As I mentioned in a few posts recently, I "bit" on the Bulldozer 8150. Before I am "pillaged" as the town lunatic by some please, read my sig below. I own 2 SB rigs that are my gaming delights. I own a Asus Sabertooth 990FX mb that I had for sale but the prices offered convinced me to keep it. I also own 2 5850s that again were for sale but the prices offered convinced me to keep them. Finally the Bulldozer 8150s dropped in price ($170) that I was willing to take a chance building a "Bulldozer" rig.
WARNING (sorry for yelling but many newbies read this). For those of you contemplating building a 8150 rig to replace your old one so you can "compete" against the Ivy Bridge chips and even Sandy Bridge chips DON"T DO IT unless you first experience a SB or Ivy Bridge rig. They are FAST! The Bulldozer lives up to its name but more of that later. Also, as correctly pointed out by Ferzerp below I used different and slower components with the Bulldozer so a true "comparison" with the SB rigs in 1 & 2 cannot be made ( Frankly, I didn't want to tear either of them apart, just build a Bulldozer rig)
I had on hand my trusty old Chieftec 1200 server case (old but tons of room) with 3 great Panaflo 80mm fans and a fan controller, 8g Gskill ddr3-1866, the Asus 990FX Sabertooth mb, 2 5850s (both running 765Mhz stock), an Intel x25M 80g ssd, DVD, Antec Green 750W PSU and a licensed version of Win7-64 HP. I had an AMD rig running an 1100T but sold it and some other parts when the Bulldozers were still higher in price and I wanted $$ to buy Nvidia 680/670 cards.
When the price dropped enough, I bought a new 8150 plus a CM Hyper 212+ to cool it.
My first problem was this "new" 8150" had a few bent pins. I carefully straightened them and it fit in the socket fine. The tin it was shipped in appeared to be unopened but bent pins are frustrating. Thank goodness it was correctable. I used ArticSilver5 as the thermal paste and and used a CM Hyper 212+ with push/pull fans to cool it. Let me say it is VERY wise to use an aftermarket cooler with this chip if you want to do any OCing. It get very hot quickly when pushed. In the process of assembly I was using a WD Blue 320g HD that I found was failing. Lost an entire day until I figure this out. I switched to a WD Green 1 TB that was sitting in my Home server not being used.
Obviously all the parts surrounding the Bulldozer are not all the newest (video cards and HD).
Impressions? Smooth. Benchmarks show it as a plodder. However, after a frusting time with the bad HD and now using a solid, but slightly slower one, I must say this is an interesting chip. Since I own 2 2500Ks I see four cores all the time in read outs. Was fun to see 8 cores!
Game play? I only had time to install COD MW3 through steam. Game plays very smooth with this rig. The Sb rigs are faster in benchmarks but with COD MW3 I couldn't tell a difference. That might be due to the 2 5850s CF on a single monitor.
OCing? Well it gets hot and unstable fast if you go too far. I could run it at 4.4 Ghz but when I ran Intel Burn test on a 10 time run the temps climbed too high. I had upped the voltage, perhaps too much but decided to back it to 4.2 Ghz on all 8 cores stable. Interestingly the stock chip runs 3.6GHZ on 8 cores, 3.9 on 8 cores turbo and 4.2GHZ on a few cores for other things. I opted to run it flatout at 4.2GHZ on all 8 all the time. What I decided was to disable the turbo features and move the chip from its stock 3.6 on all 8 cores to 4.2 Ghz on all 8. That setting survived all of the stability tests and yielded an OK OC with great stability coupled with good (not great) cooling. If you want to buy one of these to OC at 4.4 or above constantly, my limited experience says you better pony up for some serious cooling (Noctua air or H100 liquid) and a big case with plenty of ventilation.
For me at 4.2Ghz coupled with my cooling, the 8150 is smooth as silk and stable as all get out. When it is not pushed the temps are way down on the CPU ( have a licensed version of Aida64 that gives good temp reads). A solid chip. I think with better (but much more expensive) cooling I could get it to perhaps 4.5/4.6 Ghz stable.
How do I feel so far? If it was my only rig I would be a little disappointed. Clearly Intel SB and now Ivy bridge is a better "bang for the buck"
IF you already have a SB/Ivy Bridge rig for gaming and have an AM3+ mb it is worth a shot. Be warned about cooling.
