AMD FX-8150 Processor Review - Bulldozer Arrives

[Apoptosis]

great point and in other regions AMD is usually the price king for some reason. I still haven't figured how prices can change that drastically in various countries unless one brand gets taxed differently or something weird.

[Athlonite]

mostly for us Kiwi's it's extra transport costs and retail rip offs there really isn't a big reason why there's such price disparity between NZ/Aus and the US

[Kaos Kid]

These are supposed to be compatible with my ASUS 890 board with a bios update, but since I already have an 1100T in it now I'm not sure if the current price point is worth the upgrade, I'll probably wait until the prices drop a bit and we see how these perform in real-world apps. I am jonesin' though, its taking all my willpower (and lack of funds, lol) to NOT order one today...

[Major_A]

Wait for the review with the FX-8120. Another site did a brief test with it and the performance isn't that far off of the FX-8150. But since the FX-8120 isn't the flagship CPU the pricing should be more reasonable.

[Tator Tot]

FX-8120 is $220 right now.

If you disable Core's 1-3-5-7 in the BIOS (leaving 0-2-4-6 enabled) you can get up to a 20% increase in IPC, Realistically, it's more like 15% increase in IPC.
AMD's biggest flaw with these chips is marketing them as 8 Core processors, when they're realistically 4 Core parts, with a hardware level hyper threading.

[Kaos Kid]

FX-8120 is $220 right now.

If you disable Core's 1-3-5-7 in the BIOS (leaving 0-2-4-6 enabled) you can get up to a 20% increase in IPC, Realistically, it's more like 15% increase in IPC.
AMD's biggest flaw with these chips is marketing them as 8 Core processors, when they're realistically 4 Core parts, with a hardware level hyper threading.

Is this for all applications, or only those times when hyperthreading wouldn't be helpful? Give some basic examples please, I had to wiki "IPC" just to see what the heck you were talking about

[Tator Tot]

FX-8120 is $220 right now.

If you disable Core's 1-3-5-7 in the BIOS (leaving 0-2-4-6 enabled) you can get up to a 20% increase in IPC, Realistically, it's more like 15% increase in IPC.
AMD's biggest flaw with these chips is marketing them as 8 Core processors, when they're realistically 4 Core parts, with a hardware level hyper threading.

Is this for all applications, or only those times when hyperthreading wouldn't be helpful? Give some basic examples please, I had to wiki "IPC" just to see what the heck you were talking about

It's more of just in a general sense. When you disable the 2nd "core" on a Bulldozer module, you free up a decode & prefetch unit so it can operate for the other core. Like wise, you also shorten the pipeline; meaning that instructions take less time to be executed, speeding the whole process up.

Now, if you leave Bulldozer on "full blast" so to speak, with all 8 "Cores" enabled, then you can see instances where the Bulldozer architecture will shine. Specifically, when you have applications that take advantage of FMA4 & AVX Instruction sets.
Unfortunately, most programs barely go past the SSE2 instruction set (which is from 2001, almost 10 years old now.)

If you compare the performance of SSE4.2 on Intel & AMD based chips, you'll also see Bulldozer can take a lead; but not as great as before.

Another instance where Bulldozer can push ahead is with XOP & CVT16; which are two instruction sets derived from SSE5 (as SSE5 isn't finished yet.) Though, these instruction sets are really only going to be used by HPC systems, until SSE5 is finished.

Bulldozer's biggest downfall is AMD's marketing (like I said, Bulldozer is a 4 Core part. 1 Module = 1 Core. No matter how you look at it, from an engineering or physical stand point. Of course, AMD will argue this with me till no end, since they want to throw more marketing at the wind with their Opteron parts saying they've got the first 16 Core chip and what not.
The other downfall to bulldozer is that modern software is just not optimized for modern CPU design. The performance we see from both AMD & Intel right now, is increasingly getting "gimped" by Software that wishes to support old CPU's like the Pentium 4 & Athlon 64 generations.

Easily examples of software like this are Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. Currently, you can download Waterfox 64bit or Pale Moon; both of which are versions of Firefox designed to be used with modern systems that optimize for the SSE3 instruction set, which can easily net large performance increases in terms of overall responsiveness and javascript performance.

Sadly though, FAR too many businesses are still using Windows XP and old Pentium 4 / Athlon 64 based systems, which hold back software development. If you were a software engineer you would easily understand what I'm saying; as you have to easily add in an extra 400 lines of code to simple programs like Web-browsers so that they actually work on those old systems. Back-doors, alternate paths, and in some cases, completely new code; just to support what was outdated 6 years ago? Seems insane right?

Now, don't get me wrong; Bulldozer does have some fundimental flaws when you actually look at the design of the chip.
Phenom II chips have 64KiB of L1 Cache per Core, a Bulldozer Module has 32KiB of L1 Cache split between two x86 cores (effectively making it 16KiB of L1 Cache per x86 Core on a Bulldozer module.) This right here, will kill IPC on simple tasks that simply don't hit the L2 Cache, let alone the L3 Cache.
LIke I said before, AMD's design of the Prefetch & Decode nodes inside the chip were also too far apart and too few, increasing the pipeline and slowing down the entire chip (since that's one of BD's shared resourced on a module.)

