AMD Zambezi ''Bulldozer'' Desktop CPU Roadmap Revealed

[HillBeast]

I don't care if people call me a troll, but I'm just gonna say this: Fusion looks fail.

Looking at the preliminary reviews of Brazos on Anandtech it looks like AMD has spent the last 5 or 6 years bragging and not actually doing any work. All this is, is a HD5000/HD6000 GPU strapped to an underpowered and poorly designed CPU. If that's all Fusion is meant to be then sorry mate, but I'm going Intel. I have been waiting 5 years for Fusion and to see it's not remotely what they were cracking it up to be, it just seems like AMD made a processor that would have been good 5 years ago but they have held it back for far too long.

This would have been a good fight against Nehalem, but Sandy Bridge? Ha. And don't go on to me about Intel GMA being a piece of fail because obviously you haven't read the reviews of the early Sandy Bridge: that thing takes on low end HD5000 series cards, and those things aren't too bad.

AMD, just release Fusion already so we can see it fail. It's clearly ready for mass market and has been for quite some time.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

I don't care if people call me a troll, but I'm just gonna say this: Fusion looks fail.

Be careful what you say dude, your being watched lol I am an intel spy claiming to run AMD

On a serious note I really do hope bulldozer brings back the old Athlon days, the AMD Athlon kicked the P4 butt all over the show and it was great.. unfortunatly since then AMD haven't really been able to compete with c2,c2q and i7 though I believe it will happen if not with bulldozer then soon after.

Which is a good thing for all of us cause it means kick ass chips at the best prices which is a win for everyone, looking forward to bulldozer personally!!

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

will churn out 29.8 GB/s in dual-channel mode

Sounds like sandybridge. The maxxmem thread may get a bit more competitive.

 

[JF-AMD]

I don't care if people call me a troll, but I'm just gonna say this: Fusion looks fail.

Looking at the preliminary reviews of Brazos on Anandtech it looks like AMD has spent the last 5 or 6 years bragging and not actually doing any work. All this is, is a HD5000/HD6000 GPU strapped to an underpowered and poorly designed CPU. If that's all Fusion is meant to be then sorry mate, but I'm going Intel. I have been waiting 5 years for Fusion and to see it's not remotely what they were cracking it up to be, it just seems like AMD made a processor that would have been good 5 years ago but they have held it back for far too long.

This would have been a good fight against Nehalem, but Sandy Bridge? Ha. And don't go on to me about Intel GMA being a piece of fail because obviously you haven't read the reviews of the early Sandy Bridge: that thing takes on low end HD5000 series cards, and those things aren't too bad.

AMD, just release Fusion already so we can see it fail. It's clearly ready for mass market and has been for quite some time.

You are looking at it all wrong. That product is not designed to compete with sandybridge, Zambezi competes with sandybridge.

Comparing Ontario to sandybridge is like looking at a corvette and saying "but I don't think it will pull my boat...."

 

[HillBeast]

You are looking at it all wrong. That product is not designed to compete with sandybridge, Zambezi competes with sandybridge.

Comparing Ontario to sandybridge is like looking at a corvette and saying "but I don't think it will pull my boat...."

Um, by Sandy Bridge, I mean the microarchitecture behind all of Intels next generation CPUs. They WILL be putting a low end chip out that will compete against Ontario. Zambezi will just be going up against the Core i7 2xxx and Core i5. Ontario will have to take on Core i3. I doubt they will dominate considering what I've seen both parties show so far.

 

[lashton]

also the phenom II was designed to compete with core 2 quads NOT the Core i7, its just the timing that everyone relates the 2

 

[TheGuruStud]

You are looking at it all wrong. That product is not designed to compete with sandybridge, Zambezi competes with sandybridge.

Comparing Ontario to sandybridge is like looking at a corvette and saying "but I don't think it will pull my boat...."

I wouldn't even bother with these kind of guys. It's probably smyrgyl from the zone

 

[Wile E]

the best thing about AMD

How so? You still have to buy a new board to use the new cpu. It's not any different than Intel.


And I can't wait to see what these can do. I hope it's not yet another let down by AMD. I want to see competition on the high end, dammit.

 

[Steevo]

I am tired of the hype and fail from AMD also. If you aren't going to compete just say so, but don't try and put spin on this shit, especially on a tech site.


