Bulldozer is out and it sucks

BES,
Cheers mate for being a voice of reason with direct usage reports. We tend to get into mindsets that don't except those idea's that go contrary to our own.....I'm guilty of this as well so I blame myself along with most others. The idea that this revolutionary chip is dog do for being of a design which looks to best be exploited with some future bios and OS updates makes me a little crazed. I look for the performance results to improve over time and yes I understand that Intel likely has new pipelined stuff that will match or best it.....I as I've mentioned time and time again I cast my vote for the underdog and firmly believe we all benefit from the healthy competition. So go AMD go !

The problem here is that we all overfocus on benchmark results. And really, the difference between 12,123 (random jib jabs) and 10,950 (random jib jabs), is unlikely noticeable to just about anybody. From a percentage basis, it's a decent amount, but what does it really equate to in real life?

Anybody who is running an older rig, lets say an Athlon 64 X2-3400 that upgrades to an FX-8150 will find it to be a fast processor. Regardless of what they do with it, it's just going to be fast. But the same would be said of that user if they had upgraded to a Core i7-2600k, an AMD Athlon 1190T or even an Intel Core i5-2500. These are all fast processors and nothing is likely to be considered slow or feel slow.

The issue in particular here, is all the hype that this particular chip design was going to decimate anything that currently existed. For people who really bought into the hype and hoped for a chip that was going to absolute change the game and become the de-facto standard for anything performance related, this chip was a disappointment. After so many years of development, it's really just a CPU that can now compete with Intel offerings that have existed for some time. Does this mean that it's bad, or not worth owning? Of course not, it's still a fast performing chip. But would I upgrade a machine running a core i5-2500k to an AMD FX-8150 to be blown away by it's sheer power? Nope, not unless I was going to run a heavily threaded application 16+ hours a day and needed the absolute fastest results...even if it's just 30 minutes faster to complete.

I agree completely that competition is good. And I want AMD to compete, but I really would love to see them go ahead in the processor wars for a bit. That would really help to fuel the fire. Perhaps this chip will do it, after some BIOS updates, and new OS coding changes. But that's a big if at this point...especially considering the chip was years in the making.

sad thing is it seems amd is pushing away from the processor making market which sucks because that means intel will pretty much dominate the industry and will be the only processors available which are worth buying which means they can set what ever prices they want so it would become expensive and there really is no one else who can compete with intel besides amd so it would be almost a monopoly :/

Truly a sad event, a turning point in the CPU evolution.

I'm pissed and disappointed and very little of it directed at AMD. Oh, I'm sure Intel will continue to deeply discount their processors !? All I can hope is that AMD is pulling some political style slight of hand to divert attention.

IMO, Intel CPUs vs AMD CPUs, is just like SSDs vs HDDs.

Unless you absolutely need the fastest, most expensive equipment that money can buy, AMD saves you so much money that you can upgrade other parts of your system (e.g. MB, graphics card, RAM, HDD or SSD, case, monitor, PSU, expansion cards & software).

Based on my local supplier's prices, I can literally almost build 2 complete systems using the top-of-the-line AMD CPU, for the cost of just the top-of-the-line Intel CPU!
Those systems would have better specs than my current system, except HDD capacity.

Based on my local supplier's stock & prices:

• Intel Core i7-3960X - $1245
• AMD AM3+ x8 FX-8150 - $288

$957 gives you a lot of options for MB, graphics card, RAM, HDD or SSD, case, monitor, PSU, expansion cards & software.

If you only have $1000 to spend, the top-of-the-line AMD CPU automatically wins vs the top-of-the-line Intel CPU.

Just a clarification, I probably wouldn't buy the top-of-the-line CPU from either company, as I don't need the performance for the computing that I do.

LGA 2011

LGA 2011, also called Socket R, is a CPU socket by Intel. It replaces Intel's LGA 1366 (Socket B) and LGA 1567 in the performance and high-end desktop and server platforms.

The Intel 2011 is the new high-end desktop socket.

Intel® Core™ i7 Processor Family for the LGA-2011 Socket Datasheet, Vol. 1

Supporting Desktop Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition Processor, Core i7-39xxK and i7-38xx Processor Series for LGA-2011 Socket.

"The Intel® Core™ i7 processor family for the LGA-2011 socket is the next generation of 64-bit, multi-core desktop processor built on 32-nanometer process technology."

According to Intel it is a desktop processor.
Intel® Core

It doesn't appear in their server CPU list.

lehnerus2000 said:

IMO, Intel CPUs vs AMD CPUs, is just like SSDs vs HDDs.

Unless you absolutely need the fastest, most expensive equipment that money can buy, AMD saves you so much money that you can upgrade other parts of your system (e.g. MB, graphics card, RAM, HDD or SSD, case, monitor, PSU, expansion cards & software).

Based on my local supplier's prices, I can literally almost build 2 complete systems using the top-of-the-line AMD CPU, for the cost of just the top-of-the-line Intel CPU!
Those systems would have better specs than my current system, except HDD capacity.

Based on my local supplier's stock & prices:

• Intel Core i7-3960X - $1245
• AMD AM3+ x8 FX-8150 - $288

$957 gives you a lot of options for MB, graphics card, RAM, HDD or SSD, case, monitor, PSU, expansion cards & software.

If you only have $1000 to spend, the top-of-the-line AMD CPU automatically wins vs the top-of-the-line Intel CPU.

Just a clarification, I probably wouldn't buy the top-of-the-line CPU from either company, as I don't need the performance for the computing that I do.

You make a good point on the price difference, however if you compare the AMD FX-8150 to an Intel I7-2600k which is close to the same price it is no contest, the Intel is faster.
I have used AMD since I stared building my own rigs years ago as they were the best bang for the buck, but now AMD does not have that price advantage with CPU's in the same performance range. I still use AMD as I like the AMD based motherboards better. The newest thinking is the GPU taking over a lot of the CPU processing and that is where AMD has a big advantage over Intel. As more programs take advantage of GPU computing things will change in the market. Always something new to spend my money on.

Jim