Why is the response to Bulldozer so overwhelmingly negative?

[nyker96]

cause it's just ... bad?

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

It is so bad that my Phenom II can keep up with it.

 

[cherrytwist]

THIS. People frequently ask me why if I'm so interested in PCs, then why do I use an i3-2100 at home? The answer is...





Bingo. I knew I wasn't the only one wondering what's going on with the Bulldozer response, ha.

This is me. Except I went to laptop with the same chip and it serves my needs just fine.

 

[Axon]

While I agree with the general premise that it isn't as bad as the enthusiast community is making it out to be, it still falls short in a number of areas.

Initially, the years of build up hurt the chip significantly. Yes, it does well in some niche performance applications, but even then it only barely beats the 2600k, which has been on the market for 10 months now. Combine that with the fact that single and lightly-threaded performance has actually gotten worse despite the huge clock speed advantage that Zambezi brings over Phenom II, you've got a recipe for disaster. It has 2x the transistors. I can't even imagine how this happened. I just hope AMD can refresh this thing and make it baller.

 

[Ares1214]

I dont really like this argument to be honest, I can understand BD might be better for about 1% of the 1% of enthusiasts, just as a 1090T was better than the i7 920 for a decent chunk of enthusiasts, but the differences are absolutely insane. A 8150P starts at higher clocks, and OC's less compared to a 2500k. When you OC a 8150P, maybe you get 15% more performance. When you OC a 2500K, you get 33% more performance. Add that on to the already higher performance of the 2500K in the vast majority of apps.

Then you have to look at the prices. What is AMD thinking?! All of these CPU's practically need a $50-100 price cut to even be a viable option for the majority of enthusiasts. Motherboard and RAM prices are about even all said and done, which was one advantage the 1090T had over the i7 920. They have gotten rid of the price advantage since then.

Power consumption.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/10/12/amd-fx-8150-review/10

The 2500K takes just a bit more power at 5 GHz than the 8150P does at stock, yet the 8150P takes almost 2x as much power when both CPU's are OC'ed. Havent seen many head to head temperature comparisons yet though, so cant comment on that.

The argument that the lower end Bulldozers can OC vs the lower end Intel's is true, but at the same time some what moot. Those have integrated graphics, and largely better stock performance, which if you are buying a "low" end CPU, thats all you really want. People buying lower end CPU's arent going to care if it can OC or not, they want it to be cheap, fast, and indirectly they want it to have an IGP. SB gets that done, BD doesnt really. Would like to see benches of the 4xxx BD's vs intels 21xx, or even their lower ends. Intel has totally blanketed the low end for once...

Lastly but not least, BD is such a big disappointment because AMD took this long to release it, and its barely on par with their own last gen CPU's. And it costs more. AMD is also tied to this design for the next 2-3 years , in which time things wont get much better I'd guess. Intel will be on to SB-E, and then Ivy Bridge to virtually eradicate any chance of AMD coming back anytime soon. BD has about 6 months to live before all the new Intel CPU's are out, which is what everyone will be saving up for. The ONLY good thing about BD is whats usually good about AMD CPU's of late, its high core count and frequency might trick people into thinking its fast, a steal at its price. But then again, OEM's always take Intel over AMD...

 

[jacktesterson]

It is so bad that my Phenom II can keep up with it.

In Gaming, at 955 @ 4.0GHz, It is on equal terms.

Everything else, BD will around 15% faster.

 

[chaosdsm]

I have to agree with OP.... and here's why

So far all we are seeing is a very tiny fraction of capabilities tested, and 99.9% of the people are jumping to conclusions based on those few reviews... How many of these people even use 50% of the software used to benchmark these CPU's??? 40%? 30%? 10%? If you're not using at least 30% of the software benchmarked (not counting games) by any single review, then the review may not even be relevant to your situation and usage.

What people are not looking at... but should be... are details.