If your CPU's are slower they better be marketed accordingly, and with a price to match, or at lease some redeeming features. And I totally love how you just ignore users who have legit issues with being raped by your company so you can make somewhat witty comparisons.

 

[Imsochobo]

I have stacks of processors on my desk right now. But if I start giving them away, I'll get hammered with requests. Plus, they are server processors

Hi.
I've gotten a "few" cpu's from amd before, but i'm not here to ask about that ;P
only if it is a am3 bulldozer i'll be interested.
but anyways.

Will vmotion be forward compatible with bulldozer, in vi 4,1 evc mode, non amd^now (gen 3) lists future amd cpu's.
so will actually vmotion work between a gen 3 opteron/PHII and a bulldozer ? :O

and 2nd question.
will there be any "diffrence" between server and desktop bulldozer in terms of support of features, quadchannel for server, dual for desktops ?

 

[1Kurgan1]

How so? You still have to buy a new board to use the new cpu. It's not any different than Intel.

It's a stepping stone. Like back when I had an AM2 setup, then AM2+ came out, so I bought an AM2+ chip and used it in my AM2 board, then later I got an AM2+ board. Then AM3 came out, and once again, I bought an AM3 chip and used it in my AM2+ board, then I finally upgraded to my AM3 board. Just now you will be able to buy the new board, then buy the chip. It's nice not having to invest in a new mobo/cpu at the exact sametime.

I am tired of the hype and fail from AMD also. If you aren't going to compete just say so, but don't try and put spin on this shit, especially on a tech site.

If your CPU's are slower they better be marketed accordingly, and with a price to match, or at lease some redeeming features. And I totally love how you just ignore users who have legit issues with being raped by your company so you can make somewhat witty comparisons.

What fail? So far they haven't said they would contend with $1000 chips, and so far their prices are very competitive

 

[Wile E]

It's a stepping stone. Like back when I had an AM2 setup, then AM2+ came out, so I bought an AM2+ chip and used it in my AM2 board, then later I got an AM2+ board. Then AM3 came out, and once again, I bought an AM3 chip and used it in my AM2+ board, then I finally upgraded to my AM3 board. Just now you will be able to buy the new board, then buy the chip. It's nice not having to invest in a new mobo/cpu at the exact sametime.



What fail? So far they haven't said they would contend with $1000 chips, and so far their prices are very competitive

You can't use this in your AM3 board. The end result is the same. You need to buy both the cpu and board to use this architecture. I bought my Intel rig a piece at a time too. I just used my old rig until I had all the pieces I needed. Same thing.

And not being able to at least come close to competing on the high end is kind of a fail.

 

[1Kurgan1]

You can't use this in your AM3 board. The end result is the same. You need to buy both the cpu and board to use this architecture.

And not being able to at least come close to competing on the high end is kind of a fail.

I said this time its the opposite, can't use the new chip in the old board, I can use the new board with my old chip. So I don't have to buy them both at the sametime.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

You are looking at it all wrong. That product is not designed to compete with sandybridge, Zambezi competes with sandybridge.

Comparing Ontario to sandybridge is like looking at a corvette and saying "but I don't think it will pull my boat...."

So without giving too much away as I'm sure you can only say so much about Bulldozer, but surely you have seen the performance of Bulldozer, how does it stack up against the Phenom architecture?

 

[Wile E]

I said this time its the opposite, can't use the new chip in the old board, I can use the new board with my old chip. So I don't have to buy them both at the sametime.

I didn't buy my i7 rig at the same time either. i just used my old rig in the meantime. Same thing. Same results. You'll get no performance benefit by buying an AM3+ board for your current cpu, so it's absolutely no different than just using an old rig until you have all the parts.

Sorry, it's not any different. To use the cpu, you need a new board.

 

[WhiteLotus]

I'd just rather they release the damn thing already. Then all this useless speculation would go away.


Though who wants to bet the release will coincide with a new Graphics card of some sort... like the series.

 

[Frizz]

When Intel releases Sandy Bridge I'd have swapped boards 2-3 times. I'm definitely looking towards AMD and the AM3+ boards as it seems it will last more than one or two generation of CPUs.

 

[Peter1986C]

And not being able to at least come close to competing on the high end is kind of a fail.

