Has Xbitlabs already benched Bulldozer?

[JFAMD]

I don't know much about how NDA's work so I'm curious if Xbitlabs has already benched the bulldozer and know final results?

Here is how NDAs work: You sign a document saying that if the company gives you the product, you will not disclose any info about it until the date that the embargo lifts. Period.

Anyone is free to break the NDA, it is a civil contract, not a criminal offense.

However, you only get to do that once.

Because after that nobody will ever trust you again.

So, as a web site, you'd have to be crazy to sign an NDA and then break it because it puts you behind your competition when new products come out.

There is no scenario where someone gets a pre-release product, then violates the NDA and goes on to have a healthy career in the industry.

There are probably cases where someone refuses to sign an NDA and comes up with a product through some other means. But that does not mean it is final product, so anything that is said would probably not be accurate, right?

 

[looncraz]

Well, according to your logic AMD should sell a CPU capable of beating Core i7 990X for less than $300 to please a crowd of fickle budget minded enthusiasts. And in doing so, continue its trend of low ASPs and low profits since late 2006. Thus R&D will be poorly funded for next generation CPUs. AMD does not want to return to the times when it was highly profitable. :hmm:

You can't look at AMD's history here.. you need to look at the new CEO. Lenovo grew largely because it made better machines MUCH cheaper than the competition - with narrow margins and efficiency improvements in the business structure. AMD has already seen improved efficiency internally, and the Bulldozer architecture furthers the improvements as well as the GloFo contract changes. AMD is isolated from yield issues except for availability of product, and the die is smaller than phenom II x6 ( by < 10%, but still... ), so the direct costs are low enough that selling something for $260 is an improvement over the $180 they can barely get now. If it is anything like the Radeon 68x0 release, the prices will skyrocket shortly after the first round of shipments are selling like hot-cakes, and AMD will allow the market to set the price. It is also a fitting strategy to under-price in this manner so as to acquire greater market share. AMD is still riding the "better bang/buck" reputation much like Volvo is still riding its "safest cars on Earth" even though neither remains true for their flagship products (X6 / S60). All the companies now need to do to keep the reputation is to fuel the fires here and there. AMD will release fast chips cheap, Volvo makes an (expensive) "City Safe" option that sounds super-futuristic and will stop at most 5% of super-low speed accidents from happening... Never under-estimate the power of mind-share. And, to the OP, I think XBitLabs accidentally let something slip to be honest! You just don't make assumptions like that while performing such an analytical review. It would be against the NDA, but if release really is on the 22nd, that NDA may be loosening its grip. --The loon

 

[Neutralman]

^^^^^^^^

You make very valid points sir! I recently bought a Lenovo Thinkpad x220 for school. The business grade reliability and hardware was sooooo much cheaper than the ones offered by Dell and Hp and Toshiba. It was almost a no-brainer to buy it over the other business-grade brands.

I'm hoping xBitLabs slipped too! Its going to be so satisfying this winter when I can pair bulldozer fx 8150 with a triple-crossfire 7870!

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

What we need is lol_wut_axel in here to spread hatred about all things AMD, then this thread will be complete.

What we need is you stopping to spread flame bait.

Here's the current state of AMD : their desktop CPUs suck, they're on top when it comes to GPUs, and they're gaining a lot of traction with Fusion.

Instead of you criticizing me for stating the obvious, why don't you criticize AMD instead for not stepping up their game? They're launching an Eight-Core CPU at high frequencies to compete with Intel's vanilla Quad-Core.

 

[trollolo]

What we need is you to stopping to spread flame bait..

agreed. can we try and avoid pissing off the mods? the fact that there's a sticky about it makes me awfully nervous. IMO the whole CPU forum should be closed 'till Bulldozer actually ships

 

[blackened23]

What we need is you to stopping to spread flame bait.

Here's the current state of AMD : their desktop CPUs suck, they're on top when it comes to GPUs, and they're gaining a lot of traction with Fusion.

Instead of you criticizing me for stating the obvious, why don't you criticize AMD instead for not stepping up their game? They're launching an Eight-Core CPU at high frequencies to compete with Intel's vanilla Quad-Core.

I was under the impression that nobody knows *for sure* how BD will perform. You're ready to proclaim it dead before official benchmarks are out....thats the impression I get.