For example out of the dozen reviews that I looked at for the FX-8150:
> 10 sites did not even list what BIOS version their motherboard was using.
> 8 sites neglected to say whether or not Turbo Core / Turbo Core MAX was enabled in BIOS or not, and most of them listed the CPU as 3.6GHz in single-threaded benchmarks which probably means that they did not have it enabled leading to skewed results. 1 of these sites actually showed Turbo Core enabled on the 1100t but did not on the 8150, and they used two different motherboards for the 1100t & 8150.
> 2 sites did not list what motherboard driver version was used.
> 1 site listed a BIOS version that doesn't even officially support Bulldozer CPU's (or perhaps the motherboard manufacturer was just too lazy to get an updated support list posted???)

Bottom line, reviewers are getting lazy and taking certain things for granted, not what I want to see in a review.

900 series chipsets made before the release of the Bulldozer CPU's don't automatically support Bulldozer CPU's, many require a BIOS update to take full advantage of the Bulldozer architecture. Also, old motherboard drivers from the original release of the 900 series chipsets, likewise don't take full advantage of the Bulldozer architecture.

At some point in the near future, when all BIOS's and drivers are fully up to speed (and likely AMD releases a patch for Bulldozer CPU's), then prospects may brighten for Bulldozer.

I will be purchasing an FX-8150, but why???

1> The problems pointed out above clearly have the potential to greatly affect benchmarking performance.
2> I don't care what synthetic benchmarks say, I rarely find them to hold true to real-world performance
3> I already have a Bulldozer certified motherboard with a Bulldozer certified BIOS, and the latest AMD drivers (and it would cost considerably more at this point to move to Sandy Bridge)
4> The applications that matter the most to me show up to 15% higher real world performance on the stock clocked 8150 than the i7-2600k.
5> My Athlon X2 4400+ handles all the single and double threaded apps I need with ease, so the 8150 will also handle all the single and double threaded apps I need with ease

When I spend a weekend shooting hours of 1080p video, 15% faster encoding time makes a HUGE difference, enough of a difference, that I won't be worried about the slower performance in single-threaded and dual-threaded apps. Nor will I be worried about spending a bit more electricity.

Speaking of electricity, one other thing that almost EVERYONE seems to be overlooking, is that power is directly related to number of cores, not number of threads. Taking total system power and dividing that by number of cores gives you a real idea of true power usage.

Using Anandtech's own data:
i5-2500k = 133.3W total power / 4 cores = 33.325W per core
FX-8150 = 229W total power / 8 cores = 28.625W per core
1100t = 200W total power / 6 cores = 33.333W per core

Not one of these review sites bothered to test power consumption on a leveled playing court. The AMD chips can have cores disabled, the Intel chips can have HT disabled. In order to give an accurate accounting of Power Consumption, all of these chips need to be run as 4 cores only, that means disabling Hyperthreading on the Intel chips, disabling 2 cores on the 1100t, and disabling 4 cores on the 8150, then run your power consumption tests and give us some real results. Every physical core requires a certain amount of power to operate properly, the more cores you have, the higher your power usage is going to be. It's like plugging in light bulbs on a circuit, then complaining that circuit B uses more power than Circuit A, and ignoring the fact that Circuit B has 2 more light bulbs connected...

 

[apoppin]

Bottom line, reviewers are getting lazy and taking certain things for granted, not what I want to see in a review.

BULLSH .. i mean, bulldozer

AMD rushed the reviewers. Launch was on a Tuesday evening (midnight) - the PR web meeting was the previous Tuesday and most of us got our boards with less than 7 days to do some kind of an evaluation.


Support was the best their overworked PR guys could do. They were uploading stuff onto the ftp site up until the last minute. Canada's national holiday (Thanksgiving) was on Monday and there were no answers to any of our questions. And i got my watercooler the afternoon before the NDA ended.

WORST OF ALL, my ASUS AM3+ MB was DoA and i had to wait TWO DAYS for another; AMD says they test the MBs before they send them. Getting the board on Thursday meant that means i had just over 4 days to set up Windows 7 and patch it - all twenty games and twelve benches - and then run them AND THEN run Phenom II in the SAME MB with over 30 benches so results would be consistent. i used the MB's shipping BIOS (the one AMD used in Internal testing) because AMD was confused about which one was actually "best".
:'(


Thankfully, i had Intel X58 i7 comparison results already done before Bulldozer arrived because i had a "feeling" it would out the next week. i got no sleep except for naps for 4 days just to get a FX-8150 review out; and it was inconclusive

i am running Part Two benches now with GTX 580 SLI and HD 6970-X3 (880/1375MHz) TriFire to determine if FX-8150 is a good CPU for gaming or it hits a wall as some have suggested (and i got Core i3 and Phenom II X2 for contrast to demonstrate what really happens when an underpowered CPU hits a "wall" with really powerful graphics).
-- No, we are not lazy

 

[Broheim]

Taking total system power and dividing that by number of cores gives you a real idea of true power usage.

