Wednesday, January 11th 2012

New Windows 7 Bulldozer Patches Available.

Very quietly Microsoft has released two new patches available for the Bulldozer platform. According to the AMD blog these patches seem to offer little more then a 10% boost but the do improve over all performance. This is what Adam Kozak a product marketing manager at AMD had to say,

"Some of you may remember that AMD FX processors use a unique dual-core module architecture codenamed "Bulldozer", which current versions of Windows 7 were not specifically architected to utilize. In essence, for those with an AMD FX-8150 Processor, for example, Windows 7 sees the eight available cores and randomly assigns threads to them.

In initial testing of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system, we've seen performance improvements of up to 10% in some applications, when compared to Windows 7. This is because the system correctly recognizes the AMD FX processor architecture and cores. Thanks to close collaboration between Microsoft and AMD, Microsoft recently completed back-porting some of the Windows 8 scheduler code for AMD FX processors into a hotfix for Windows 7."

Here are the directions given by Adam Kozak,
So if you have an AMD FX processor, here's what you can do to update your version of Windows 7:

1) Download the scheduler update (KB2645594) and install. This will tell the scheduler that your AMD FX processor contains dual-core modules (in fact this is similar to the SMT path that the other guys use). In essence, threads 1-4 now get assigned to their own module first.

2) Download the core parking scheduler update (KB2646060) and install. This will prevent Windows 7 shutting down unused cores prematurely when there are threads to be assigned (there's a performance penalty parking and then un-parking a core).

The best possible cases for improvement are applications that use ½ cores in your AMD FX processor. In our testing using the AMD FX-8150 processor, we found the best improvement in wPrime, Left 4 Dead 2, and Lost Planet. Below you'll find links to the patches:

Patch 1
Patch 2
Source: AMD Blog
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105 Comments on New Windows 7 Bulldozer Patches Available.

#101
Aquinus
Resident Wat-man
clncainfx4170-8gig ram-asus crosshaire v5 win7-64bit,when first installed windows it scored two lower than before7.5-7.3, have installed the two patches still the same score 7.3 no improvement at all,we can only hope they get it right before christmas…
I wouldn't trust the Windows experience score as a good measure of performance.
Posted on Reply
#102
clncain
so what is the best way to see if the cpu is running like it says on the box
Posted on Reply
#103
Aquinus
Resident Wat-man
clncainso what is the best way to see if the cpu is running like it says on the box
What do you mean? CPUs don't have benchmarks on the box. ;)

You could use CPU-Z or ThrottleStop to find out what your CPU is clocked at. Maybe WPrime for a performance comparison? This doesn't help though because it sounds like you already installed the patches. Generally speaking, the performance benefits aren't typically noticeable by a human user and only benefits in specific cases.
Posted on Reply
#104
clncain
we need to benchmark the cpu so all can see what it performs at and where you can compaire your system
Posted on Reply
#105
brandonwh64
Addicted to Bacon and StarCrunches!!!
I don't see a "Windows Patch" fixing bulldozer. It will take a whole new CPU structure to do that.
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