Anyway, I wasn't criticizing you, it was honestly just a joke. I just want official benchmarks to get released so all the speculation ends....that will be a good day indeed.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Well, according to your logic AMD should sell a CPU capable of beating Core i7 990X for less than $300 to please a crowd of fickle budget minded enthusiasts. And in doing so, continue its trend of low ASPs and low profits since late 2006. Thus R&D will be poorly funded for next generation CPUs. AMD does not want to return to the times when it was highly profitable. :hmm:

I think the pricing has already told us how BD will perform. When AMD was actually competitive with the top end, they made sure to charge you out the ass for it. When AMD came out with the Athlon 64 X2 it was $800 and $1000 for their top models. Thinking a $300 BD is gunna beat Intel's $999 chip is a joke.

I was under the impression that nobody knows *for sure* how BD will perform. You're ready to proclaim it dead before official benchmarks are out....thats the impression I get.

Anyway, I wasn't criticizing you, it was honestly just a joke. Whatevs though.

Well, it's mostly common sense.

Well, according to your logic AMD should sell a CPU capable of beating Core i7 990X for less than $300 to please a crowd of fickle budget minded enthusiasts. And in doing so, continue its trend of low ASPs and low profits since late 2006. Thus R&D will be poorly funded for next generation CPUs. AMD does not want to return to the times when it was highly profitable. :hmm:

I think the pricing has already told us how BD will perform. When AMD was actually competitive with the top end, they made sure to charge you out the ass for it. When AMD came out with the Athlon 64 X2 it was $800 and $1000 for their top models. Thinking a $300 BD is gunna beat Intel's $999 chip is a joke.

I'm not proclaiming it "dead", all I'm saying is that Sandy Bridge is more balanced. Given that AMD needs eight cores to fight Intel's four, that means it's a bad single-threaded performer and a good multi-threaded performer. AMD prices their CPUs according to their performance (see Phenom II X4 940 vs Core 2 Quad Q9400 and Phenom II X6 1090T vs Core i7 860). That means the FX-8120 will probably be a decent amount faster in MT than the Core i5-2500K, but the FX-8150 will fall short of the 2600K by a bit. In single-threaded they'll both be trashed, though.

 

[AnandThenMan]

I'm not proclaiming it "dead", all I'm saying is that Sandy Bridge is more balanced.

How do you know without seeing a single Bulldozer benchmark? You're making up stuff in your head and believing it is fact. And it doesn't matter how many cores a processor has, what matters is performance in a variety of workloads.

 

[Mopetar]

Here is how NDAs work: You sign a document saying that if the company gives you the product, you will not disclose any info about it until the date that the embargo lifts. Period.

Anyone is free to break the NDA, it is a civil contract, not a criminal offense.

However, you only get to do that once.

Because after that nobody will ever trust you again.

So, as a web site, you'd have to be crazy to sign an NDA and then break it because it puts you behind your competition when new products come out.

There is no scenario where someone gets a pre-release product, then violates the NDA and goes on to have a healthy career in the industry.

There are probably cases where someone refuses to sign an NDA and comes up with a product through some other means. But that does not mean it is final product, so anything that is said would probably not be accurate, right?

Spot on, but how much wiggle room is there for a website to make a statement like the one quoted in the original post?

Technically they haven't released any information, but they've implied the BD is going to be more of a monster than a lot of people have been speculating. I don't know what kind of relationship Xbitlabs has with AMD or if they're a likely site to receive hardware to benchmark and review, but it's either the case that they have received and benchmarked a production quality chip or that they've made a clever quip designed to drive page views and fan the flames of speculation.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

How do you know without seeing a single Bulldozer benchmark? You're making up stuff in your head and believing it is fact. And it doesn't matter how many cores a processor has, what matters is performance in a variety of workloads.

I love how people conveniently forget that most desktop workloads use two-four threads.

You're not gonna pit twice the cores as your competitor at the same price point unless you absolutely need to. Bulldozer has TWICE the cores as the competing Sandy Bridge CPUs, and higher clock speeds. It also has a deeper pipeline than Sandy Bridge, and the module concept (as we should all know now) reduces performance when running two threads on a single module. If AMD's estimates regarding how much is lost are accurate remains to be seen, but it seems to have a higher problem in floating point workloads and almost none in integer workloads.

