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[Wolf Akela]

Well ouch. Beaten on all benchmarks? I don't think we'll see a price drop on SB when BD releases. I guess I can safely get an SB before launch.

 

[Hazaro]

I don't think I can take anything out there as of now as credible. The performance just doesn't line up at all.

 

[·feist·]

Wednesday is going to be very interesting.


First Look: AMD Trinity APU, Linux Already Runs Well
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_trinity_early&num=1

Trinity is the Fusion successor to the recently launched Llano APUs. AMD has publicly acknowledged Trinity and said the new hardware will be available in 2012. They've also said that the performance is roughly 50% faster than Llano. The Trinity results I've seen under Linux have been impressive, but tough to compare to my current Llano hardware due to other hardware differences. The Catalyst graphics support seems a bit premature, but we're still months away from the actual Trinity launch. The compute performance is at least in order.

One of the AMD Linux engineering systems for Trinity is running nicely even on Ubuntu 11.04 with the Linux 2.6.38 kernel. The CPU string is AMD Eng Sample 2M252057C4450_32/25/16_9900_609 and its graphics are the Trinity Devastator Mobile with 512MB of video memory and an AMD Pumori motherboard. The PCI ID on the Trinity Devastator appears to be 0x9900. This Trinity APU is quad-core and running at 2.50GHz. The current quad-core Llano offerings are clocked at 2.6GHz (A6-3650) and 2.9GHz (A8-3850), while this Trinity part is clocked slower, it's numbers are nice compared to my A8-3850 Linux system.

To end for now, AMD Trinity should be very nice and I'm glad to see it already running on Linux -- it's a much better situation than when already released AMD hardware would fail with Linux. (When the first AMD Phenoms were released there would be kernel panics and other problems with the latest Linux code at the time.) Stay tuned for more.

 

[·feist·]

Heat pipes.

http://forum.overclockers.ua/viewtopic.php?p=625354&sid=f364e0b59fa770a5cc50b9a435db5361#p625354

*click for 3,648px × 2,736px




*click for 640px × 480px

 

[Hazaro]

If that person posts benches his RAM doesn't look like it is dual channel.

 

[·feist·]

Yup, someone just pointed that out. AMD boards are hard to keep track of some times since some use consecutive DIMMs, and others are alternating. And sometimes, people don't use the primaries...

They're trying to get the guy to post AIDA 64, x264, AOGenMark, and a few others.

 

[Hazaro]

AMD pimping their 5GHz clocks on IPL stream too.

Now I wonder if when the stream isn't 60fps it's because of AMD...

 

[·feist·]

Heh. They had a 7GHz 8150 running Starcraft 2, and BF3 a day or so ago, but I didn't watch.

After a lot of jumping through hoops, and few people wanting to volunteer to bench because it's very late at night/early a.m. in their country, members of that site got an American to do benches through a remote connection. I should note that the original poster didn't own the hardware, he just had permission from the owner to try it out.

Live stream of the remote connect benching:

AMD Bulldozer 8120P
http://www.justin.tv/bassbench

 

[Hazaro]

That is amazing.

 

[LQX]

Edit-Found answer.

 

[Hazaro]

English thread.
http://www.overclock.net/amd-general/1137265-new-fx-8120-bulldozer-pics-benches.html

Results skewed because of stream. Still not believing BD could be as bad as what info I've been seeing. I'm sure it will be faster for retail.

 

[Rabid Wolverine]

Pretty dissapointing by AMD.

Intel gets my money yet again.

 

[Hazaro]

Possible Prices (From MicroCenter)

 

[chaosblade]

So if all these benches end up being legit how does AMD justify those prices?

"Eight cores with turbo speeds over 4GHz! See, we're faster* than Intel, our numbers are bigger!"

So far everything leaked has been disappointing. Looking it up it doesn't even seem to beat out Phenom IIs, and while it seems pretty unlikely AMD would release new CPUs that can't even compete with their old ones, nothing aside from that assumption is showing evidence to the contrary.

I want BD to be great, competition is always a good thing (look at the GPU market!) but unless they pull off a miracle on Oct 12 this is looking like a swing and a miss for AMD.

 

[McHuj]

It's starting too look like AMD has some sort of bug with Bulldozer and this release is a "oh shit we have to ship something this holiday season" and a fix won't come until next spring.

 

[jonremedy]

AMD's getting really good at the low-end, APU-style processors, but are still struggling hard to reach Intel levels on the mid-to-high-end. Let's hope Piledriver will be more than just catching up to Sandy Bridge, though this is exactly what it looks like now.

 

[chaosblade]

It's starting too look like AMD has some sort of bug with Bulldozer and this release is a "oh shit we have to ship something this holiday season" and a fix won't come until next spring.

That would be pretty ridiculous, Bulldozer has been part of AMDs roadmap for years. It was heavily delayed during development, and delayed again before launch (was planned for June), and now they still have issues and technically need to delay it again?

It seems possible, especially considering delay to October. I guess they do have to do something regardless, they haven't introduced anything new since early 2009 when Phenom II launched. Edit: I guess there was Llano, but that was basically Phenom II cores with a GPU duct taped in.

