FRONTPAGE AMD FX-8150 - Bulldozer - Processor Review

It sickens me to be honest. Intel has had toooo much dominance for toooooo long. There needs to be an equalizer and I thought this would be it

http://www.shopblt.com/cgi-bin/shop...011003000503_BLA5915P.shtml&order_id=!ORDERID!

http://www.provantage.com/amd-fd8150frw8kgu~7AAMD2ML.htm

there needs to be balance in the force eh

eviljab said:

there needs to be balance in the force eh

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Yes. I think that this will lead to further advancements but they need to come fast.

the prices are so fluctuated on every site, what gives .___.

according to the early poll figures, BD appears to be a disapointment. Only four person ranks it 8 or above.

11 people voted under 4, 11 people voted over 6... But 6 people voted a total disappointment while no one thinks its everything they hoped for. Poll results are looking like a big fat "meh" so far to me, slanted heavily towards the "fail" side of the spectrum.

Thanks for the review. Saved some $ from buying a new platform.
As Archer0915 had mentioned, I would like to see how it performs in real world video/encoding scenarios with all 8 cores.

Meh.. to invested at this point. As soon as it hits newegg I am clicking next day shipping.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/8

A good breakdown of gaming benchmarks of the chip. It looks like it hangs in there for the most part on GPU-bound levels (1920x1080/1200) but if you are playing a CPU-bound game, or your resolution is at 1680x1050 or lower it is a huge drop off from SB.

SamSaveMax said:

Thanks for the review. Saved some $ from buying a new platform.
As Archer0915 had mentioned, I would like to see how it performs in real world video/encoding scenarios with all 8 cores.

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Do you have any suggestions for what you might consider more real world? PovRay and x264 are real encoding utilities, but we're always looking to expand the testing suite to include more widely accepted and real world tests over things people consider synthetic. Audience opinion on this sort of stuff is as important as anything.

BD feels like a stop-gap attempt by AMD. The architectural improvements are certainly welcomed, and I do think these chips have some future scability to them, but what good does that do AMD with the ever-coveted benchmarks? They should have emphasized to the tech community the relevance of this design and what will benefit the most from it. Sure a brief tidbit is in the ad but that's not enough. I'm interested in learning what benefit the new instructions this lineup has that the SB does not have. This kind of feels like it is just the Phenom all over again minus TLB. Piledriver will be the one that will have the tweaks, the improved power consumption, etc etc. With SB-E around the corner what is the point of going with BD? I guess budget is about the only reason, or 8 VM's. I don't think it's a bust but it's just lackluster, certainly not a splash. But if AMD is just going for being relatively competitive I guess they accomplished that. if PD production doesn't get delayed we should see it next year

*Edit I got to read more of the review and I can totally see how some older bench programs would not reflect the performance improvement of this architecture. Nevertheless I'm waiting for PD unless some of you guys put up some great BD deals in the months to come

Hey why were there not more tests based on the real torque the BD should have delivered?

Was it a time limitation?

EDIT: Multitasking tadks are best for multi core where you really want to show off prowess. Something like I did in the AthII PhII comparison where you load the crap out of the CPU and then run timed tests to see how it could handle extreme usage.

SETI tests, WCG tests, F@H tests, Multi file Zip while transfering files and running a virus scan and encoding in the background to give a feel for the entire package. Open the damn thing up. Dont just play with it. Sure you have to satisfy the kids who want toys but some of us will work the crap out of a CPU and system. Some of us actually need and use more than 8 gigs of memory as well. We like to be catered to in reviews.

torqus? I'm not sure what you mean.

I.M.O.G. said:

Do you have any suggestions for what you might consider more real world? PovRay and x264 are real encoding utilities, but we're always looking to expand the testing suite to include more widely accepted and real world tests over things people consider synthetic. Audience opinion on this sort of stuff is as important as anything.

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I think a photoshop render wouldn't be a bad idea (or 3dsmax or something similar).

I would like to see more games in the testing, but I understand that can be difficult to standardize as each reviewer would have to be given/purchase copies of each of the games in the suite.

Wouldn't hurt to have PCMark Vantage or 7 used

I.M.O.G. said:

torqus? I'm not sure what you mean.

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Torque SP error on my part. The Intel have the high end for speed but do they have the low end grunt when the work is piled on.

Janus67 said:

I think a photoshop render wouldn't be a bad idea (or 3dsmax or something similar).

I would like to see more games in the testing, but I understand that can be difficult to standardize as each reviewer would have to be given/purchase copies of each of the games in the suite.

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I think the challenge there is what sort of render? I don't think there is a standard photoshop render benchmark, at least not that I know of. PovRay, x264, 7zip... These are real world apps that include a benchmarking routine. We could develop our own standard render that is reproducible, but we'd need to spend some time figuring that out which hasn't happened yet - or we'd need a member to contribute a reliable and repeatable procedure.

Games aren't hard for us to get test keys for, they have handed those out to us like candy when asked, so we could actually include more of those I expect. We typically go for representative samples here I think, as its something we've talked about doing more of but they are some of the longer benchmarks typically I believe. I think more specific game title tests could make sense and its not impossible for us to work in.

I.M.O.G. said:

Do you have any suggestions for what you might consider more real world? PovRay and x264 are real encoding utilities, but we're always looking to expand the testing suite to include more widely accepted and real world tests over things people consider synthetic. Audience opinion on this sort of stuff is as important as anything.

Click to expand...

The only suggestion I would make is just about the only 'heavy CPU' task I do (besides playing MWLL which is based on Crysis Wars, mostly single threaded, and wouldn't be anywhere close) and that's taking a FRAPS video recorded at 1080p and using Windows Live Movie Maker to compress it down using the standard 1080p output setting, as would be typical for someone to do before uploading game footage to youtube.