Thursday, December 15th 2011
AMD 'Bulldozer' gets an Update from Microsoft.
Today Windows updater may have brought "Bulldozer" users a little surprise. A hotfix that increases the AMD flagship processors performance. As this "hotfix" is bleeding edge news any benchmarks have yet to be seen but this confirms Windows 7 was in fact hampering "Bulldozer" from performing at 100% in all prior benches. What percentage it was previously performing at has yet to be determined. Here is a small snippet from the Hotfix release notes.
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.You can download the Hotfix here.
139 Comments on AMD 'Bulldozer' gets an Update from Microsoft.
So far though, I'm not impressed at all :laugh:
GPUs need optimisations both on games patches and drivers because you have 20 different GPUs per brand and you have 100's of games. It's 1 CPU and 1 OS. You have to have it sorted out before launch, no f* excuses.
5+ years in development, 2-3 delays. You'd think that they should have worked with MS for the "next" OS don't you? I do. Win 7 has been in development for a far shorted period than BD. If Win 7 did not have a proper scheduler who's mistake is that? Hell considering the delays Vista had to use the fixed scheduler, not Win 7, let alone 8.
EDIT: If yu think I'm kind of angry. Of course I am. It didn't take too long to release this fix after launch, so it does not seem like it was to difficult which makes all of the above 100 times worse. Now let's see if it does improve anything. I hope so. Does not look like it does improve much from what I read on this thread.
Bloody! Brilliant!
Didn't know what else to test that was quick :p
With WinRAR, I found the results don't change much, if at all, after the third test run.
20 GPU models, 100's games, 1000's threads, 1-2 years max to work with game developers, realistically 3 months.
vs
1 CPU, couple of OS, 8 threads, 5+ years development time for both the CPU and the OS... NO EXCUSES.
Intel's HyperThreading get same treatment by Windows kernel out of the box.
Hyper threading is ( VERY simplified explanation) HW based thread scheduling, it still only executes 1 thread at a time per core.
Say for example you had a single core with hyper-threading what would be happening is hyper-threading schedules the threads in such a way that it bounces between the two of them, like putting the threads in a nice orderly que.
Where as AMDS approach it can actually execute both threads at once.
This is why everyone got their pants wet at it as it was supposed to be 25-30% increase in transistors for 80% of the performance or so.
But well basically they didn't achieve it, vs the original phenom II x 4 they done pretty well
But compared to the thurban they done really badly by simply adding two extra cores they would of hit the same 1.2 billion transistors you'll find in bulldozer.
Basically if bulldozer was never delayed it would of done quite well and been a very impressive chip.
How ever I've NO idea why they didn't adjust the design, must of already committed to much to the design.
For x264 HD BENCHMARK 4.0
before fix
Results for x264.exe r1913
==========================
Pass 1
------
encoded 1442 frames, 114.26 fps, 3913.30 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 114.40 fps, 3913.30 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 113.70 fps, 3913.30 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 112.87 fps, 3913.30 kb/s
Pass 2
------
encoded 1442 frames, 28.00 fps, 3959.17 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 27.92 fps, 3958.75 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 28.02 fps, 3959.86 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 27.93 fps, 3960.67 kb/s
After fix
Results for x264.exe r1913
==========================
Pass 1
------
encoded 1442 frames, 119.43 fps, 3913.30 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 119.27 fps, 3913.30 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 118.96 fps, 3913.30 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 121.78 fps, 3913.30 kb/s
Pass 2
------
encoded 1442 frames, 31.42 fps, 3958.43 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 31.49 fps, 3958.93 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 31.53 fps, 3959.72 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 31.56 fps, 3959.45 kb/s
-------------------------------------------------
Luxmark 1.0 64bit Native CPU
Before
After
Luxmark 1.0 64bit OpenCL CPU
Before
After
Somehow it is working 5%-10% faster
Ö
Oh and I find it curious that nobody mentioned the fact that M$ (and possibly AMD) now consider their Bulldozer module thingy a variant of SMT ("HyperThreading in Intel lingo) whereas they were OHNOOMFGDUDEtotally8corzZ before. Had they toned down their marketing bullshit prior to launch, the dissapointment would have been a lot smaller (it doesn't perform that bad for a 4C HT chip which needs its first generation quirks ironed out).
Test rig: (all stock)
FX-8120
Asus M5A990 Evo
12 gig DDR3@ 1600MHz
3850 crossfire
OCZ vertex plus latest FW (3.55)
1010w OCZ gameXtreme
Windows 7 Ultimate Retail x64
Results:
PC mark vantage:
No service pack: 11501
With SP1: 11462
With SP1 And hotfix: 11250
Cinebench R11.5:
No service pack: 5.11
With SP1: 5.7
With SP1 and hotfix: 5.11
NovaBench:
No service pack: 1021
With SP1: 941
With SP1 and hotfix: 967
Winrar:
No service pack: 2571
With SP1: 3881
With SP1 and hotfix: 2730
Back to no service pack for me I think. Screen shots were taken for proof if ya wanna see them.
Come to think of it my bets have been crap of late. Not going to hold my breath.
EDIT: I paid for both winrar and PC mark just to know, I am a heartbeat off buying batman :ac to test.
Anyway I'm just commenting to say how useless a comment like that really is and because I've seen you making similar comments plenty of times, here and on Fudzilla a couple of times iirc (or someone with the same nick anyway, but I dobt it).
Just because you have no problems does not mean problems don't exist.
I've never been robbed, or attacked so crime surely does not exist?
I don't have cancer or AIDS, hence they don't exist? They are not a problem that needs to be fixed?
So tell me, should I go and post that I don't have AIDS in every related thread on the entire internet, so as to make clear... what?
I think this is where they're going with the scheduler. Now, that terrible sub-optimal case doesn't always happen, but it can happen. This patch will try and severely reduce the occurrence of such scheduling, and hopefully schedule as few modules as possible to engage turbo core.