How much is AMD behind.

[radu_matei_2007]

hmm not much difference between 965 extreme and 920

fx8150~i7 920

 

[mikeymikec]

i7 870 vs FX-8150

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=107

i7 870 launch date Q3 2009

Even more embarrassing for AMD, FX-8150 versus i5-750:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=109

Bulldozer wins on the heavily multi-threaded benchmarks. Intel's desktop R&D department could have taken a three-year holiday and they would probably still be ahead of the curve.

Even the Core i3-530 doesn't have a bad showing against the FX-8150:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=118

 

[radu_matei_2007]

Even more embarrassing for AMD, FX-8150 versus i5-750:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=109

Bulldozer wins on the heavily multi-threaded benchmarks. Intel's desktop R&D department could have taken a three-year holiday and they would probably still be ahead of the curve.

Even the Core i3-530 doesn't have a bad showing against the FX-8150:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=118

I think 530 with OC to 4,5 is better than FX

 

[Homeles]

I think 530 with OC to 4,5 is better than FX

In what? Everything? Not even close.

You can overclock the FX as well...

 

[sangyup81]

Are we strictly talking about high end desktop processors here? The title of the post seemed a little more vague than that.

Here's one reason AMD will keep selling processors: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834215257

You guys almost make it sound like the FX-8150 is the only processor AMD sells

 

[mikeymikec]

Are we strictly talking about high end desktop processors here? The title of the post seemed a little more vague than that.

You guys almost make it sound like the FX-8150 is the only processor AMD sells

I think people were largely talking about desktop processors, and older Intel processors were mentioned so I also threw in Anand's benchmarks for the mid range s1156 processors. It seems pointless to talk about the lower Bulldozers when Intel gives the flagship mainstream AMD processor a thorough spanking in the same price bracket, let alone the fact that FX can't keep up with three-year-old mainstream Intel processors until a heavily multi-threaded task comes along. FX doesn't even make a compelling upgrade from the PhII.

Also, I somewhat doubt that AMD is doing so much better than Intel in the laptop CPU arena. Yes, their graphics are better, but just like comparing Intel integrated graphics to AMD integrated / onboard graphics in the desktop arena is a bit pointless because anyone serious into gaming is going to go for a discrete GPU, the same applies to laptops, then Intel are free to continue spanking AMD in that arena as well.

No, I'm not an Intel fanboy. I have an AMD Phenom II in my main PC and I mainly went for AMD when building systems for customers for the best part of a decade, but since the farce that is Bulldozer, that had to change.

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Are we strictly talking about high end desktop processors here? The title of the post seemed a little more vague than that.

Here's one reason AMD will keep selling processors: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834215257

You guys almost make it sound like the FX-8150 is the only processor AMD sells

Intel is targeting them here now, and might even overtake them with Haswell. However, I would say that I'd prefer an AMD APU in this form factor because at least then you'll have some display driver support.

 

[SlowSpyder]

It seems like they kind of got stuck in the A64 era. Phenom launched and basically had the same IPC, but by then Intel had the C2D's out for a while and they were clearly better. AMD seemed to forget about improving IPC and went for threaded performance.

But, Piledriver looks promising. It won't beat Intel at the top, but if it can improve IPC a bit, improve clock speed a bit, and improve power use it may at least get noticed by enthusiasts whereas Bulldozer isn't even a consideration for 99% of us.

If AMD goes under in a few years I think it will have less to do with their 'good enough' products and more to do with PC gaming and x86 shrinking because of tablets and smart phones.

 

[zsdersw]

The better process technology will always win... in the two key areas that matter these days: cost and power usage.

Intel's process advantage means they can price their chips cheaper (if AMD ever gets around to beating them in performance) and they leak less current so they're more energy efficient and generate less heat.

 

[Nemesis 1]

I give AMD about another 3 years. And I'm not joking.

Sadly, they will drag a great graphics company, ATI, down with them.

I went from Intel, to AMD during the "Athlon 64" era, then back to Intel. So I'm no Intel fanboy. And It upsets me... because once they do go under, Intel and Nvidia will price gouge the heck out of graphics cards and GPUs.

Best we can hope for is they sell of their ATI graphics division... which isn't likely, because it's the only thing keeping them afloat.

And this is coming from someone who has never owned ATI, but respects them.

Time permitting there is another elephant in the room Apple. Intel with medfield pits itself against Apple. I would say apple buys AMD.
Yet another elephant is making its way into the room . China

 

[nismotigerwvu]

The better process technology will always win... in the two key areas that matter these days: cost and power usage.

Intel's process advantage means they can price their chips cheaper (if AMD ever gets around to beating them in performance) and they leak less current so they're more energy efficient and generate less heat.

This, also keep in mind that not all "XXnm" processes are created equal. For all intents and purposes, GF's 32nm is right about on par with (if not every so slightly, but hardly noticeably ahead of) intel's 45nm.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Time permitting there is another elephant in the room Apple. Intel with medfield pits itself against Apple. I would say apple buys AMD.
Yet another elephant is making its way into the room . China

2 issues.
Buying a hole in the ground=Economic suicide.
Buying AMD=No more x86.

