Rumour: Bulldozer 50% Faster than Core i7 and Phenom II.

[Edrick]

Newsflash!

Future AMD 16 core chips (BD successor) will probably beat future Intel 8 core chips (IB).

Funny. I love how AMD fanboys compare apples to oranges instead of apples to apples.

 

[Kuzi]

If you check my speculation numbers from the other thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2134559

You'll see that I had a 4-Module BD @ 3.4GHz being 52% faster than an i7-950 @ 3GHz when running 8 threads. This number is nothing extraordinary as you have 8 real cores vs. 4 core+4 HT threads, plus the supposed higher clocks of BD.

I would be more impressed if BD is clocked similarly to the i7-950 and gets a 50% (or higher) performance advantage. Cause that would also mean it would beat Gulftown and SB by a noticeable margin too when running 8 threads.

 

[sawtx]

This number is nothing extraordinary as you have 8 real cores vs. 4 core+4 HT threads, plus the supposed higher clocks of BD.

Aren't BD cores less than full cores from other architectures due to the sharing of FP within a module? So wouldn't it be better to say 4 modules/8 threads vs 4 cores/8 threads.

 

[Wreckage]

has begun, these core wars

Dirk Meyer: "Into exile, I must go. Failed I have"

I'm looking forward to the Bulldozer launch. I hope AMD does another Tech Tour like they used to do. I went to one just before the Phenom launch and it was really interesting.

 

[Gheris]

I am looking forward to the launch and fans on both sides should hope for a good showing from Bulldozer. The better BD performs the better the price wars will be. The consumer always wins out in the end when two companies get into a price war.

 

[Daedalus685]

I am looking forward to the launch and fans on both sides should hope for a good showing from Bulldozer. The better BD performs the better the price wars will be. The consumer always wins out in the end when two companies get into a price war.

You know.. I'm no so sure about that.

If BD is clearly inferior to sandy price will be the only thing to sell it, and it will likely attempt to undercut it hard. However, if it is close AMD might simply slot it in at the same price/performance as sandy in the hopes of actually making money.

I surely hope to see price wars, a great BD product, and long awaited competition, but I'm just not sure AMD would want to have that sort of war if they have the ability to sell at the same levels as Intel.

 

[OCGuy]

Yea I bet grandma is really going after an 8 core processor.

What about the 95% of people who never use a program that utilizes more than 4 cores?

Clever marketing by AMD, but not a real-world situation.

 

[Phynaz]

Aren't BD cores less than full cores from other architectures due to the sharing of FP within a module? So wouldn't it be better to say 4 modules/8 threads vs 4 cores/8 threads.

To paraphrase JF, cores are cores.

A BD module has two cores.

 

[Kuzi]

Aren't BD cores less than full cores from other architectures due to the sharing of FP within a module? So wouldn't it be better to say 4 modules/8 threads vs 4 cores/8 threads.

Yes you are right. And I personally prefer it to be compared this way, especially Bulldozer vs. Sandybridge. But then we have to also look at other variables such as power draw and price. BD should bring in some impressive power efficiency, probably catching up to Intel in this regard.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Yea I bet grandma is really going after an 8 core processor.

What about the 95% of people who never use a program that utilizes more than 4 cores?

Clever marketing by AMD, but not a real-world situation.

If Grandma uses IE8+ or Chrome then she is using a program that does utilize more than 4 cores. Especially if you mix in running apps/video with Flash, Silverlight, or Java inside the browser.

Edit: If Bulldozer can match Intel's lower end CPUs and come within throwing distance of Intel's mid range market with better power usage I'll use them. A light performance dip won't be noticeable for normal usage especially if you're using an SSD. The lower power usage will be noticeable for people who have computers on most of the day. I've built more than a few PCs for people that just do Web, web games, music, & Office on their PCs. They're all perfectly happy with AMD systems especially when in a year or two I'm able to cheaply upgrade the system.

AMD really needs to get their AM3+ boards out soon to stem the bleeding. I will eventually use Bulldozer & Fussion but right now I have a 2600k sitting on my work bench just waiting for my memory to arrive.

 

[Daedalus685]

Yea I bet grandma is really going after an 8 core processor.

What about the 95% of people who never use a program that utilizes more than 4 cores?