 

[BlueBlazer]

You can't look at AMD's history here.. you need to look at the new CEO. Lenovo grew largely because it made better machines MUCH cheaper than the competition - with narrow margins and efficiency improvements in the business structure. AMD has already seen improved efficiency internally, and the Bulldozer architecture furthers the improvements as well as the GloFo contract changes.....etc...etc....etc...

You make very valid points sir! I recently bought a Lenovo Thinkpad x220 for school. The business grade reliability and hardware was sooooo much cheaper than the ones offered by Dell and Hp and Toshiba. It was almost a no-brainer to buy it over the other business-grade brands.

Again, posters wearing rose colored glasses. Lenovo is formerly IBM's PC and laptop division sold off to a Chinese corporation (Lenovo is part of a multinational holdings/group from China). Their products can be as cheap as you can get. :\

Have you guys ever look at AMD's past financial situation? Do you know how depressed AMD's ASPs and profits are compared to its heydays? Have you seen the financial mess in some of their quarterly reports? Do you know about the debt (and interest payments) from ATI acquisition? Do you know that AMD was in red ink (losses) for many quarters (before Intel's billion bucks payout)? Do you know R&D funding requires lots of money (for development of new CPUs)? Do you know that AMD has to pay royalty fees to IBM (we are talking about millions)? Do you know AMD had to sell off many assets (including old fab equipment, fabs in Dresden, mobile graphics division, etc) to remain afloat? ..etc.. :hmm:

Things isn't as simple (or isn't as "rosy") in the real world.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Have you guys ever look at AMD's past financial situation? Do you know how depressed AMD's ASPs and profits are compared to its heydays? Have you seen the financial mess in some of their quarterly reports? Do you know about the debt (and interest payments) from ATI acquisition? Do you know that AMD was in red ink (losses) for many quarters (before Intel's billion bucks payout)? Do you know R&D funding requires lots of money (for development of new CPUs)? Do you know that AMD has to pay royalty fees to IBM (we are talking about millions)? Do you know AMD had to sell off many assets (including old fab equipment, fabs in Dresden, mobile graphics division, etc) to remain afloat? ..etc.. :hmm:

Thanks for the synopsis of what has been discussed to death the last 5 years. :thumbsdown:

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Thanks for the synopsis of what has been discussed to death the last 5 years. :thumbsdown:

On the upside, they're recovering and have posted some relatively solid quarters recently because of Fusion.

 

[BlueBlazer]

Thanks for the synopsis of what has been discussed to death the last 5 years. :thumbsdown:

I was reminding them, who are not aware by thinking that selling products as cheaply as current situation is fine. I wonder if you noticed that they are newbies (look at the post count and join dates)?

 

[blackened23]

How do you know without seeing a single Bulldozer benchmark? You're making up stuff in your head and believing it is fact. And it doesn't matter how many cores a processor has, what matters is performance in a variety of workloads.

This. AMD has in the past priced their processors cheaper than intel when they performed virtually the same. (486 days anyone?) Fact of the matter is , nobody knows how well BD performs so running around bad mouthing it nonstop isn't really productive. Lets wait for official benchmarks.

 

[BlueBlazer]

This. AMD has in the past priced their processors cheaper than intel when they performed virtually the same. (486 days anyone?)

Those 486 days are different since they were just an alternative supplier of x86 CPUs (price competition for essentially the same CPU). When AMD had good products, they will charge accordingly as demonstrated here >> AMD's Athlon 64 FX-57 processor....

Pentium 4 630 $224
Athlon 64 3200+ $194
Pentium 4 640 $237
Pentium D 820 $241
Athlon 64 3500+ $272
Pentium D 830 $316
Pentium 4 650 $401
Athlon 64 3800+ $373
Pentium D 840 $530
Athlon 64 4000+ $482
Athlon 64 X2 4200+ $537
Pentium 4 660 $605
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ $581
Pentium 4 670 $851
Athlon 64 FX-55 $827
Athlon 64 X2 4600+ $803
Pentium 4 XE 3.73GHz $999
Pentium XE 840 $999
Athlon 64 FX-57 $1031
Athlon 64 X2 4800+ $1001

AMD was highly profitable in those heydays.. :thumbsup:

Fact of the matter is , nobody knows how well BD performs so running around bad mouthing it nonstop isn't really productive. Lets wait for official benchmarks.

