AMD Releases FX-Series Bulldozer Desktop CPUs

[droidhacker]

Do you people even realize that for a new processor architecture to actually perform the way it was designed, you need to actually build your binaries to take advantage of it? All the so-called "benchmarks" being tested on it are actually built to make older and especially intel architecture look good. Benchmarks are acceptable for comparing similar hardware against each other.... i.e., you can compare one bulldozer chip to another bulldozer chip. Benchmarking is virtually pointless in comparing different architectures against each other.

[mcirsta]

Do you people even realize that for a new processor architecture to actually perform the way it was designed, you need to actually build your binaries to take advantage of it? All the so-called "benchmarks" being tested on it are actually built to make older and especially intel architecture look good. Benchmarks are acceptable for comparing similar hardware against each other.... i.e., you can compare one bulldozer chip to another bulldozer chip. Benchmarking is virtually pointless in comparing different architectures against each other.

I'll agree with you, I think this might be true, especially for Bulldozer. The problem is this, how are you going to get Bulldozer optimized binaries ? It will have to run whatever is out there and that's that. Unless you're willing to use Gentoo, as a former user I'm not.

[tuke81]

Michael if you get one, there is a patch coming in kernel for it:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux..../focus=1170744

Hopefully we see benches with and without patch in phoronix.

[Kano]

The new cpus seem to have got even more inefficiant single cores than the phenom series. That means every apps that prefers to use mainly 1 core is even slower with a new cpu. even the cheapest pentium g620 (with only 2.6 ghz) beats the new chips in that discipline (cinebench 11.5). As there are not that many games that run faster with more than 4 cores it is really weird that the chips should be for GAMERS, thats absolutely not logical. For Linux it might be better when you compile lots of apps, so it is more a Gentoo/Arch/BSD optimizied cpu There should be a kernel patch out there that could improve Linux speed (also Win8 could be faster than Win7 i read somewhere) but i don't find the link now. Maybe oc freaks like it when they use powerful liquid cooling solutions and disable everything with the exeception of 2 cores... btw. intel i7-2600k often beats that cpu in common tasks and needs only 95w tdp compared to 125w for the new fx cpus...

[deanjo]

Do you people even realize that for a new processor architecture to actually perform the way it was designed, you need to actually build your binaries to take advantage of it? All the so-called "benchmarks" being tested on it are actually built to make older and especially intel architecture look good. Benchmarks are acceptable for comparing similar hardware against each other.... i.e., you can compare one bulldozer chip to another bulldozer chip. Benchmarking is virtually pointless in comparing different architectures against each other.

This is true to an extent. However other introduced processor architectures (i3/i5/i7, K7, etc) have shown great leaps in performance even without rebuilding of binaries. When the binaries were redone that leap in performance just got greater.

[deanjo]

There should be a kernel patch out there that could improve Linux speed (also Win8 could be faster than Win7 i read somewhere) but i don't find the link now.

Several sites have claimed AMD has been saying that.

Unfortunately, the Windows 7 scheduler wasn't built with Bulldozer's distinctive sharing arrangement in mind, and as far as we call tell, the BIOS doesn't provide any hints to that OS about how to schedule threads. Win7 simply sees eight equal cores, with no preference between them. AMD claims Windows 8 will be better optimized for the Bulldozer architecture and cites improvements of 2-10% in several recent games with the Windows 8 developer preview.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21813/3

Toms has a bit of a write up on it as well.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-23.html

[mirv]

Do you people even realize that for a new processor architecture to actually perform the way it was designed, you need to actually build your binaries to take advantage of it? All the so-called "benchmarks" being tested on it are actually built to make older and especially intel architecture look good. Benchmarks are acceptable for comparing similar hardware against each other.... i.e., you can compare one bulldozer chip to another bulldozer chip. Benchmarking is virtually pointless in comparing different architectures against each other.

Go away. You're making sense. That doesn't belong here!
On a serious note, you're quite right. Bulldozer was designed with heavily threaded/multi-process environments (aka server systems) in mind. Many desktop applications are headed that way too, but they're not there yet. There's also cost and wall-power to look at, CPU features, and a host of other details that will get glossed over because of some meaningless "ooh, game, pretty" bias. Human nature I guess.
Intel and AMD started branching off focus on different things a while ago - which in pretty much in line with what I've seen from any benchies so far.

[deanjo]

AMD really missed the boat on this one IMHO. There is really no compelling reason for a person to look at upgrading to bulldozer right now. For the most part the x6's keep up with Bulldozer and with AMD choosing to continue using the AMD 8xx series chipset you can't even justify upgrading to get chipset with more functionality (such as PCI-e v3, extra SATA and I/O, etc). It is really starting to look like Phenom/Phenom II all over again where they release the initial version and then shortly after release what it should have been in the first place. They probably should have just shrunk the X6 down to use the smaller process in the time being and maybe add some extra extension support until the OS's were ready and a new chipset to take advantage of it.

[FireBurn]

I've fired off an email this morning to the two new AMD CPU contacts asking about Linux tests.... Waiting for response :/ Otherwise I'm hoping I can get remote SSH access from a third party this week to an FX system, but that's less than ideal when not having the same other system components here so that I can conduct a direct/fair comparison.

When did you first ask for them?

[droidhacker]

I'll agree with you, I think this might be true, especially for Bulldozer. The problem is this, how are you going to get Bulldozer optimized binaries ? It will have to run whatever is out there and that's that. Unless you're willing to use Gentoo, as a former user I'm not.

You don't necessarily need to optimize *all* your binaries. Probably the kernel by itself will make a big difference.