Using Anandtech's own data:
i5-2500k = 133.3W total power / 4 cores = 33.325W per core
FX-8150 = 229W total power / 8 cores = 28.625W per core
1100t = 200W total power / 6 cores = 33.333W per core

FX-8150 doesn't have 8 cores... it has 4 modules with 8 threads.

also, core/watt is irrelevant as it is performance/watt that matters.

as for the rest of your post, I'm not gonna touch that with a 10ft. pole.

 

[mrcool63]

I have to agree with OP.... and here's why

So far all we are seeing is a very tiny fraction of capabilities tested, and 99.9% of the people are jumping to conclusions based on those few reviews... How many of these people even use 50% of the software used to benchmark these CPU's??? 40%? 30%? 10%? If you're not using at least 30% of the software benchmarked (not counting games) by any single review, then the review may not even be relevant to your situation and usage.

What people are not looking at... but should be... are details.

For example out of the dozen reviews that I looked at for the FX-8150:
> 10 sites did not even list what BIOS version their motherboard was using.
> 8 sites neglected to say whether or not Turbo Core / Turbo Core MAX was enabled in BIOS or not, and most of them listed the CPU as 3.6GHz in single-threaded benchmarks which probably means that they did not have it enabled leading to skewed results. 1 of these sites actually showed Turbo Core enabled on the 1100t but did not on the 8150, and they used two different motherboards for the 1100t & 8150.
> 2 sites did not list what motherboard driver version was used.
> 1 site listed a BIOS version that doesn't even officially support Bulldozer CPU's (or perhaps the motherboard manufacturer was just too lazy to get an updated support list posted???)
900 series chipsets made before the release of the Bulldozer CPU's don't automatically support Bulldozer CPU's, many require a BIOS update to take full advantage of the Bulldozer architecture. Also, old motherboard drivers from the original release of the 900 series chipsets, likewise don't take full advantage of the Bulldozer architecture.

At some point in the near future, when all BIOS's and drivers are fully up to speed (and likely AMD releases a patch for Bulldozer CPU's), then prospects may brighten for Bulldozer.

I will be purchasing an FX-8150, but why???

1> The problems pointed out above clearly have the potential to greatly affect benchmarking performance.
2> I don't care what synthetic benchmarks say, I rarely find them to hold true to real-world performance
3> I already have a Bulldozer certified motherboard with a Bulldozer certified BIOS, and the latest AMD drivers (and it would cost considerably more at this point to move to Sandy Bridge)
4> The applications that matter the most to me show up to 15% higher real world performance on the stock clocked 8150 than the i7-2600k.
5> My Athlon X2 4400+ handles all the single and double threaded apps I need with ease, so the 8150 will also handle all the single and double threaded apps I need with ease

When I spend a weekend shooting hours of 1080p video, 15% faster encoding time makes a HUGE difference, enough of a difference, that I won't be worried about the slower performance in single-threaded and dual-threaded apps. Nor will I be worried about spending a bit more electricity.

I agree with that apart from the lazy part.. but seriously he has raised all the important points there.. the reviews are far flung and downright incomparable to each other.. one shows BD bettering the sandy's in certain apps and in others in the same apps they beat BD.... User reviews on newegg say he can reach 4.9 on air easily on an 8120 whereas in some they struggle to reach 4.5 on water...

We need some sort of a standard!! This is getting out of hand

 

[Hypertag]

I have to agree with OP.... and here's why

AMD fanboy's psychotic rant

1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Acceptance

Judging from the book this guy typed, he is in stage two. Judging form the delusional rants about turbo core being disabled AND BIOS issues, he is in stage one. Does anyone want to imagine how funny it is going to be when this guy gets to stage 5? I would love to see it.