As for the PileDriver, I hope it is an improvement, but from what I read to make it worthwhile the 8350 will have to sell under $225 and have much better thermals along with a performance bump. That's a lot to ask, especially in light of the inherent Bulldozer design. Sorry for rambling but thought these comments might help someone. Besides, why did you spend money on that :\ do you have any questions?
WARNING (sorry for yelling but many newbies read this). For those of you contemplating building a 8150 rig to replace your old one so you can "compete" against the Ivy Bridge chips and even Sandy Bridge chips DON"T DO IT unless you first experience a SB or Ivy Bridge rig. They are FAST! The Bulldozer lives up to its name but more of that later. Also, as correctly pointed out by Ferzerp below I used different and slower components with the Bulldozer so a true "comparison" with the SB rigs in 1 & 2 cannot be made ( Frankly, I didn't want to tear either of them apart, just build a Bulldozer rig)
I had on hand my trusty old Chieftec 1200 server case (old but tons of room) with 3 great Panaflo 80mm fans and a fan controller, 8g Gskill ddr3-1866, the Asus 990FX Sabertooth mb, 2 5850s (both running 765Mhz stock), an Intel x25M 80g ssd, DVD, Antec Green 750W PSU and a licensed version of Win7-64 HP. I had an AMD rig running an 1100T but sold it and some other parts when the Bulldozers were still higher in price and I wanted $$ to buy Nvidia 680/670 cards.
When the price dropped enough, I bought a new 8150 plus a CM Hyper 212+ to cool it.
My first problem was this "new" 8150" had a few bent pins. I carefully straightened them and it fit in the socket fine. The tin it was shipped in appeared to be unopened but bent pins are frustrating. Thank goodness it was correctable. I used ArticSilver5 as the thermal paste and and used a CM Hyper 212+ with push/pull fans to cool it. Let me say it is VERY wise to use an aftermarket cooler with this chip if you want to do any OCing. It get very hot quickly when pushed. In the process of assembly I was using a WD Blue 320g HD that I found was failing. Lost an entire day until I figure this out. I switched to a WD Green 1 TB that was sitting in my Home server not being used.
Obviously all the parts surrounding the Bulldozer are not all the newest (video cards and HD).
Impressions? Smooth. Benchmarks show it as a plodder. However, after a frusting time with the bad HD and now using a solid, but slightly slower one, I must say this is an interesting chip. Since I own 2 2500Ks I see four cores all the time in read outs. Was fun to see 8 cores!
Game play? I only had time to install COD MW3 through steam. Game plays very smooth with this rig. The Sb rigs are faster in benchmarks but with COD MW3 I couldn't tell a difference. That might be due to the 2 5850s CF on a single monitor.
OCing? Well it gets hot and unstable fast if you go too far. I could run it at 4.4 Ghz but when I ran Intel Burn test on a 10 time run the temps climbed too high. I had upped the voltage, perhaps too much but decided to back it to 4.2 Ghz on all 8 cores stable. Interestingly the stock chip runs 3.6GHZ on 8 cores, 3.9 on 8 cores turbo and 4.2GHZ on a few cores for other things. I opted to run it flatout at 4.2GHZ on all 8 all the time. What I decided was to disable the turbo features and move the chip from its stock 3.6 on all 8 cores to 4.2 Ghz on all 8. That setting survived all of the stability tests and yielded an OK OC with great stability coupled with good (not great) cooling. If you want to buy one of these to OC at 4.4 or above constantly, my limited experience says you better pony up for some serious cooling (Noctua air or H100 liquid) and a big case with plenty of ventilation.
For me at 4.2Ghz coupled with my cooling, the 8150 is smooth as silk and stable as all get out. When it is not pushed the temps are way down on the CPU ( have a licensed version of Aida64 that gives good temp reads). A solid chip. I think with better (but much more expensive) cooling I could get it to perhaps 4.5/4.6 Ghz stable.
How do I feel so far? If it was my only rig I would be a little disappointed. Clearly Intel SB and now Ivy bridge is a better "bang for the buck"
IF you already have a SB/Ivy Bridge rig for gaming and have an AM3+ mb it is worth a shot. Be warned about cooling.
As for the PileDriver, I hope it is an improvement, but from what I read to make it worthwhile the 8350 will have to sell under $225 and have much better thermals along with a performance bump. That's a lot to ask, especially in light of the inherent Bulldozer design. Sorry for rambling but thought these comments might help someone. Besides, why did you spend money on that :\ do you have any questions?
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