24th 2011

Bulldozer Shines in 3D Gaming and Rendering: AMD
Close to two weeks ago, reports surfaced about AMD claiming that its upcoming "Zambezi" 8-core desktop processor based on the company's new Bulldozer architecture is expected to perform 50% faster than Intel's Core i7 and its own Phenom II X6 processors. The slide forming the basis for the older report surfaced, and it's a little more than a cumulative performance estimate.
Slide #14 from AMD's Desktop Client Solutions presentation to its industry partners reveals that the company went ahead and provided a breakdown on which kinds of applications exactly does its new 8-core chip perform better compared to present-generation processors. The breakdown provides an interesting insight on the architecture itself. To begin with, AMD's 8-core Bulldozer "Zambezi" processor is 1.5X (50%) faster overall compared to Intel Core i7 "Bloomfield" 950, and AMD Phenom II X6 1100T. Breaking down that graph, the processor performs similar to the other chips in media applications, but features huge gains in gaming and 3D rendering, which is where most of its gains are coming from.To put this into perspective, games and 3D graphics applications, which still favour processors with higher clock speeds with lesser number of cores/threads to processors with lesser clock speeds and higher number of cores/threads, performing well on Bulldozer indicates that AMD is concentrating on higher performance per core, in other words, higher instructions per clock (IPC). The modular design of Bulldozer, perhaps, is contributing to high inter-core bandwidth, which helps 3D games that can do with lesser number of cores.
AMD described the Zambezi-powered "Scorpius" enthusiast desktop platform to have "the best graphics features and performance". A comparative table also reminds us that apart from the radical design, Bulldozer might benefit from a vastly upgraded SIMD instruction set compared to the previous generation. Bulldozer packs SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, and AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions). With socket AM3+ motherboards already seeing the light of the day in pre-release photo shoots, AMD's new processor doesn't seem too far.
Source:
DonanimHaber
Slide #14 from AMD's Desktop Client Solutions presentation to its industry partners reveals that the company went ahead and provided a breakdown on which kinds of applications exactly does its new 8-core chip perform better compared to present-generation processors. The breakdown provides an interesting insight on the architecture itself. To begin with, AMD's 8-core Bulldozer "Zambezi" processor is 1.5X (50%) faster overall compared to Intel Core i7 "Bloomfield" 950, and AMD Phenom II X6 1100T. Breaking down that graph, the processor performs similar to the other chips in media applications, but features huge gains in gaming and 3D rendering, which is where most of its gains are coming from.To put this into perspective, games and 3D graphics applications, which still favour processors with higher clock speeds with lesser number of cores/threads to processors with lesser clock speeds and higher number of cores/threads, performing well on Bulldozer indicates that AMD is concentrating on higher performance per core, in other words, higher instructions per clock (IPC). The modular design of Bulldozer, perhaps, is contributing to high inter-core bandwidth, which helps 3D games that can do with lesser number of cores.
AMD described the Zambezi-powered "Scorpius" enthusiast desktop platform to have "the best graphics features and performance". A comparative table also reminds us that apart from the radical design, Bulldozer might benefit from a vastly upgraded SIMD instruction set compared to the previous generation. Bulldozer packs SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, and AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions). With socket AM3+ motherboards already seeing the light of the day in pre-release photo shoots, AMD's new processor doesn't seem too far.
122 Comments on Bulldozer Shines in 3D Gaming and Rendering: AMD
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Would be nice to see some client side info however
hint hint.
And again, I'm not saying the 540 is an amazing super great processor that everyone should buy over AMDs offerings. I'm saying that the idea that AMD is better price for the buck in the areas the compete in isn't a given fact. Intel stays pretty competitive going down into the lower end. Yeah, if you believe this, I pitty you. This is coming from someone that paid $900 for an AMD processor, AMD prices their products where they need to be to sell. Don't kid yourself and think that AMD would still be selling their highend processors at $300 if they were on top and Intel wasn't. They sell their processors at low prices because they have to, because that is where they perform. You aren't getting incredible bang for the buck by going with AMD, you are just getting a cheaper processor that doesn't perform as well, but performs good enough for you to not notice. AMD-Because the $99 quad-core performed worse than Intels $99 dual-cores. But minor details like that don't mater, I'VE GOT FOR CORES AND YOU DON'T! HAHA Sweet spot if you consider only Intels current generation, but since Intel kept that last generation going to compete with AMD's "sweet spot", Intel still had that title...they just held it with the last generation products that were still competiting with AMDs current gen.:laugh: Exactly, that is my point. Intel competes very well in the middle-ground. The only area that AMD really shines is low-end, and even there Intel's Celerons compete pretty well, they just don't have something to compete with the single cores from AMD.(but really, would you recommend a single core to anyone today?) But, honestly, once you get down this low, most people buying here don't care about a few percentage points difference, it really won't help them checking their email any faster, and won't let them watch movies any better. Where AMD shines in the low end market is their integrated graphics, they really do walk all over Intel, who are still relying on the G31/G41 chipset in this market. I expect the same, but I fear that people are getting their hopes up and over hyping what Bulldozer will really do.
But I digress as synthetic benchmarks are mostly crap IMO.
2. Them adjusting price based on compared performance is exactly what I was talking about with the Intel Inflation comment. And yeah, I kinda do believe that if AMD had the top of the heap processor it would as over priced as Intel. I don't think it would be $300 range, but I seriously doubt it would be in the $1000+ range either.
Come on AMD, that's a crock and you know it.
My new i7 950 quad core from Intel cost $280.00.
I only built AMD systems for 10 years and I made the decision to go with Intel for my current build. I made that choice because Intel had a great product. This is also the first time I have had an SLI setup. I can say I am not loyal to either camp at this time but will make future decisions based on need and cost.
What is of interest to me now is Tri channel memory systems, will it last or go away like Rambus memory? Will dual channel win out? AMD has stayed with Dual channel but right now Tri channel feels like it was an experiment for a few years like Rambus.
While the CPU's are getting faster, memory does not seem to be keeping pace...almost disproportionately.
While we all would like the next best thing most of us don't need it, we just like to tinker a bit. To that end, all we can do is wait and see.
I am interested to see 5GHz on Air. That would make us all...Buy..Buy..Buy.
For one, AMD came up with the idea of an APU for desktop computing, and in the time it took for AMD to rave on about it and produce nothing, Intel built a so-called APU, TWICE. Yes the GPU is rubbish but can you honestly tell me the video encoder/decoder that uses the GPU in Sandy Bridge isn't amazing? Unless ALL the figures that have been mentioned so far are a major underestimation, I can see AMD Fusion become AMD Flop.
Besides, this slide is released by AMD, leaked yes, but it's still from AMD. That still means the information in this should be taken as an exaggeration and that this will in fact be HIGHER than what we should expect.
And anyways, was I ever taking a jab at JF-AMD? No. I posted my comment straight after reading the article. It wasn't until after I read the thread that I saw his posts.
Besides he said himself: So how does he know that it's not official information?
That is the stock AMD template, but I just can't vouch for any slides that I did not create.
We did change our template in January with the launch of the APU, so if it is an AMD slide it would have been from last year. The dates auto populate.
Everyone should be happy that there is lots of competition and new products are coming out. They should want every product to be better than what they are expecting, not worse.
Bad products lead to complacency, not innovation.
If a company shows such indifference to laws and good sales practices, as Intel has been, that company does not get my $$$ no matter how good their product is.