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Idontcare
Super Mod

 

[podspi]

BULLSH .. i mean, bulldozer

AMD rushed the reviewers. Launch was on a Tuesday evening (midnight) - the PR web meeting was the previous Tuesday and most of us got our boards with less than 7 days to do some kind of an evaluation.



....


i am running Part Two benches now with GTX 580 SLI and HD 6970-X3 (880/1375MHz) TriFire to determine if FX-8150 is a good CPU for gaming or it hits a wall as some have suggested (and i got Core i3 and Phenom II X2 for contrast to demonstrate what really happens when an underpowered CPU hits a "wall" with really powerful graphics).
-- No, we are not lazy

Slightly OT, but I can't wait for that article. I am particularly interested in the difference in FX gaming performance w/ the GTXes vs. Radeons, and the lower-powered CPUs :thumbsup:

 

[reb0rn]

I bet my ass i3 would win on GTX580 SLI, gaming evolved my ...

 

[chaosdsm]

BULLSH .. i mean, bulldozer

AMD rushed the reviewers. Launch was on a Tuesday evening (midnight) - the PR web meeting was the previous Tuesday and most of us got our boards with less than 7 days to do some kind of an evaluation.


Support was the best their overworked PR guys could do. They were uploading stuff onto the ftp site up until the last minute. Canada's national holiday (Thanksgiving) was on Monday and there were no answers to any of our questions. And i got my watercooler the afternoon before the NDA ended.

WORST OF ALL, my ASUS AM3+ MB was DoA and i had to wait TWO DAYS for another; AMD says they test the MBs before they send them. Getting the board on Thursday meant that means i had just over 4 days to set up Windows 7 and patch it - all twenty games and twelve benches - and then run them AND THEN run Phenom II in the SAME MB with over 30 benches so results would be consistent. i used the MB's shipping BIOS (the one AMD used in Internal testing) because AMD was confused about which one was actually "best".
:'(

i am running Part Two benches now with GTX 580 SLI and HD 6970-X3 (880/1375MHz) TriFire to determine if FX-8150 is a good CPU for gaming or it hits a wall as some have suggested (and i got Core i3 and Phenom II X2 for contrast to demonstrate what really happens when an underpowered CPU hits a "wall" with really powerful graphics).

-- No, we are not lazy

That's pretty messed up on AMD's part... but did part of the NDA include a requirement that you MUST post a review on launch day? If so, then my apologies to you and any reviewer who may have had similar experiences. If not, well, you could always post when it was done thoroughly

Unfortunately, it's not up to AMD to be sure of which BIOS to use. Yes they need to provide motherboard manufacturers with the updated AGESA and specifications to follow, but it's up to the mobo manufacturers to iron out the details & get everything to work right in their boards.

Personally, I cannot wait to get my hands on an 8150, (though I have to wait because they're on back-order everywhere) and do my own testing on software I actually use.

I do agree on one point with the masses though... AMD really dropped the ball vs what was expected of Bulldozer I really was hoping that AMD would knock this one out of the park with a chip that could go head to head with Intel's best & give just as many hits as it took, and they probably could have if they had gone with a "true" 8-core design instead of sharing FP's.

In the end, does all of it really matter though??? The vast majority of computer users will never even see any of these reviews, and almost all of them will find the 8150 a more than efficient solution for everything they use their computer for.

 

[apoppin]

That's pretty messed up on AMD's part... but did part of the NDA include a requirement that you MUST post a review on launch day? If so, then my apologies to you and any reviewer who may have had similar experiences. If not, well, you could always post when it was done thoroughly

Unfortunately, it's not up to AMD to be sure of which BIOS to use. Yes they need to provide motherboard manufacturers with the updated AGESA and specifications to follow, but it's up to the mobo manufacturers to iron out the details & get everything to work right in their boards.

If you are late - really late - you will not get parts under NDA any longer; not to mention your site loses the initial traffic. They expect you to be on time and these kind of deadlines are hard for me to meet since i use at least 20 games in every evaluation.

i was late with Bulldozer; more than 12 hours after NDA ended, i posted my gaming summmary charts; after that the full article went up - not quite two days late - and still with a partial conclusion since i do not know for sure about the FX-8150 and gaming.