Clever marketing by AMD, but not a real-world situation.

Grandma will be going after whatever her grandson can find for 200bucks. Whether it is a billion cores or half a core.. Cost is the only important factor in the low end machines. I'd be pretty pleased if even the low end machines started to get decent at multi threading as it will eventually become important.

Besides that, if 8 cores competes with 4 cores in performance, thermals, and cost who would rightly give a crap? Pardon the yogism, but different designs are different, and we cant simply judge based on blind numbers. Cores are the new MHz and are going to be as equally meaningless.

 

[OCGuy]

If Grandma uses IE8+ or Chrome then she is using a program that does utilize more than 4 cores. Especially if you mix in running apps/video with Flash, Silverlight, or Java inside the browser.

Did you just use web browsing as justification for buying a processor with more than 4 cores?

I just went from a E8600 to a i7 950, and I see no difference in anything except extremely CPU intensive games. Im guessing going from 4 cores to 6 or 8 cores would be even less of a jump for those who dont encode, etc.

 

[Kuzi]

Yea I bet grandma is really going after an 8 core processor.

What about the 95% of people who never use a program that utilizes more than 4 cores?

Clever marketing by AMD, but not a real-world situation.

People said the same thing about Quad cores two years ago

 

[Arkaign]

Did you just use web browsing as justification for buying a processor with more than 4 cores?

I just went from a E8600 to a i7 950, and I see no difference in anything except extremely CPU intensive games. Im guessing going from 4 cores to 6 or 8 cores would be even less of a jump for those who dont encode, etc.

Yeah we've reached an era where even the cheapest new CPUs are up to almost any simple end-user tasks. A dirt-cheap i3 build with 4gb of ram and a regular old 1tb 7200rpm drive will run Win7, browsing, farmville, bluray, etc with no issues.

I think it's going to be harder and harder to justify new CPU releases unless you game and/or encode, or are one of the rare few that use heavy industrial grade programs like SolidWorks.

 

[OCGuy]

Besides that, if 8 cores competes with 4 cores in performance, thermals, and cost who would rightly give a crap? Pardon the yogism, but different designs are different, and we cant simply judge based on blind numbers. Cores are the new MHz and are going to be as equally meaningless.

Games are just now starting to use 4 cores. If you can show me a 8 core processor that competes with a 4 core processor in programs that can use 8 cores, and still competes with it in the programs that dont, I will be impressed.

 

[OCGuy]

People said the same thing about Quad cores two years ago

And most of the world could be on a E8400 and still be chugging along just fine.

 

[sawtx]

Yes you are right. And I personally prefer it to be compared this way, especially Bulldozer vs. Sandybridge. But then we have to also look at other variables such as power draw and price. BD should bring in some impressive power efficiency, probably catching up to Intel in this regard.

Yeah, performance and price are the two main things that people should care about first and foremost. If a chip is cheaper and faster it is cheaper and faster regardless of "core count." If BD is 50% faster than a i7 950 or X6 1100T then it looks like a very nice chip and if priced right should be a great seller.

 

[bryanW1995]

The real point is that both are gonna be uber performers so you can't go wrong with either. This'll make AMD more expensive and Intel less so.

if this info ends up panning out then I think we'll see a lot more of us going for BD in lieu of skt 1155 ( and possibly 2011 ). however, recent amd news hasn't exactly been confidence-inspiring, and their product/launch performance has been very poor since c2d took away their competitiveness. At best I see amd being "competitive" again in the high end, but I strongly doubt that they'll take the lead in the consumer cpu space. their low/mid end should be much more desirable since intel has locked out OC'ing on theirs at least.

 

[bryanW1995]

has begun, these core wars

help you I can, yes, MMMmmmmmm.

 

[extra]

This reminds me of all the Fermi stuff when the 58xx cards were already out and Fermi was still months away..oh, it's going to crush it, etc, etc...when it came out, was competent but those expecting it to crush the radeons were left seriously underwhelmed. Bet same thing will happen here--BD will be good, great at some workloads probably, but anyone expecting it to crush SB is in for a big disappointment.

 

[hamunaptra]

If you check my speculation numbers from the other thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2134559

You'll see that I had a 4-Module BD @ 3.4GHz being 52% faster than an i7-950 @ 3GHz when running 8 threads. This number is nothing extraordinary as you have 8 real cores vs. 4 core+4 HT threads, plus the supposed higher clocks of BD.