Hopefully that will be soon (if the "pressure" to release the final product keeps up).

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

This. AMD has in the past priced their processors cheaper than intel when they performed virtually the same. (486 days anyone?) Fact of the matter is , nobody knows how well BD performs so running around bad mouthing it nonstop isn't really productive. Lets wait for official benchmarks.

I'm not sure mentioning what AMD did in the 1990s is very relevant to now since AMD was just selling their own alternate version of an Intel CPU, and apart from that, AMD doesn't want to be losing money in the upcoming quarters. They need the ASP of their CPUs as high as it can be. Looking at recent pricing from 2009-now confirms that AMD prices their CPUs based on their performance, which is to say the Phenom II X6 1090T is comparable to the i5 2400 in multi-threaded, but noticeably slower in single-threaded, so they price it as so. I doubt they'll be generous enough to give us two-four more cores than Intel even if the FX-4100 series is comparable overall to the Core i5. They need high ASP and a reasonably-sized die so they don't end up with razor-thin profit margins.

They're a corporation; they have to care about their bottom line.

 

[BlueBlazer]

They're a corporation; they have to care about their bottom line.

I second that...

 

[Imouto]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_v._Intel

 

[Neutralman]

Again, posters wearing rose colored glasses. Lenovo is formerly IBM's PC and laptop division sold off to a Chinese corporation (Lenovo is part of a multinational holdings/group from China). Their products can be as cheap as you can get. :\


Things isn't as simple (or isn't as "rosy") in the real world.

So what if Lenovo is a chinese corporation? Their thinkpad T and X lines are seriously top of the line in business grade laptop quality, they have the same hardware (intel made chips, matte screen, etc..) as other big brands business line, yet lenovo manages to deliver it at a MUCH better price point.

And last I checked, my family has 2 Dell latitude(business grade) laptops, 1 apple macbook, 1 sony vaoi laptop, 1 toshiba, and my own thinkpad. THEY ARE ALL MADE IN CHINA

I was reminding them, who are not aware by thinking that selling products as cheaply as current situation is fine. I wonder if you noticed that they are newbies (look at the post count and join dates)?

You don't need to degrade us just because we are new posters of Anandtech. Looncraz presented some very well-thought arguments and analogies. Lenovo may make a lot less net profit per thinkpad sold, but their sales volume and quality of product make them very profitable.

 

[busydude]

Again, posters wearing rose colored glasses. Lenovo is formerly IBM's PC and laptop division sold off to a Chinese corporation (Lenovo is part of a multinational holdings/group from China). Their products can be as cheap as you can get.

So you must be the kind of person who thinks everything that is made in China is a cheap POS?

 

[looncraz]

I was reminding them, who are not aware by thinking that selling products as cheaply as current situation is fine. I wonder if you noticed that they are newbies (look at the post count and join dates)? <img src="images/smilies/familiar/razz.png" border="0" alt="" title="Razz" smilieid="35" class="inlineimg" />

AMD has done this before, and the guy now running the show made his career on doing exactly this. If you are getting an extra $80/cpu for your launch, winning mind-share and reviews, the demand will go up and the price per lot will increase.

This is a bit like gaming the system - you KNOW/ASSUME you will have supply issues, but you know if you price accordingly at launch that demand will soften. So what to do?? Simple: send out a few thousand chips CHEAP. And beat your competitor as well as you can. You don't lose money on the chips, in fact you can do this and make MORE than you are now, so NO loss!

Now, you have people saving up their money, having $250 aside.. but alas, you are all out of chips!! BUT, don't worry, we have more, BUT there is a HUGE demand for these things now - "that we didn't expect" - so you will need to throw us another $20. And the cycle continues...

AMD did this with the Radeon 68x0 cards, either on purpose or on accident. I'm willing to bet they will do it this time - particularly if they only have a close-winner on their hands...