As to the BIOSes .. do you expect a reviewer with 4 days to review a board to run all his benches - then try another BIOS and run them again?

i got completely screwed up CF results (that another site also got and they attributed it to the FX-8150 hitting a "wall") but had no time to redo everything including a complete Windows fresh install

Slightly OT, but I can't wait for that article. I am particularly interested in the difference in FX gaming performance w/ the GTXes vs. Radeons, and the lower-powered CPUs

I bet my ass i3 would win on GTX580 SLI

This one is going to take a week just to run the benches. My last major article before this one was "SLI vs CrossFire (Part 2), High-End Mult-GPU Scaling" and i am going to MASH them together by adding dual core and overclocking my i7 and FX-8150 further (i just got a new Thermaltake Chaser MK I full tower for review, and it is ready for AMD's watercooling).

We shall see which CPU runs out of gas first with overclocked GTX 580 SLI
and HD 6970-X3 TriFire (880/1375MHz)
:whiste:

• Core i3
• Phenom II X2
• Phenom II X4 at 4.3GHz (and i might put it under water to get 4.5)
• Core i7 at 4.0 GHz
• FX-8150 at 4.6 GHz

 

[Yellowbeard]

AMD had an almost impossible task here. A lot of people still clearly remember what they got when they bought an Intel killer socket 754 or 939 CPU. Subconsciously, people want and expect that again. And, when you add the anticipation to these expectations, the marketing, the long wait, and the name "BULLDOZER", anything less than free processors that cure cancer is going to be a failure to a certain amount of people. But, that's why they are called Enthusiasts. They have different expectations than those that simply use computers as tools.

 

[guskline]

I bought an AMD 970 mb (upped from a 770) to run 2 460GTXs in SLI and to have an AMD mb to accept the Bulldozer ( I have a 965 BE C3 OC to 3800. After seeing the results and the fact that the MB (Asrock Extreme 4 970) only shows support for a 8120FX, I highly doubt I'll jump to the Bulldozer. At least I'm running SLI!

 

[VirtualLarry]

If I see that various popular Distributed Computing programs add support for AVX and FMA4, then I might just pick up a BD chip. Certainly, the AM3+ motherboards are very nice (4-way GPU action, something you don't get with SB/IB).

But if they never materialize, then I see no reason for me to purchase one. Sad to say, really, I kind of had my hopes up. "Something new, something different, AMD."

Maybe that should be their new slogan?

 

[frostedflakes]

Yeah that is one nice thing about AM3+, the platform is pretty solid compared to 1155. Lots of PCI-E lanes for multiple GPUs, lots of SATA 6Gbps ports instead of just two, etc. Just too bad Bulldozer itself didn't really deliver.

 

[Idontcare]

AMD had an almost impossible task here. A lot of people still clearly remember what they got when they bought an Intel killer socket 754 or 939 CPU. Subconsciously, people want and expect that again. And, when you add the anticipation to these expectations, the marketing, the long wait, and the name "BULLDOZER", anything less than free processors that cure cancer is going to be a failure to a certain amount of people. But, that's why they are called Enthusiasts. They have different expectations than those that simply use computers as tools.

 

[Vesku]

Is AMD always this tight on new hardware releases (7 days)? Seems to me they knew it was going to get some serious criticism especially with the FX name.

 

[chaosdsm]

1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Acceptance

Judging from the book this guy typed, he is in stage two. Judging form the delusional rants about turbo core being disabled AND BIOS issues, he is in stage one. Does anyone want to imagine how funny it is going to be when this guy gets to stage 5? I would love to see it.

ROFLMAO

1> I would rather go with an Intel system, but in the end I'm limited by funding. My AM3 build saved over $400 vs a comparable Intel build & got me 6-cores instead of 4 which definitely helped in my video editing & encoding to Blu-Ray. But now that I'm shooting more video, more encoding performance would be a plus

2> I tend to look at all sides of a problem to see what is wrong, not just the side that is presented to me. Though the trends in most of the reviews is generally the same, the actual results are vastly different between several of them. Logic dictates that there's either a problem with the methodology, hardware, or software, or reviewer. Since we all know that there's no such thing as a biased reviewer, it must be one of the other three and yes, I am angry, angry at AMD for not putting more though & better all-around performance into Bulldozer... if these early reviews hold-up over time.