You can take what I say here with a grain of salt, since none of this is confirmed; but the re-iteration of Bulldozer will be the Piledriver Core, which has a redesigned Prefetch & Decode process to increase IPC on a Module by 10-15%. This will easily catch AMD up to Intel's Sandy Bridge design; but Intel will have Ivy Bridge out by then and Global Foundries 32nm Process has given them nothing but issues with Bulldozer.
What remains to be seen is if we'll have a small jump from Piledriver (E.G. GTX 480 to GTX 580 ) or a huge jump ( Phenom I to Phenom II ) from the Piledriver revision.

What I can see, is that any negative press you see about Bulldozer right now, is as granted as Fermi (GTX 480) got at launch; but it's also over hyped to an extreme margin.

On the other hand, AMD didn't release bulldozer completely deaf, blind, & stupid. They know what they were doing, and at least have a vague idea of where they're going to move in the future. If this pans out for them? Well dear god I hope so, as AMD's release cycle is gonna be fast-tracked with Bulldozer and it could give Intel a run for their money down to the 11nm manufacturing process (assuming that Global Foundries can keep up with AMD's demands.)

[Kaos Kid]

Thanks for dumbing that down a little for me, things are a bit less muddy now. For my daily load on that 1100T machine (mainly videdit) I don't see much of a reason to jump on a new Bulldozer/Zambezi right now, but its nice to know that my mobo could upgrade to one once I feel the need.

[XstollieX]

Thanks for dumbing that down a little for me, things are a bit less muddy now. For my daily load on that 1100T machine (mainly videdit) I don't see much of a reason to jump on a new Bulldozer/Zambezi right now, but its nice to know that my mobo could upgrade to one once I feel the need.

AMD isn't supporting the new FX processors on 890 motherboards. What motherboard vendors do, or try to do is solely on them.

[Kaos Kid]

I see, ASUS has had a bios listed for quite a few months now that is supposed to support the Bulldozers, I wouldn't know though because if I upgrade to that bios I have to put one in, it isn't supposed to be compatible with anything earlier.

[XstollieX]

I see, ASUS has had a bios listed for quite a few months now that is supposed to support the Bulldozers, I wouldn't know though because if I upgrade to that bios I have to put one in, it isn't supposed to be compatible with anything earlier.

What board are you running?

[Kaos Kid]

M4A89GTD PRO/USB3

[KnightRid]

I will just say it, I am not impressed.

No offense to AMD nor the AMD users but this is an 8-core processor that has a hard time beating 4-core processors. I do not know if all of the software used for the testing was able to handle 8 cores (does it have 16 total with virtual?) but the scores I have seen here on LR and around the web make me wonder how AMD has fallen so far behind. I used to use AMD exclusively but ever since the core i7, I have not even looked at an AMD.

I do not think I was expecting too much either. Let me say this again - IT IS AN 8-CORE CPU

If you can not produce an 8-core cpu that can readily defeat an Intel 4-core processor, I think you need to get back to the drawing board and figure out what is wrong.

Ok, flame on

[Tator Tot]

The problem is, despite AMD's marketing; it's not an 8 Core part. It's a 4 Core part with a hardware level of essentially "Hyperthreading."

Check about two posts up where I explained the reasoning behind this statement.

[Lehmann]

the fx-8150 running stock 3.6 only gets 13.588 ppd running a 6900 overclocked to 4.9 which isnt going to be stable unless you have a custom water cooling sytem should be around 25,000 to 26,000 ppd. which is slower than a i7-920@4.0 and uses 50 more watts to do soo give or take. while a i7-2600k will do well over 30k a day and uses 200 watts less power @ 4.9. for 24/7 folding in the us 100 watts is roughly $20 per month.

[Athlonite]

you have noticed that F@H isn't using anything more than SSE2 had F@H been able to make use of SSE4 or above you'd see a huge improvement in PPD or so I assume or maybe it makes better use of OpenCL type calculations

[Major_A]

F@H isn't using anything more than SSE2 had F@H been able to make use of SSE4

This is the problem with all software. They have to write it so older CPUs can work. The only software that tries to push the boundaries is a dediacted AAA PC game. Most other apps, not so much.

[Tator Tot]

F@H isn't using anything more than SSE2 had F@H been able to make use of SSE4

This is the problem with all software. They have to write it so older CPUs can work. The only software that tries to push the boundaries is a dediacted AAA PC game. Most other apps, not so much.

AAA PC Games don't either. Even on the GPU side.

The one that did ( RAGE with some of the advanced Open GL options ) ended up having poor driver support from AMD & nVidia due to them ignoring the Open GL part of their drivers for Windows.

General rule of thumb, Software is always 10 years behind.

[Athlonite]

F@H isn't using anything more than SSE2 had F@H been able to make use of SSE4

This is the problem with all software. They have to write it so older CPUs can work. The only software that tries to push the boundaries is a dediacted AAA PC game. Most other apps, not so much.

that's why it surprising see as the newer version V7 is meant to be used with newer hardware not older CPU's/GPU's by forcing the use of 8 cores for SMP2 and openCL for GPU's so really it should be taking advantage of SSE4 or better

[Tator Tot]

V7 was made before AMD's Bulldozer parts were out; so it doesn't have SSE 4.2 added in yet.

Also, apparently a registry fix is going to come out on Windows to aid bulldozer's low IPC. Though, I'm skeptical about that.