AMD's Bulldozer Disappoints: Why That's Good News
By Bruce Gain, PCWorld
AMD's latest-and-greatest chip may lag slightly behind Intel’s competing Core i5, as initial PCWorld performance-testing indicates. But these disappointing results hide benefits that AMD's "Bulldozer" FX CPU will likely offer, especially for cost-conscious
The cost is the same, and with power consumption for running the processor, and effectively cooling it for half they year as that 200Watts of heat have to go somewhere in the summer, so 200W of direct load on a A/C unit times the number of processors and system efficiency for the whole machine actually makes this cost more ICO (Initial Cost of Ownership) and TCP (Total Cost of Ownership) So sorry, there is no savings. Besides, the fact is companies who are running enough of these to warrant worrying about thread/core count wouldn't be running this anyway, they run servers with two or four CPU's with multiple cores. So everything in this paragraph is untrue. small businesses.
AMD Bulldozer The issue is that most CPU-performance tests don't reflect the potential computational power offered by FX, which has up to eight cores, depending on the version. Sure, computationally-wise, preliminary synthetic tests, such as PCMark 7 and Cinebench, reflect real-world computing performance and indicate that the FX lags in comparison with Intel’s Core i5. That's what PCWorld's tests showed after running the four-core FX-4100 through the paces.
Actually most of the high end software they DIDN'T test with is capable of using more than one or two threads. A friend is attending the Art Institute in Portland for editing, and his father runs a editing studio, and runs two and four way boxes for his editing with Premiere Pro http://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS9F936D13-E76A-41e4-BF8F-577132AB4723a.html Just in case you can't google it yourself.
Why can’t the FX’ multi-core design crank past Intel’s Core i5 in these tests? Most of these tests are largely geared for CPUs with two or fewer cores. Software makers also have yet to bring to market applications that will take advantage of FX multi-core design for multi-threading tasks.
So we see above that software that actually USES multi-core/multi-threading could use all the cores, but the performance still sucks. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,review-32295-23.html Here they actually use the multi-core capable software in both Windows 7, and 8 and......it slows DOWN. The games below do reflect some significant games, but with Windows 8 still in Alpha, who knows what the actual performance will be in RTM.
The server equivalent of the FX, code-named "Interlagos"--meant to launch in a few weeks--already takes advantage of the eight cores to a greater extent than the desktop equivalent of the FX does, AMD says.
“AMD FX and Bulldozer CPU technology was optimized for multi-processing and multi-threaded applications,” Dina McKinney, corporate vice president, design engineering, for AMD said via email.
The eight cores also benefit from AMD’s Turbo Core feature, which automatically boosts the clock speed of different cores when others are not in use above and beyond their normal speeds. When Turbo Core kicks in, the standard clock speed of the FX-8150, the highest-end version of the FX, can speed from 3.6GHz to 3.6GHz.
Turbo core would work, except it was active for those games where it still lost.
Turbo Core also does this while monitoring power consumption and will lower the processing speed if overheating occurs (Intel’s Turbo Boost has a similar functionality).
Junk filler in a article that says nothing new, and means nothing.
So in the future, look out for potential video editing, engineering, and other software that might harness what eight cores and Turbo Boost can offer both in the desktop space. While it is has yet to be proven, the FX with its eight cores could very well be ahead of its time.
Except it has already been tested in the video editing, engineering and other software that people use, and its still slower, despite the software using all the threads and cores available. In case you didn't know, second place in a race means you have lost. AMD lost with a chip that is 400Mhz per core faster than its competitively priced chip. Lost.
For now, the FX-8150--the highest-end variation of AMD's FX--retails for $245, compared with $220 for its direct competitor, the Intel Core i5-2500K. So, if you're buying a new motherboard for a workstation and want to scrutinize the best value for your money, the Intel part will offer slightly better performance for most office applications for $25 less.
But, in the larger scheme of things, expect to see versions of the FX show up in future PCs that will at least compete against machines with Intel inside performance- wise, and may still beat the in price as well.
AMD vs. IntelIn the worst case scenario, AMD’s FX launch is disappointing in that the chip doesn't trounce competing Intel devices in performance. Regardless, as the two chip giants battle, they continue to attempt to outdo each other, which benefits consumers.
In the end, the fact that AMD has maintained market share in CPUs means that Intel has had to keep its prices in check to remain competitive. If Intel had a monopoly, as Microsoft has had with its PC operating system, then CPU prices would surely have been higher and Intel would have had less incentive to innovate. Without the competition, a pure Intel monopoly would have left the workstation and server computing would years behind what it is today.
Bruce covers tech trends in the United States and Europe. He can be reached through his Website at
www.brucegain.com.
Bruce gain needed a article to write that would get page hits to prove his worth at getting ad revenue, congrats on funding him. He has written a article without any actual tests being done, no hard data, no information. Just speculation that has been proven wrong.
All that being said, I'm sure it will be fun to play with, and yes, it is a upgrade from a X6 if you use software that will take advantage of it, but NO you CANNOT compare it to a 2600 for threaded performance.
$314 for a 2600
VS
$279.99 for a 8150
$30 less.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/10/12/amd-fx-8150-review/10
Load stock speed 82W more power. Means on average $17 more per year in power for the AMD system, not including cooling costs.
