CPU/Mobo AMD Bulldozer Discussion Thread
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Nope, I think the architecture is fine.
What it needs is higher clocks, more optimised software (remember the early days of SSE2?) and a less leaky CPU. Process improvement should take care of most of these issues, and a helping hand to software developers will help.
28nm is not something BD needs, it is something it needs desperately, if the process works well.
If you look at how long Stars lasted (in one form or the other) it is a fair bet AMD is looking to squeeze 4-5 years out of this microarchitecture. Thread location awareness and leakage/power consumption seem to be where AMD needs most work as of now.
So I'm skipping BD as well, maybe AM3+ and a big quad is what I'll be doing, or SB 2500k with a decent motherboard. The second is about 30% more expensive, so I'll weigh that into the decision as well.
2560x gaming and desktop work (surf, music and a bit of movies, photoshop and pdf) doesn't seem to indicate a beefy CPU anyway.
What it needs is higher clocks, more optimised software (remember the early days of SSE2?) and a less leaky CPU. Process improvement should take care of most of these issues, and a helping hand to software developers will help.
28nm is not something BD needs, it is something it needs desperately, if the process works well.
If you look at how long Stars lasted (in one form or the other) it is a fair bet AMD is looking to squeeze 4-5 years out of this microarchitecture. Thread location awareness and leakage/power consumption seem to be where AMD needs most work as of now.
So I'm skipping BD as well, maybe AM3+ and a big quad is what I'll be doing, or SB 2500k with a decent motherboard. The second is about 30% more expensive, so I'll weigh that into the decision as well.
2560x gaming and desktop work (surf, music and a bit of movies, photoshop and pdf) doesn't seem to indicate a beefy CPU anyway.
cranky said:
I dont know from where you got the data but latest IDC report the PC CPU market revenue for 2011 at 43billion. I doubt that accounts for 1% or not, but I am sure neither Intel nor AMD would want to lose that share. Maybe you are talking about enthusiast segment and confused it with Desktop,
Ummm, no idea. I was coming from the simple fact that you can't compare benchmarks done on two different versions of any software.
Nor did I.
But the channel + OEM makes up about 90% of the offtake, the number released in secondary retail is usually much, much lower.
What the figure pointed out was the number of people walking into a shop and choosing a CPU was.
There is also some amount retained for restocking and warranty service needs. This is usually very small, to the order of 4-5%
I'm inclined to agree without even looking at the data.
what i am saying is if AMD shifts to a smaller fabrication die won't these leaks decrease as there is a closer proximity of working components.. I might be shooting in the dark here but doesn't that help?
Also shorter pipelines will help decrease power consumption won't they... the present problems arise as you have said due to longer pipelines and the inability of the architecture to perform shorter threads more efficiently..
Thats a very shortsighted statement.. power footprint is large i agree but not massive... let me point out a few flaws in your argument... the core 2 duo e6400,i5 760, x4 975, the i7 970 and many more have an even bigger power consumption at idle.. what you see as load there is a cinebench rendering which i can say with 99 percent guarantee than nobody will do it 24 hours a day... for 7-8k that proccy is a steal!!
Also shorter pipelines will help decrease power consumption won't they... the present problems arise as you have said due to longer pipelines and the inability of the architecture to perform shorter threads more efficiently..
Aces170 said:
Thats a very shortsighted statement.. power footprint is large i agree but not massive... let me point out a few flaws in your argument... the core 2 duo e6400,i5 760, x4 975, the i7 970 and many more have an even bigger power consumption at idle.. what you see as load there is a cinebench rendering which i can say with 99 percent guarantee than nobody will do it 24 hours a day... for 7-8k that proccy is a steal!!
thebanik said:Comeon now, you are just shooting figures out of your a**,
It was a little more involved than that. Do note that IDC, for example, reports unit and revenue only to paid subscribers.
But you can make a pretty good estimate by clubbing together a bunch of data sets.
Let's start with the semiconductor industry as a whole. This generates about $25bn in sales per month (documented on the SIA site). Note this is all sales of all semis. This is roughly $300bn. I find it a bit tough to imagine sales of desktop PC CPUs being 15% of this total at $45bn. Imagine if that were true. You're looking at AMD getting about $9-10bn, if this were true, and only from sales of desktop CPUs given their ~20% share.
Obviously there's some problem with these numbers as AMD is currently at about $6.5bn total revenue, and Intel is at $43 billion. This would mean that they make almost every bit of money only off CPUs, which we know is not true.
The $43bn number (even as a forecast) doesn't sound right.
So let's dig deeper.
AMD's market share tiptoes higher, Intel still ruler of the roost -- Engadget
So we have another figure, this time the pie size is $9.5 billion, a number I can frankly believe easily.
Now let's use this as a base, which makes AMD's desktop CPU business about $2bn and Intel's about $7.5bn. Given that AMD's 'Desktop solutions' space is about $4.8bn including chipsets, embedded and server (hey, don't ask me!!), a fifty-fifty split sounds good.
Let's take a quick look at some proof of channel splits:
Channel Partners Expected to Dominate PC Sales Through 2012-www.itchannelplanet.com
So we're down to 5%. Obviously this includes entities such as 'white box' providers or your friendly neighborhood assembler.
5% of (let's say) AMD total desktop CPU biz ($2bn, remember) is $100 million.