 

[Idontcare]

Time permitting there is another elephant in the room Apple. Intel with medfield pits itself against Apple. I would say apple buys AMD.
Yet another elephant is making its way into the room . China

Apple doesn't need AMD, they need access to Intel's process tech and the easiest way to gain that access is to just buy Intel's CPU's.

What would Apple do with AMD? Go beg and plead with TSMC/GloFo/Samsung to convince them to throw more billions into process tech development so their (Apple's) foundered CPU's have less of a handicap to that of their competitor's products that are built using Intel chips?

I'm sure Apple would love to swing a foundry deal with Intel to get their A5 and A5X chips shrunk and produced on 22/14nm Intel nodes, but Intel is intentionally keeping their foundry deals restrictive so they aren't reducing the advantages of their own Atom products over that of ARM. They'll do FPGA, no competition with Intel's own products, but nothing that competes with Atom.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Intel's process advantage means they can price their chips cheaper (if AMD ever gets around to beating them in performance) and they leak less current so they're more energy efficient and generate less heat.

Price is relatively minimal. Intel simply wins on volume.

The main thing is Intel can make a chip twice as complex. Meaning they can essentially make and massproduce a chip that AMD cant fabricate.

 

[pantsaregood]

Things could very easily have been different. K10 vs. Nehalem didn't look nearly as bad as Bulldozer vs. Sandy Bridge. Had AMD continued to refine the K7-K8-K10 lineage, it could've been a reasonable competitor to Sandy Bridge. I doubt anyone thinks a Phenom III X8 sounds bad, given that the cores perform as well as Phenom II cores did. Simply throwing full speed L3, AES, AVX, and SSE4 support onto K10 would've helped out significantly - the 32nm die-shrink probably would've boosted clocks above 4.0 GHz, as well.

AMD fumbled the launch of K10, but it really wasn't an awful product. In the late 90s, AMD caught Intel off-guard with the original Athlon. Athlon XP was actually a lot of trouble for the Pentium 4. Athlon 64 put Intel in the position of being completely helpless - despite the fact that it launched behind schedule. At this point, Intel seems pretty determined to not give AMD another opening.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Apple doesn't need AMD, they need access to Intel's process tech and the easiest way to gain that access is to just buy Intel's CPU's.

What would Apple do with AMD? Go beg and plead with TSMC/GloFo/Samsung to convince them to throw more billions into process tech development so their (Apple's) foundered CPU's have less of a handicap to that of their competitor's products that are built using Intel chips?

I'm sure Apple would love to swing a foundry deal with Intel to get their A5 and A5X chips shrunk and produced on 22/14nm Intel nodes, but Intel is intentionally keeping their foundry deals restrictive so they aren't reducing the advantages of their own Atom products over that of ARM. They'll do FPGA, no competition with Intel's own products, but nothing that competes with Atom.

Good points . Didn't intel hint that they would be interested in taking on process customers. The way of the world . Apple buys AMD . Apple becomes a process customer of intel . Intel need not look over shoulder at AMD . and both keep the others enemy close to themselves. Ya I can see Apple buying AMD.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Thanks to APUs AMD is doing fine in the low end laptop market but they fail hard on desktops.

The only half compelling processor from AMD at this point is the BD quad cores but that will fall flat once the Ivy i3s come out.

AMD was actually pretty competitive with Intel until Sandy came out but they really screwed up with BD.

 

[Makaveli]

hmm not much difference between 965 extreme and 920

fx8150~i7 920

I Agree!

Paid $300 for a 920 D0 in 2009 and would still buy that again at that price vs what the current 8150 is selling for.

The 920 at 4Ghz will also be much faster and still probably use less power when both are overclocked.

 

[inf64]

I love how people are throwing sysmark numbers around and talking nonsense all the time. Since I don't like repeating myself over and over again here is the post I made about FX8150 vs Westmere 980x:

Ok again,some facts instead of fiction. First of all,do you consider a 980x Westmere to be a fast modern multicore chip that does good in both single and MT workloads? I bet you do. Westmere is still a fast desktop chip. Has 6 cores/12T and has a high Turbo clock @ stock.

Now let's see how FX8150 @ stock compares to Westmere 980x @ stock.
Numbers can be found here. This is what they used in their tests:
Single-Threaded Efficiency Run:
980x - 9:32 or 572s
FX8150-11:13 or 673s

980x is : 572/673=0.85 or 15% faster in pure single thread workloads (all time values added up;results are total run time and lower is better naturally).
So 15% higher single thread performance of Westmere is a "huge performance gap" somehow? Didn't think so.

