I have an itch

Looking around the FX-4 and FX-6 series are looking like good little overclockers, and the gaming performance matches my Thuban, even beating it slightly sometimes, add to that the FX-6 is cheap and the FX-4100 costs less than an i3 2100.

x86 benchmarks are so predictably consigned to what brand and type of CPU you have, its got so mind numbingly boring.... they also have little if any real relevance to everyday computing, so they are for the most part obscure bragging rights.

((((neeee.... my x6 Thuban can encode x264 FHD faster then your FX-8###, and your 2500K..... yeah so what? how is that important? what benefits do you have with that? i mean really?!?!?))))

What matters is how much does it cost and how smoothly can it play my games, and at what graphics settings?
In that i have nothing on any aforementioned FX, £ for £ nothing from any brand or model type on the market has.

I'm bored stiff with my CPU and i'm struggling to wait for a good look at how IVY or PD stack up.

I hope this itch goes away before i scratch at it too soon.

I think they make an ointment for that.

I personally can't wait to see PD. I also want to see the mid and lower end 7xxx series GPUs, but I'm probably not going to do anymore upgrading until my computer is entirely outdated. I'm almost mad that I didn't wait until PD, but then again I'm not having any problems with my Bulldozer, and I'm able to play all my games on high and ultra settings. It's mindblowing for a guy who just switched from an Athlon X2 and an Nvidia Geforce 9500.

Aldakoopa said:

I think they make an ointment for that.

I personally can't wait to see PD. I also want to see the mid and lower end 7xxx series GPUs, but I'm probably not going to do anymore upgrading until my computer is entirely outdated. I'm almost mad that I didn't wait until PD, but then again I'm not having any problems with my Bulldozer, and I'm able to play all my games on high and ultra settings. It's mindblowing for a guy who just switched from an Athlon X2 and an Nvidia Geforce 9500.

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I know, that FX-4100 is turning out to be a very good cost effective gaming chip, its capable of matching an i5 2500K in the new breed of games, and will OC just as high or more on the same cooler.... it costs as near as makes no difference half as much.

PD is probably not going to hit the shelves until Q3 or Q4. that's a long wait, and low end 7xxx are also of interest to me.

I see the price of the FX-8120 now though and I also wish I had gone with it. $200 for 8 cores? Hell yes! However, when I was building this rig I figured that 4 cores would be enough for me until I needed to upgrade in a few years. (hopefully)

Aldakoopa said:

I see the price of the FX-8120 now though and I also wish I had gone with it. $200 for 8 cores? Hell yes! However, when I was building this rig I figured that 4 cores would be enough for me until I needed to upgrade in a few years. (hopefully)

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The FX-8 (predictably) has come down sugnificantly since launch.

Here's the thing, your FX-4 is pretty much the same as an FX-8120 in all gaming benchmarks i have seen so far.

The newest games are still only using 4 threads, including BF3.

When games start using 6 or 8 threads it looks like the FX-8 would be an absolute monster, and so warrant its very aggressive name, predictably what AMD miss calculated (((AGAIN))) was how many threads developers would encode now and in the near future.

XSplit uses x264 to encode your stream.

Whitefang said:

XSplit uses x264 to encode your stream.

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I don't stream games from the cloud or anything like that, i have them locally installed, they are encoded and rendered with my own hardware (and so it will always be) The cloud is a very dirty word in my house

Frakk said:

I don't stream games from the cloud or anything like that, i have them locally installed, they are encoded and rendered with my own hardware (and so it will always be) The cloud is a very dirty word in my house

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Completely different idea. Not streaming from the cloud - streaming to a website so you others can watch. .

well, what about we that dont game but must crunch very large numbers over a very long time?
my p2x4 955 used to take 14 days to complete my program, now my 8120 completes it in 6 days.
I need more cores and threads running at a lower clock.

caddi daddi said:

well, what about we that dont game but must crunch very large numbers over a very long time?
my p2x4 955 used to take 14 days to complete my program, now my 8120 completes it in 6 days.
I need more cores and threads running at a lower clock.

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Point taken

Thats a 120% performance increase over your old 4 Core Phenom.

AMD's have been the preferred choice in multi-threading and number-crunching for a long time,
its good to see there still advancing that
Ask CRAY what CPU's they use in there super computers, AMD have a lot of raw processing power, its just a shame most Microsoft run of the mill apps don't know how to use it, stick an AMD on Linux and it will run the Star Ship Enterprise at warp 14.

