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FRONTPAGE AMD FX-8150 - Bulldozer - Processor Review

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How happy are you with AMD FX-8150 price/performance?


  • Total voters
    205
  • Poll closed .
I want to see some BOINC numbers. I see no real advantages or reason to move to a new platform if it will not burry an Intel Quad or AMD X6. Not beat but burry.

For me this is a little sad; actually:cry: Come on AMD:(

:rain:

Come onnnnnnnnnnnnnn already.....
 
Well I decided id try it out just for a review even though its a waste of time and money but frys wont have it instock till the weekend at the earliest my local store said. So much for a launch.

Yup ....s mae boat here they figure not till the end of the month. I might wait till Jan for the 8170 ........ wondering what tweaks or changes they might have instore ofr it by then. But then again knowing me if I see one in at Canada Computer I just might drop a dime .... or two.
 
I expect we'll see better performance from BD as the manufacturing process is refined, new steppings come out, and software is optimized for it. I also expect newer, more robust AM3+ motherboard chipsets will evolve to compensate for the extra power draw BD seems to be imposing upon other hardware components. More robust chipsets could help lower temps which seem to be higher than expected. Don't jump to too many firm conclusions just yet.
 
I expect we'll see better performance from BD as the manufacturing process is refined, new steppings come out, and software is optimized for it. I also expect newer, more robust AM3+ motherboard chipsets will evolve to compensate for the extra power draw BD seems to be imposing upon other hardware components. More robust chipsets could help lower temps which seem to be higher than expected.
I really have high hopes (I don't know why I allow myself to) for PD.
 
guys... to me, a product is a flop when it doesn't even generate enough interest for me to bother saving up my pennies...
 
I expect we'll see better performance from BD as the manufacturing process is refined, new steppings come out, and software is optimized for it. I also expect newer, more robust AM3+ motherboard chipsets will evolve to compensate for the extra power draw BD seems to be imposing upon other hardware components. More robust chipsets could help lower temps which seem to be higher than expected. Don't jump to too many firm conclusions just yet.

I read the review early this A.M. here; good review. But like you Trents, after mulling this all day during a 300 mile drive mostly in a downpour, I'm thinking that more hardware and software to take advantage of BD will come forth over the next few months, some probably already near tape-out, and there will be some more positive reviews at those times. But for now, my personal tick must await the next tock, or something.............
 
Sadly i have to say, even if the new Bulldozer seems to be able to catch up to most Sandy Bridges on many terms, or even exceeding at some spots, the backside is its massive TDP. Well, i mean, that have to be expected at 8 cores, thats not gentle on smaller systems anymore, its kinda a small supercomputer when it keeps continuing like that. Although, the Sandy Bridge will mostly handle the same performance with half the TDP, which clearly is showing that AMD still isnt fully up to the task on the CPUs.

Sure, those who want to save up bucks and got huge systems who can handle such a TDP, may become happy getting that alternate CPU, however, expecially users of SFF and Notebooks/Laptops will have to stay with Intel, thats almost certain.

I mean, i already wondered.. what 2 billion transistors? While the flagship of the Nehalem series had "only" 1 billion, which was still a lot. And we know, usualy the TDP is calculated by 4 things:

1. Amount of transistors (twice as much, so its usualy resulting into twice the TDP)
2. Manufacturing process and overall architecture (aswell nm)
3. Stepping
4. Voltage

Now, all values are about same such as Sandy Bridge with the exceptions of the transistor amount, right... what else to say. Anyway, at least AMD users can now mostly catch up on raw performance, which is at least some good news.
 
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Speaking of notebooks, I see where A6 laptops are now coming out. Anyone tried an A6 laptop/notebook yet?
 
Did you check out the Toms Hardware Guide review? TDP issue will mostly be resolved with Windows 8.
 
Sigh.... I was expecting a lot more from AMD this time around.... looks like I'll settle for a 980x or 990x in January or so once I get my tax return back. By then, their price hopefully will have gone down. From the benchmarks I've seen, its not worth buying a completely different mobo, PSU, and cpu, when I can just pop in a 980/990x into my board and get better performance.

:facepalm:
 
Did you check out the Toms Hardware Guide review? TDP issue will mostly be resolved with Windows 8.

At first, i got no clue how they gonna reduce the TDP by a large margin, if so, it may bring some optimations regarding some technology which isnt currently activated in WIN 7. Although i dont know why they dont just add it on a update, cant be impossible. Since they update the OS all the time, and all what it is on about is to enable more support, not to completly enable a disabled CPU. AMD was always supported by WIN and ofc im happy about because the market is living by having competition. So what MAC was doing isnt toward my liking and reason enough not to use it anymore (just to put a clear signal that im not gonna support such a strategy). Anyway, as a gamer and video user i dont truly need a MAC OS, so i drive well using WIN, even if i have to pay for it (although the hardware cost is 10 times higher on high end systems).


And at second, WIN 8 will aswell need some time in order to etablish itself in a fixed and great working condition, so we cant expect it before the end of the year 2012 in a good condition, so that means it will be a full year to get the AMD CPU working with lower TDP, and its just not very advisable to jump to AMD any quick in that case.

I mean, dont get me wrong, im sure some users might not have a issue with higher TDP and may have fun using the new AMD CPU, for some stuff it surely may perform great and it got high OC capabilitys, which isnt always given at CPUs with that much cores (as more cores as harder to get a OC stable). At least in that term AMD got a fair deal of possibilitys and it surely can be fun using it. But its simply still not on par with Intel, so i cant give it more than a average 5ish rating. AMD made big improvements on performane at least, that have to be noticed and at least AMD users are able to live with, without feeling like a aged snail, finally some performance for those kind of users, thats indeed good improvement still.
 
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The link is apparently about the fact that half of the disabled cores doesnt give half the performance, much more than that. Thats however not very surprising considering that it isnt only the core being the limitations, a core is just a part of the CPU, but its by no means the only thing which does matter for performance. So, even with half the cores, the other areas of the CPU still are fully enabled, so we may miss some cores but indeed.. the performance isnt dropped by half, in that case.

Maybe its possible that the performance goes up a bit when some optimations done to the OS and programs too, which is currently not truly the case because everything is fully optimized for Intel. So i rather keep careful with doing premature judgements in that term.

In overall, i may be disappointed lesser than a huge user base, because i did never expect the new AMD CPU to be a Intel killer or even be on par with it, AMD wont reach such a condition out of the blue sky, thats no realistic approach. I just notice improvements, and truly huge ones (compared with the old FX CPUs), and thats what i did expect and so i am happy in a average manner, because its exactly what i did expect, not more and not less.
 
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