3> Bargaining???? If you mean looking for value from my money... always, Which is why I ended up with AMD this last build, otherwise I haven't got a clue what you're talking about there.

4> I was depressed when I started seeing reviews released, but then I started seeing all the variations between reviews...

5> Three days ago, I accepted the fact that AMD yet again let the computing world down. They need to stop spending time coming up with names that will just let people down, and use that time to instead figure out how to build a better processor

Give him a break Mr Super Mod, I tend to 'go' places people rarely care to see, and it sometimes brings this out in people.

 

[chaosdsm]

If you are late - really late - you will not get parts under NDA any longer; They expect you to be on time and these kind of deadlines are hard for me to meet since i use at least 20 games in every evaluation.

That sucks, but for an initial eval, wouldn't it be better to just use a couple of top games, then do a full review later... forgive me, thinking outloud there.

As to the BIOSes .. do you expect a reviewer with 4 days to review a board to run all his benches - then try another BIOS and run them again?

Not at all, in fact, I would expect the motherboard manufacturer and CPU manufacturer to work together and give you a fully updated board to start with. Then if they give you enough time, you could try different things on your own. But given the time you had.... well, heck, I usually spend up to 4 days doing my own testing after burn-in on my new builds, and that may only include 2 to 4 games & some photo & video editing apps, plus music production with Cubase.

We shall see which CPU runs out of gas first with overclocked GTX 580 SLI
and HD 6970-X3 TriFire (880/1375MHz)
:whiste:

• Core i3
• Phenom II X2
• Phenom II X4 at 4.3GHz (and i might put it under water to get 4.5)
• Core i7 at 4.0 GHz
• FX-8150 at 4.6 GHz

Can't wait... however, I'm not holding high hopes for gaming on the 8150, even though I know it will be a lot better than gaming on my old X2-4400+ which is still kickin A & taking names with a GTX460 at the helm.

 

[toyota]

ROFLMAO

1> I would rather go with an Intel system, but in the end I'm limited by funding. My AM3 build saved over $400 vs a comparable Intel build & got me 6-cores instead of 4 which definitely helped in my video editing & encoding to Blu-Ray. But now that I'm shooting more video, more encoding performance would be a plus

2> I tend to look at all sides of a problem to see what is wrong, not just the side that is presented to me. Though the trends in most of the reviews is generally the same, the actual results are vastly different between several of them. Logic dictates that there's either a problem with the methodology, hardware, or software, or reviewer. Since we all know that there's no such thing as a biased reviewer, it must be one of the other three and yes, I am angry, angry at AMD for not putting more though & better all-around performance into Bulldozer... if these early reviews hold-up over time.

3> Bargaining???? If you mean looking for value from my money... always, Which is why I ended up with AMD this last build, otherwise I haven't got a clue what you're talking about there.

4> I was depressed when I started seeing reviews released, but then I started seeing all the variations between reviews...

5> Three days ago, I accepted the fact that AMD yet again let the computing world down. They need to stop spending time coming up with names that will just let people down, and use that time to instead figure out how to build a better processor

Give him a break Mr Super Mod, I tend to 'go' places people rarely care to see, and it sometimes brings this out in people.

please show me how a comparable Intel system costs 400 bucks more and your X6. a 2500 only costs about 20 bucks more than an 1100t. a 2600 costs about 110 bucks more than an 1100t.

mobos are all over the place but you can find comparable features for within 50 bucks. so in the end you could have a much faster and much more efficient 2600 build for only around 150 bucks more.

 

[soccerballtux]

please show me how a comparable Intel system costs 400 bucks more and your X6. a 2500 only costs about 20 bucks more than an 1100t. a 2600 costs about 110 bucks more than an 1100t.

mobos are all over the place but you can find comparable features for within 50 bucks. so in the end you could have a much faster and much more efficient 2600 build for only around 150 bucks more.

yeah. AMD really is pretty screwed IMO unless Intel jacks the prices and EOL's these 25/2600's