Sunday, November 27th 2011
Bulldozer Beats Politicians As The Biggest Fail
On our front page, we placed a poll in mid-September, ahead of AMD FX Processor family launch (based on the "Bulldozer" architecture). Based on the most plausible specifications and the hype surrounding the products at the time, we had a hunch that neither Bulldozer nor Sandy Bridge-E will meet our readers' expectations. AMD FX Processor family turned out to be a Duke Nukem Forever, clogged in the pipeline for too long (since 2007, as a matter of fact), when it came out, it made a mockery of itself. It's barely faster than its previous generation.
Sandy Bridge-E promised to be a pin-up processor platform that's eons faster than its predecessor, its specs-sheets warranted its hype. As it turns out, although they're the fastest processors, they aren't much faster than previous-generation Westmere six-core chips at multi-threaded applications, and aren't much faster than Sandy Bridge LGA1155 Core i7 processors at gaming and serial loads. We set out to find out which would turn out to be a bigger "fail" (failure, in internet jargon). To stuff the poll up with more options, we experimented with the idea of placing a seemingly-unbeatable poll option "Our Politicians", just to see if either of the two could fail so hard, that politicians end up better. The myth that politicians always win at a failing contest is busted, at least in this case.
At the time of counting today, "Bulldozer" edged past "Our Politicians". The graph above shows the trend of voting chronologically. At the start of polling, people were evenly optimistic about both Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge-E. Politicians were off to a flying start, and although there were a few spikes, their votes per day figure was decreasing. Then by the 7th of October, votes began to increase for Bulldozer (around the time when unofficial benchmark results were doing rounds, reviewers had samples at hand). On 12th October (AMD FX launch day), Bulldozer got a Noah's flood of fail votes. People weren't expecting Bulldozer to be a Sandy Bridge-E killer, but they were at least expecting it to outperform Intel's LGA1155 platform. That was not to be. Despite not really bringing shock and awe to the table that its specifications Sandy Bridge-E managed to be the fastest processors money can buy. This ensured that Sandy Bridge-E didn't fare badly in our poll, few thought it was a fail. Sarah Michelle Gellar? Well, apparently people tolerate her provided they mute their TVs.
In before dragons and grammar tutors.
Sandy Bridge-E promised to be a pin-up processor platform that's eons faster than its predecessor, its specs-sheets warranted its hype. As it turns out, although they're the fastest processors, they aren't much faster than previous-generation Westmere six-core chips at multi-threaded applications, and aren't much faster than Sandy Bridge LGA1155 Core i7 processors at gaming and serial loads. We set out to find out which would turn out to be a bigger "fail" (failure, in internet jargon). To stuff the poll up with more options, we experimented with the idea of placing a seemingly-unbeatable poll option "Our Politicians", just to see if either of the two could fail so hard, that politicians end up better. The myth that politicians always win at a failing contest is busted, at least in this case.
In before dragons and grammar tutors.
93 Comments on Bulldozer Beats Politicians As The Biggest Fail
Bulldozer finally won something!!
:)
ok, so Intel is doing great. they have great cpus and good SSDs and are making a lot of money...
but who the hell are you to say that AMD fails when they are a widely recognized industry leader in many markets. some of their products perform the best in their respective market
just because they havent had the fastest cpu for years doesnt constitute failure... that is just one product. the problem lies in your head because you have attached AMD as soley a cpu company
using your logic I could say that Intel is an epic failure because they have NEVER been able to create jack shit for graphics!
If you look between the lines, I am insinuating that nVidia is the main force behind the push to ARM, and all the chatter about it. As a major player in the market with no CPU, they stand to benfit the most from ARM getting used in Windows.
Of course, admitting FACTS is a good thing...mention of nVidia is bad? We have but 3 major silicon players...Intel, AMD, and nVidia. Very few others make silicon that is used in nearly every PC, except those three, so yes, it's hard to talk about CPU/GPU designs without mentioning nVidia.
Why is that a bad thing? I don't get it. I like to talk about everyone that may have some affect in things like this...ignoring such a large part of the industry seems foolish, as nVidia does weigh in on this subject, quite specifically so, when talking about CPU designs.
I mean, you can say I am biased all you like...I will never deny that. But because I am very open with my bias, it's not an issue...you simply need to consider that bias when reading my comments. I'm not some emotion-less machine that has no personal feelings, and to deny those feelings is asinine.Intel basically owns the entire industry. they are THE major force in nearly every market they have products in, and nearly everyone else marches to the beat of their drum.Not 100%, no. They also make GPUs and chipsets. It's a weird mix not seen elsewhere in the same ratios, and kinda explains why they are having issues. They need to switch focus.
AMD merged with ATI sometimes back, there offices and CEO's manage both video cards and processors. They release platforms via graphics, and processors, and chipset and code-name them.
There not considered to be only a CPU company. Other then the entire bulldozer architecture low performance and disappointment, everything else they have released has been great sense 07-08. People are still running llano CPU's. amd apu's were also a good release for there side.
Intel is also not just a cpu company either, they manufacture Motherboards, CPU's, SSD's. They fail in there own aspects, their greedy, real greedy sometimes. They have never released anything with price in consideration, that being said, the competition is usually slower by minimal percent. Not talking Pentium or value CPU's, a genuine high end model out priced compared to the competition which performs with 90+% of there product.
it quite simply is because they are bundled in a product that uses their own cpu
one of AMD's problems is that Intel has far greater mindshare
My boss would tell me and I would notice that people are really all about the name.
He would not stock much AMD product simply because the people did not approve of the name, tons of customers would always head to "Intel" which we stocked in store much more often basically because of the name.
Intel really does have more mind share, and the more commercials and advertising released, the more AMD needs to push to compete with that.
Intel sounds better to the average ipod smart person then AMD does, still to this day.
But with AMD on the console game, and on Mac's there eventually might be some leveling in quality and appeal to the norm of customers.
I can't forgive Intel for failing, not even once, they've got everything to make things right from the beginning, huge resources, great engineering team, marketing dominance, etc. Still they may fail, they did with the SB chipset bug, but they fixed it on time. Still don't know why they don't put bigger efforts on the GPU side, but I can conclude they don't care/don't need, or they try but they just aren't good at it, despite latest improvements over here and there.