Move on to MT runtime.
Multi-Threaded Efficiency Run:
980x - 13:49 or 829s
FX8150-16:31 or 991s

980x is : 829/991=0.836 or 16.4% faster in multi-threaded workloads.
We have a "fat" 6 core chip that supports SMT(12T) versus a "slim" 8 core chip with only 4 FP units(8T) that should be weak in single thread workloads and somewhat strong in MT workloads. What we get is 15% higher single thread performance and 16.4% higher MT performance for "fat" core. FX is not that slow after all.At least if you compare it to Westmere.

One more comparison using hardware.fr numbers is here .
Compared to top IB 3770K,in applications FX8150 is 183.7/150.7=1.22 or 22% slower ,stock vs stock. This is not bad at all since we have "slow" 32nm FX "8core"(which actually has 4 floating point,8 threaded subunits) versus 4C/8T IB @ 22nm. 22% slower in desktop workloads is peanuts gap and can be closed with Vishera with little to no problems.

As can be seen from above,facts are facts and fanboy fiction is fanboy fiction. Let's stick with the facts and this forum may be regarded(one day) as a serious tech forum,not a fanboy lounge .

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Apple doesn't need AMD, they need access to Intel's process tech and the easiest way to gain that access is to just buy Intel's CPU's.

Exactly. Success in business is about core competence: Intel's is in making chips; Apple's is not.

 

[taltamir]

I don't think you can quantify it in years.
AMD's problem is that performance/watt is just bad on their devices. This affects price of ownership (sure its cheaper to buy, but electricity and AC cost money) AND affects mobile market (which is the biggerst market).
AMD is already hobbled by inferior manufacturing tech to intel (who has that best manufacturing).
But its coupled with an inferior design, and not inferior in the term of "older" but in the terms of worse... which is a bigger problem.

If you check the features you would notice they are similar, both top of the lines feature hyperthreading, turbo mode, etc. Every time AMD copies an intel feature though, they implement a more "budget" designed version of it that is inferior.

Take turbo mode, intel has a very lithe and efficient hardware design. AMD has a weak hardware design with weaker software coupling that "sorta works" and looks only good in comparison to having nothing at all. If AMD wanted to upgrade to an intel like design they would have to scrap the current one.

This is a problem because:
1. Intel has spent years refining their design. If AMD switches to intel like design they start from square 1.
2. AMD's investment into their current design is a sunk cost. So if intel spent 500m on this development and AMD spent 100m, AMD will now have to spend 500m as well and end up spending a total of 600m, more then intel, just to match up intel... and they have to do that for every single component. (that is assuming AMD has equally robust corporate culture and management which can execute at the same cost as intel, if not it will cost them even more!)

So, looking at an AMD processor you see a processor that is the same "generation" as intels and features the same hardware features... but all of them are budget rather then "done right the first time". If AMD had an "older" processor with intel quality features but not as many then they could have just added new features targeting low hanging fruit. As it is they will have to redo existing feature at a higher quality and that is much more difficult and the rewards are smaller per feature.

 

[Lepton87]

980x is : 829/991=0.836 or 16.4% faster in multi-threaded workloads.
We have a "fat" 6 core chip that supports SMT(12T) versus a "slim" 8 core chip with only 4 FP units(8T) that should be weak in single thread workloads and somewhat strong in MT workloads. What we get is 15% higher single thread performance and 16.4% higher MT performance for "fat" core. FX is not that slow after all.At least if you compare it to Westmere.

One more comparison using hardware.fr numbers is here .
Compared to top IB 3770K,in applications FX8150 is 183.7/150.7=1.22 or 22% slower ,stock vs stock. This is not bad at all since we have "slow" 32nm FX "8core"(which actually has 4 floating point,8 threaded subunits) versus 4C/8T IB @ 22nm. 22% slower in desktop workloads is peanuts gap and can be closed with Vishera with little to no problems.

As can be seen from above,facts are facts and fanboy fiction is fanboy fiction. Let's stick with the facts and this forum may be regarded(one day) as a serious tech forum,not a fanboy lounge .

How is Gulftown a fat core compared to BD? Die size is 248mm2 and 1.2B transistors. Amd BD? 315mm2 and also 1.2B. Just look at the performance gap in games, it is HUGE.

 

[Makaveli]

How is Gulftown a fat core compared to BD? Die size is 248mm2 and 1.2B transistors. Amd BD? 315mm2 and also 1.2B. Just look at the performance gap in games, it is HUGE.

i'm curious about this myself.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

What we get is 15% higher single thread performance and 16.4% higher MT performance for "fat" core. FX is not that slow after all.At least if you compare it to Westmere.

The obvious question then becomes: why *are* you comparing it to a chip that came out 18 months earlier? And why do you seem to be considering the comparison a good one when it can't even match that previous-generation processor, much less beat it?

 

[Idontcare]

How is Gulftown a fat core compared to BD? Die size is 248mm2 and 1.2B transistors. Amd BD? 315mm2 and also 1.2B. Just look at the performance gap in games, it is HUGE.

Pointing out that the emperor has no clothes is highly discouraged among the peasantry. Please desist.