@ Aldakoopa

7770 Review

its cheaper than the old 6870 but more expensive than the 6770, its performance is also better than the 6770 but a little less than the 6870.
Looks to me like a 6770 replacement, and not just by name. So not a great deal better than my 5770 which is what the 6770 actually is only with updated OpenGL etc...

BF3 in Ultra mode 4x AA 1920 x 1200 21 FPS, with 4x AA and Ultra my 5770 grinds to a (15 - 17 FPS) halt, 21 FPS is not playable but take the AA down and half the Ultra setting to high and it should be 40+ fine, for its cost that's pretty good. I wish they would stop using the single player mode when demoing BF3, its crap... a multi-player map is soooo much better.

The one i'm waiting for is the 7870.

Frakk said:

7770 Review

its cheaper than the old 6870 but more expensive than the 6770, its performance is also better than the 6770 but a little less than the 6870.
Looks to me like a 6770 replacement, and not just by name. So not a great deal better than my 5770 which is what the 6770 actually is only with updated OpenGL etc...

The one i'm waiting for is the 7870.

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The fact that the 7770 is better than the 6770 and not quite as good as the 6870 leads me to believe that it performs about the same as my OC'd 6850, give or take a little, which isn't bad seeing as I paid the same price for my card just a few months ago as this just-released card costs.

It's looking like the 7870 is going to be a beast with a decent price.

Frakk said:

When games start using 6 or 8 threads it looks like the FX-8 would be an absolute monster, and so warrant its very aggressive name, predictably what AMD miss calculated (((AGAIN))) was how many threads developers would encode now and in the near future.

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Nopr, build it and they will come

mjw21a said:

Nopr, build it and they will come

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Well on that AMD have sent out information on there BD architecture and instructions on how to fully utilize it, our main coder has a copy (i must remember to ask him for it)

The problem is, has been and remains the same, its not easy to code for 2 different architecture's that are so very different. most simply code for one, the main one, IE Intel.
More often then not no mater what CPU is plugged in, it gets treated as if its an Intel, what architectural aspects make no sense to its instructions, are simply ignored.

This includes the MS OS its self, hence why it gets confused by it, attempts to patch MS have had limited success as we know, when it comes to most apps it still thinks there are only 4 cores on the 8 core BD and 2 cores on the 4 core (just to take one example where they get confused)

Linux is open source, its an army of very highly skilled coders who just love new and different hardware, by comparison to MS they will have been drooling over BD's architecture and raced to code everything up to make full use of it if for nothing else but there own vanity.

Large game developers have an interest in getting there products to work to there full potential for obvious reasons, its probably why the FX is so competitive with the latest and greatest games.

Well, if Linux is being coded for it this will benefit AMD in server and HPC workloads. It takes time however if they hadn't released this chip, code would NEVER be created to make use of it. It will get there eventually, its just that chances are that by the time the code is there Intel will have an 8 core chip also with better performance per core. Build it and they will come.

AMD are successful with there server processors, as are Intel and people do look to AMD for vast data computations.

The fact is they are in ever sense every bit as powerful as any Intel and more, as long as the software used knows how to use AMD's x64 architecture

Not necessarily. If AMD can't win marketshare, it doesn't matter how well they do in niche markets. They have to make $ to succeed. AMD are that far in debt that surviving is a factor. They need to do well for a period of time.... More than one generation of processors to succeed. If they were to hit the point where they had no debt things would get seriously interesting.... (By the way, not sure if you should even bother reading that post.... I've had WAY too many drinks).

mjw21a said:

Not necessarily. If AMD can't win marketshare, it doesn't matter how well they do in niche markets. They have to make $ to succeed. AMD are that far in debt that surviving is a factor. They need to do well for a period of time.... More than one generation of processors to succeed. If they were to hit the point where they had no debt things would get seriously interesting.... (By the way, not sure if you should even bother reading that post.... I've had WAY too many drinks).

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I did not know they were actually far in debt, how bad is it?

They're still owing a few billion to the banks as I understand it..... I'm not sure if that expense was spun off into Global Foundries though considering most of that expense would have been due to manufacturing capabillity.

mjw21a said:

They're still owing a few billion to the banks as I understand it..... I'm not sure if that expense was spun off into Global Foundries though considering most of that expense would have been due to manufacturing capabillity.

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Right, lets hope they can get through it.