--The loon

 

[Arkaign]

The corps charge as much as they can get for their CPUs, that's just the way it is. AMD, if anything, wants as much as possible to AVOID a price war with Intel, as that would murder them and leave Intel largely unscathed. Thus, pricing competitive chips well under Intel's prices makes zero sense. The stockholders would be pissed, for one thing. For the other thing, the price war, think about this :

Hypothetical BD model BD-123 offers performance equal to stock 2500k. AMD prices this at $140. Oops, now Intel introduces slightly better 2520k (or whatever), and prices it at $140. So now AMD has to adjust yet again or they will look uncompetitive at that price point. Not to mention, lets say gross adjusted cost (accounting for R&D, labor costs, shipping costs, etc) for a single model BD-123 was $90. Not even accounting the discounted price they have to give for large distributors and OEMs, this leaves them $50/unit profit initially, instead of the $120/unit profit if they intro'd this for $210 instead of $140. Not only that, but because of the new Intel SKU, they quickly have to drop it to $120 and push out a new model to compete with 2520k to try to get their ASP up.

ASP >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> *.* in the CPU business. That's the lifeblood of the industry. If you price things well below what the market will bear, you are doing it wrong. AMD is not a charity. If you price things well below what the market will bear in the presence of a behemoth that will eat you alive in a price war, you're REALLY doing it wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I hope BD is great, I hope even if it doesn't magically leapfrog the top chips out of the gate that it offers compelling value, particularly to gamers and overclockers (I've said time and time again that it'd be nice to hit stock 2500k levels with a $140-$150 chip after overclocking).

But never forget, profitability is king. Their best bet is to price competitively, and keep ASPs as high as possible. A good example of how profit > sheer volume is HP. They're dumping their PC business even though they're the world's largest PC maker. Why? The profits suck, and the operating and legacy costs are insane. Obviously it's a difficult direct comparison, but look at Apple vs. HP. High profit / low volume >>> Low profit / high volume.

 

[looncraz]

The corps charge as much as they can get for their CPUs, that's just the way it is.
...

That is the net result, actually! It is just a tricky way of doing it. :ninja:

You don't under-sell by too much. $20-40 is as far as this can go on a CPU, but they did it by about $80 on the Radeon 68x0 (accidental, perhaps/probably).

Your share holders want one thing: profit.

If AMD can sell the new CPUs at an additional profit compared to the current ones, while also undercutting the competition (however slightly), you are winning. :thumbsup:

AND, if you can do this while maintaining the mind-share of "best bang/buck" and then charge MORE and make MORE profit... you've got a winner!

AMD is looking at a boost of about 25% or more from the new crop of chips per investment into the die itself. That said, Phenom II will be around for some time, but I imagine the x6 will vanish very quickly, with the x4 maybe even seeing a revamp. This would fit the strategy of aiming at the low-mainstream ballpark. You still have some 45nm capacity to use until it is converted to 32nm...:hmm:

Meanwhile, your main-dog's die is a pretty hefty size and the price you can get for it is decreasing, but you are prepared to make smaller dies to meet demand for the lower end and larger dies to meet the competition head-on.

That means you are prepared for the future(the whole point of Bulldozer) and you can focus on becoming the predator (the new CEO's own stated ambitions). To be the predator, you have to make your prey (the customer) believe you are the better deal when you really don't have much more to offer over the competition.

One proven way is to cause inflated demand by limiting supply. BUT, if you actually limit supply, you MAY lose money! :thumbsdown: So you just create the illusion of a supply problem by causing a rush on the first round of shipments by under-pricing your product enough that stocks dry up more quickly than they can be refilled. Now, the next batch can be sold at a higher value and those in waiting in the wings will rush to buy them, driving costs up even more.:biggrin:

In the end, the corp gets more money, more press, more mind-share, and machines running the "AMD FX" processor will be in higher demand than would otherwise be the case ( remember, techs/enthusiasts influence buying decisions for about 40% or more of the total market ).

Psychology is very much integral to business tactics - both of which I study relentlessly (and physics, cosmology, what-have-ya).

NOT saying I'm right - far from it... more so HOPING I'm right!!:$

See, it makes me feel better about the prices, and I see some significant evidence to support such a move in the history of this CEO, and the upcoming price breaks from Intel on Sandy Bridge... AMD will factor those in up front, and will drop the price out a bit more for the aforementioned effect, and gain the advantage of having rave reviews for bang/buck categories. Lord knows those reviews don't fall off the internet...:twisted:

I shall abort this posting now lest my rambling overdrive engages and exhausts my logic reserves

--The loon

 

[Arkaign]

Well, I think you're over-thinking things somewhat, but I can say with all seriousness that you're an original, entertaining character

Welcome to AT!