This is roughly 0.01% of their total revenue ($6.5bn). And it includes assemblers.
So if anything, I overestimated it.
Any statement about the architecture is a fools errand, AMD has got the best of engineers in the world working for them. They have been working on this CPU for atleast 5 Years, and our keyboard warriors after reading few reviews have already figured the problem and suggested solutions. All that is left is to implement it in the next stepping or maybe give it a codename and launch a new more efficient CPU within the next 6 months....Hoorah!!!!! :hap2:
The flaw with that statement is that you are comparing older generations of Intel CPU's with the latest generation from AMD. If you compare it with latest generation of Intel CPU's then you will find that Power Usage on Idle has increased by 131% and under load by ~160%. All the while not able to match(or just about match) the performance of a CPU which is cheaper (ie 2500K) while being costlier. You have taken a hypothetical statement by Aces to show his disappointment and based your whole argument around that. :no:
--- Updated Post - Automerged ---
The article you linked to from engadget doesnt even mention what kind of Pie that is. Revenue, Profit or something else, below I am linking just two which clearly states the revenue of PC Processors from IDC, there are lot more which will substantiate that claim....
PC processor market up 17.6% in 2011, says IDC
Intel Ends 2010 with 81.0 Percent Share of CPU Market - Broadband & Consumer Electronics Market Research at iSuppli
2010 around 40 Billion $, 2011 around 43 Billion $.
Anyways no point in arguing, the point I was trying to make was, you can easily discount enthusiast segment as not being important, but saying the whole PC segment is not worth it for Companies like Intel, AMD, Nvidia is a bit far fetched is all I would say....
mrcool63 said:
The flaw with that statement is that you are comparing older generations of Intel CPU's with the latest generation from AMD. If you compare it with latest generation of Intel CPU's then you will find that Power Usage on Idle has increased by 131% and under load by ~160%. All the while not able to match(or just about match) the performance of a CPU which is cheaper (ie 2500K) while being costlier. You have taken a hypothetical statement by Aces to show his disappointment and based your whole argument around that. :no:
--- Updated Post - Automerged ---
The article you linked to from engadget doesnt even mention what kind of Pie that is. Revenue, Profit or something else, below I am linking just two which clearly states the revenue of PC Processors from IDC, there are lot more which will substantiate that claim....
PC processor market up 17.6% in 2011, says IDC
Intel Ends 2010 with 81.0 Percent Share of CPU Market - Broadband & Consumer Electronics Market Research at iSuppli
2010 around 40 Billion $, 2011 around 43 Billion $.
Anyways no point in arguing, the point I was trying to make was, you can easily discount enthusiast segment as not being important, but saying the whole PC segment is not worth it for Companies like Intel, AMD, Nvidia is a bit far fetched is all I would say....
cranky said:
Can't be profit.
Intel's total revenue is $43bn. (annual report, 2010)
AMDs is $6.5bn. (annual report, 2010), their profit was $43mn only.
The $43 bn CPU market (which I can actually believe) may be the total of every kind of processor made by every manufacturer, including the bits that go into washing machines et al.
Definitely not PC processors. It would mean that Intel makes more than 80% of their money on PC CPUs alone. We know this is not true, their embedded and memory business is almost as big.
Bulldozer Has Arrived: AMD FX-8150 Processor Review - X-bit labs
This is another review of the same. My apologies if it has already been mentioned. I did not go through the entire thread. Basically inspite of those who wish to believe in the contrary I think AMD is a loosing proposition. They have frankly nothing to compete against Intel and it is frankly a little depressing. Just my thoughts. Peace
This is another review of the same. My apologies if it has already been mentioned. I did not go through the entire thread. Basically inspite of those who wish to believe in the contrary I think AMD is a loosing proposition. They have frankly nothing to compete against Intel and it is frankly a little depressing. Just my thoughts. Peace
Gannu said:
true.. AMD has always been the budget choice for the past 3 years.. i guess they need to change the pricing to still remain budget king..
But wonder what will happen to their profitability though.. they must produce BD in large quantities to meet the gap.. but they were having issues with their yields...
Aces170
ex-Mod
Huge....
Frankly I don't think the chip with its current performance, and power requirements is worth it. The sides have changed from A64 days when Pentium was pushing its net burst architecture, and just claiming higher speeds in certain applications. While totally discounting performance for watt.
The only reason to even consider BD is as Cranky pointed out, a more robust platform as AMD has more options at a lower price-point for the motherboards. However I would skip BD completely and wait for Pile-driver where they have more time to iron out the short comings. However Intel is not lying idle, and Ivy Bridge looks very promising.
Just hope they have cheaper BD "quad-core/hexa core" variants sub 5k. That seems the only price-point where AMD can survive atm.
it has been shown that the IIPC increases by around 20 percent when you disable 4 cores in BD that is core 2,4,6 and 8. the sharing is supposedly decreasing the IIPC
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...ew-(4)-!exclusive!-Excuse-for-1-Threaded-Perf
Check this out.. now are you convinced Aces??? BD is not totally useless its just not fabricated with you iin mind:bleh:
to quote rage3d
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...ew-(4)-!exclusive!-Excuse-for-1-Threaded-Perf
Check this out.. now are you convinced Aces??? BD is not totally useless its just not fabricated with you iin mind:bleh:
to quote rage3d