You seem to fail at understanding that the OEM market has a huge importance. There retailers and manufacturers get the biggest sales figures.
BTW, I still see a lot of Core2 series computers being advertised by electronics and computer stores, especially in case of affordable (500-700 euros) laptops I still see a lot of E-series Pentium cpus among the Core 2 Duos and i3s. Desktops aren't much different, I guess it's 50% i3, 50% C2D/C2Q. And I think a lot of people would gladly have such a compo because it is Intel stuff (not caring about the exact model, as if they actually have a clue). A lot of people don't care about how pcs work, not even talking about how to build them themselves and especially not about high-end stuff that cost per part often roughly the price of an entry or intermediate level OEM machine.

Llano is an attempt to get a much better foothold on the OEM market, with both a CPU and a GPU that are expected to be economical and powerful enough to compete with the dual core sytems equipped with IGPs currently on the market.

Zambezi will probably (at least, I guss so) leave i3s in the dust, while competing with the i5 and with those i7 CPUs that don't cost roughly 800-1000 euro. In addition, I expect the Zambezi to OC way better than the Sandy i7s, for the simple reason that Intel will make OCing sorta impossible from a technical point of view. I forgot though how Intel is going to do so and I am currently too lazy to look it up.

 

[Badlands]

Well for me AMD and Gigabyte are the best things since cotton candy...... I have an AM2 mobo that started with an AM2 Athlon 6000 dual core , then upgraded to the AM2+ Phenom X4 9550 , (really disapointed with that one) then jumped to the AM3 Phenom II X6 1090T . (All I needed was a Bios update for my upgrades) The 6 core has brought new life to an ageing system . AMD and Gigabyte has been good to me with the constant mobo support of an old pc build. I think they made sure I got my moneys worth outta their products and with that being said , I don't need to compare the performance of Bulldozer against the sandybridge to wonder what my next Build will be. How I figure it , when I upgrade to an AM3+ Mobo , I will have an upgrade path for 3 years of so . (Its what I got from my last purchase) How many intel products can say that with sockets 775 , 1156 , 1366, or the ........???

 

[TheMailMan78]

Does anyone know why they are still running duel channel on the desktop if the server class can be quad channel? I mean I am in no way an expert but it sounds like this could be major bottleneck.

How so? You still have to buy a new board to use the new cpu. It's not any different than Intel.


And I can't wait to see what these can do. I hope it's not yet another let down by AMD. I want to see competition on the high end, dammit.

Yeah but then you have people like me. I'm already running a 1090T and I don't want to jump to the first gen. of bulldozer. However I do want a new mobo. Ill be able to buy a new mobo with an upgrade path and still use my old components until I'm ready to upgrade again. THAT is whats great about AMD.

 

[HalfAHertz]

Does anyone know why they are still running duel channel on the desktop if the server class can be quad channel? I mean I am in no way an expert but it sounds like this could be major bottleneck.



Yeah but then you have people like me. I'm already running a 1090T and I don't want to jump to the first gen. of bulldozer. However I do want a new mobo. Ill be able to buy a new mobo with an upgrade path and still use my old components until I'm ready to upgrade again. THAT is whats great about AMD.

Because your Winodwz doesn't eat up 128GB of ram a second?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_computing

 

[JF-AMD]

Cleint workloads rarely saturate the memory bus. We'll be adding ~50% more throughput than current designs.

Benchmarks and real life usage are 2 different things.

For every person that is bottlenecked on today's systems there are a million others on the interwebs that are not even saturating 1/3 of their memory bandwidth.

People are getting hung up on number of channel instead of focusing on the amount of bandwidth they can actually achieve and the amount of bandwidth their applications require.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Cleint workloads rarely saturate the memory bus. We'll be adding ~50% more throughput than current designs.

Benchmarks and real life usage are 2 different things.

For every person that is bottlenecked on today's systems there are a million others on the interwebs that are not even saturating 1/3 of their memory bandwidth.

People are getting hung up on number of channel instead of focusing on the amount of bandwidth they can actually achieve and the amount of bandwidth their applications require.

Cool. Nice clear answer for a joker like me. So its not how many bottles of beer you got. Its the size of the bottle?

 

[JF-AMD]

Exactly. Would your rather have two 7 ounce Little Kings or a 22 ounce Stone IPA?

One is twice as many bottles, that would be better, right?

 

[Kovoet]

And now AMD are trying to make me homesick damn them