Windows 7: AMD Bulldozer Can Reach Up to 4.1GHz with Turbo Core Enabled

Forgive me, but you're absolutely wrong, on every single point you've made. Please don't take offense, do some research and get yourself into the know, it will serve you well I promise.

First and foremost, 90% of PC games are not console ports, and actually, a few that kind of are, are incredibly well done, look no further than Frostbite 2.0, which originated on Consoles, and was rebuilt from the ground up as a fantastic DX11 masterpiece.

Let me elaborate. It's not just the 8 cores, which surely may see little benefit for a game that is a terrible port. It's about the extreme clock speeds these chips will run at, and additionally the 5Ghz plus speeds we expect to see, with great ease, at 32nm and extreme emphasis on AMD's part with respect to efficiency. I think there are a number of benefits you may be unaware of.

I'm not sure if you realize just how badly a Phenom II X4 965 can bottleneck a high end Gpu.

Actually, nevermind, I'm not going to try to explain this. Feel free to do the research for yourself. If you simply had questions, I'd be happy to help. But you have your mind made up, therefor I fear (from experience) there's nothing I can say that will matter.

I suggest borrowing a GTX 580, or Radeon HD 6970, or go to the extreme Gpu's above them, throw any of them into a rig with a X4 965, and keep a good look at Gpu utilization in gaming, you'll be very dissapointed.

Again I'm only trying to point out how misinformed you are, I'm not in any way trying to ridicule or offend, I cannot stress that enough.

Edit: I just fear being honest on forums lately, not because of anything I've encountered here, but other forums. People have a hard time if someone disagrees and it can turn bad.


Here, I'll try to address each point made. Feel free to post your thoughts.

"From a gaming perspective, a 965 is more than enough, seeing as 90% of games are console ports and the rest are not really designed for proper multi-threading anyway."

The rest would include every PC game made, other than ports. It would take many lines of text to outline the games/simulators that incorporate proper multithreading, especially DX10/DX11 API based games, which by way of the API make multithreading not only easy to implement, but do so extremely effectively. Frostbite 1.5 and upcoming 2.0, Arma 2, Flight Simulator X, BFBC2 (Trying playing this with multithreading disable, it won't run) There's too many to list.
Final note on this point: "Rest are not really designed for proper multi-threading anyway" Unless you're an engineer, please elaborate, very clearly, exactly what this means. Hard as I try I don't understand any of it.

"Look at the Witcher 2, built for PC, it recommends a quad but screwed up AMD drivers." This is actually not possible, AMD has nothing to do with implementation of threades oftware, their Cpu's do this natively without any further work on AMD's part, this, if true, is on The Witcher 2's developer, they chose how to implement threading, fact.

"For workstation use, the existing six-core Thuban's are enough. Yes, Bulldozer is faster, but its speed you don't really need." This is your opinion, while your workload on your workstation may be suitable for a Thuban, this has nothing to do with those doing extreme heavy lifting work, there's always room for more power. Perhaps not for your workload, but you must realize different workloads scale better to superior hardware. Honestly though, I'm not sure I understand this particular comment.

I can't help but feel like you're looking at 'your' workstation, and your particular workload, and feeling what you have is suitable. This just doesn't work. Workloads scale out differently, and I find it hard to imagine that ALL workloads scale perfectly to a Thuban. I feel like this extremely erronous, and short sited.

I think you may be right, with regard to your personal needs, but you must realize not everyone is dealing with your identical workload. Also I think you may be ignoring many of the outstanding benefits of Bulldozer, and the Intel offerings as well.
I enjoy my Thuban, but I cannot wait to dump it in a few weeks for Zambezi, and I'm just one, there are certainly many many thousands of people looking forward to Bulldozer, Zambezi specifically, Thuban, solid as it is, is an incredibly inferior chip to Zambezi.

CMD187, I think you missed his point. What he said is that you are right about gaming. However many people do things other than gaming. Many of those other things will benefit greatly from an 8 core faster CPU. Many people who do things such as heavy duty graphics encoding and CAD work are buying the i7-980X at $1000 a pop to help them do their work. They make money by using those powerful processors because they can turn 30 minutes of work into 5 minutes. Those people will be anxious for Bulldozer. To them, more cores+more speed=more money. That was his point.

True, but he also mentioned CPU bottlenecks, which isn't true. There is no way a quad can bottleneck any GPU at 1080p. If its a 590 or 6990 then the bottleneck is the resolution.

If you have a 6990 or GTX 590 you'd be gaming at 2560 x 1600, the resolution itself could be a bottleneck. Again, I've never seen a quad being a bottleneck @ 1080p. Few games can even use a 590 or 6990 anyway.

How about Metro 2033? That game brings any graphics card to its knees.
Benchmark Results: Metro 2033 (DX11) : Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 3 GB Review: Firing Back With 1024 CUDA Cores
scroll down to the 2560x1600 resolution benchmark, because according to you anybody with such a high end card would also use a 2560x1600 resolution.

Naturally. If I bought a GPU for a couple hundred I'd be using a 30" monitor, otherwise what is the point?