I would be more impressed if BD is clocked similarly to the i7-950 and gets a 50% (or higher) performance advantage. Cause that would also mean it would beat Gulftown and SB by a noticeable margin too when running 8 threads.

You know, based off architecture analyses that have happened these past few months. The whole point of the new architecture is not necessarily to have a higher IPC count at the same clockspeed as the competition. But rather, to introduce an arch that uses way less die space, while maintaining somewhat increased IPC and being able to clock way beyond what archs we have nowadays.

So, the goal of bulldozer is not to beat intel at IPC at the same clocks, rather to clock really high, having a more effecient architectural layout and maintaining a very nice TDP.

If AMD sells a 4 module BD for the desktop, clocked at 4ghz+ and it offers performance beyond 980X / SB....then I would gladly pay for it!....
Better yet,
If AMD sells a 2 / 3 module BD for desktop, starting clocked at around 3.5ghz and it offers performance beyond SB for the price of about 200$...AND if it could OC to 5ghz+ on air due to the architectural advancements / design of the architecture to go high clocks....
Then I am all in! For, that would literally kill a SB, at the same price...probably offering way more OC tweakability, .. probably use less power too! LOL


OTOH If AMD cant ramp the clocks to their expected speeds based on this new "high speed able" architecture...then they are in big trouble! They better refine the process fast and release high clocking chips ASAP later in the year.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Did you just use web browsing as justification for buying a processor with more than 4 cores?

I just went from a E8600 to a i7 950, and I see no difference in anything except extremely CPU intensive games. Im guessing going from 4 cores to 6 or 8 cores would be even less of a jump for those who dont encode, etc.

You made a comment about most people not even using a porgram that uses more than 4 cores. I'm simply pointing out that Microsoft & Google's browers use 4 or more cores plus any other programs that run inside the browser.

I'm also going to bet that some MS Office programs get multi-threaded as well. Besides having two threads/cores helps the OS out as well. Since Vista, Win7, & 2008ws do a lot in the background to help performance starting with auto defragging.

 

[Gheris]

You know.. I'm no so sure about that.

If BD is clearly inferior to sandy price will be the only thing to sell it, and it will likely attempt to undercut it hard. However, if it is close AMD might simply slot it in at the same price/performance as sandy in the hopes of actually making money.

I surely hope to see price wars, a great BD product, and long awaited competition, but I'm just not sure AMD would want to have that sort of war if they have the ability to sell at the same levels as Intel.

Good points but do you think that AMD will drop the ball THAT much? Ok so say BD is still not up to Sandy Bridge levels, but provides best bang for buck? You still have another option that will initiate a price war. However if BD is too far behind Sandy Bridge then I certrainly have the same fears as you.

 

[JFAMD]

Aren't BD cores less than full cores from other architectures due to the sharing of FP within a module? So wouldn't it be better to say 4 modules/8 threads vs 4 cores/8 threads.

No, this is not true, they are all full cores. Every integer core has its own FP unit (actually a more powerful FMAC.)

It will be 8 cores, 8 threads.

 

[Kuzi]

You know, based off architecture analyses that have happened these past few months. The whole point of the new architecture is not necessarily to have a higher IPC count at the same clockspeed as the competition. But rather, to introduce an arch that uses way less die space, while maintaining somewhat increased IPC and being able to clock way beyond what archs we have nowadays.

So, the goal of bulldozer is not to beat intel at IPC at the same clocks, rather to clock really high, having a more effecient architectural layout and maintaining a very nice TDP.

If AMD sells a 4 module BD for the desktop, clocked at 4ghz+ and it offers performance beyond 980X / SB....then I would gladly pay for it!....

It's very likely that what you mentioned will be the case. BD is built to clock pretty high, and I believe a 4GHz 4-Module BD would easily overtake the i7-2600 and i7-980X at highly multi-threaded apps. But at least initially, I think the base clocks for BD would be lower than that, and would reach ~4GHz only when Turbo is enable.

Remember GlobalFoundries 32nm process is still very new, while Intel is on their second-gen 32nm process with SB. And Intel could also push SB clocks higher if needed.