AMD's getting really good at the low-end, APU-style processors, but are still struggling hard to reach Intel levels on the mid-to-high-end. Let's hope Piledriver will be more than just catching up to Sandy Bridge, though this is exactly what it looks like now.

If the leaks are true, this isn't good on the low end either.

 

[McHuj]

That would be pretty ridiculous, Bulldozer has been part of AMDs roadmap for years. .

You're right, it is ridiculous. But given the results that are coming back, I can see no other explanation. It just seems like a compete fuckup that will cost the people in charge their jobs.

 

[Datschge]

This BD was always just a stepping stone, not the goal itself. No idea where people got the idea AMD could compete with Intel (>6 times the revenue, >24 times the profit, >3 times the R&D spending) out of the gate.

 

[Gvaz]

They're falling further behind though, these results look like where amd should have been back when sandybridge was released at the beginning of this year

 

[Esperado]

I feel like there must be some Windows update or AMD driver that hasn't been released to the public yet. If Bulldozer is really this bad, then it would have made more sense for them to just switch Phenoms over to the 32nm process, and then delay or cancel the chip altogether. Who knows... maybe it's going to end up being primarily a server chip.

 

[Datschge]

They are developing something that doesn't exist in that form anywhere yet and is also still unproven (transparently integrating CPU and GPU), and that takes time. While doing so they have to keep selling some kind of products though which consequently are essentially barely more than snapshots of a work in progress.

 

[Mudkips]

I feel like there must be some Windows update or AMD driver that hasn't been released to the public yet. If Bulldozer is really this bad, then it would have made more sense for them to just switch Phenoms over to the 32nm process, and then delay or cancel the chip altogether. Who knows... maybe it's going to end up being primarily a server chip.

Single-threaded performance is not the focus.
Multi-threaded performance is.

And it looks like it's doing exactly as expected so far on default clocks - it sits between the 2500 and 2600 in both performance and price.

And yes - driver/application/scheduler updates will improve things, but those will come later (and scheduler updates might not happen at all for Windows 7), and won't result in a huge change.

 

[Avtomat]

I feel like there must be some Windows update or AMD driver that hasn't been released to the public yet. If Bulldozer is really this bad, then it would have made more sense for them to just switch Phenoms over to the 32nm process, and then delay or cancel the chip altogether. Who knows... maybe it's going to end up being primarily a server chip.

Should be a winner in the professional / server space.

 

[Izayoi]

Yikes. AMD is really dropping the ball.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

I would still take a SB over these. Especially if the price is higher. That of wait for Ivy Bridge.

 

[belvedere]

I can't make myself believe that AMD won't release something competitive, no matter what all of these Intel tourists keep regurgitating.

Until the major sites release their in-depth impressions, it's pretty ignorant to make a final judgement.

 

[Izayoi]

Until the major sites release their in-depth impressions, it's pretty ignorant to make a final judgement.

With all of the negative news we've heard over the past few months, I don't think that it's really all that "ignorant" to expect the worst at this point.

 

[·feist·]

Wednesday, Wednesday...

Actually, we already have such an issue known for Bulldozer, and NO bench-marked system has the patch installed!

The shared L1 cache is causing cross invalidations across threads so that the prefetch data is incorrect in too many cases and data must be fetched again. The fix is a "simple" memory alignment and (possible)tagging system in the kernel of Windows/Linux.

I reviewed the code for the Linux patch and was astonished by just how little I know of the Linux kernel... lol! In any event, it could easily cost 10% in terms of single threaded performance, possibly more than double that in multi-threaded loads on the same module due to the increased contention and randomness of accesses.

Not sure if ordained reviewers have been given access to the MS patch, but I'd imagine (and hope) so! Last I saw, the Linux kernel patch was still being worked on by AMD (publicly) and Linus was showing some distaste for the method used to address the issue. One comment questioned the performance cost but had received no replies... but you don't go re-working kernel memory mapping for anything less than 5-10%... just not worth it!

http://www.amdzone.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=532&t=138852&p=212152#p212152

So this is a patch that needs to be applied to the operating system? I knew about the scheduler issue but not this...

There is a problem with the two-way 64 kB L1 shared instruction cache. This IC aliasing issue was discussed in the Linux Kernel list back in July, and a patch by AMD was submitted. Linus Torvalds was not happy with the patch, and I do not know whether it has been patched into the kernel or not.

The following Linux Kernel list archive is one of the more readable ones, and you could find the whole discussion at the bottom of the page:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/1409305?do=post_view_threaded#1409305

I do not know if this IC aliasing issue manifests itself in Microsoft Windows as well. The performance impact, according to AMD, is as follows:

"Up to 3% for a CPU-intensive style benchmark, and it can vary highly in
a microbenchmark depending on workload and compiler."​

As such, there does not appear to be a magic OS patch here that would suddenly increase the performance by 20% or more.

I am waiting for the official Opteron Valencia and Interlagos launch, but I have lowered my expectations.

Cheers.

[PATCH] x86, AMD: Correct F15h IC aliasing issue
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/1409305?do=post_view_threaded#1409305

[July 2011]

From: Borislav Petkov <borislav.petkov [at] amd>

This patch provides performance tuning for the "Bulldozer" CPU. With its
shared instruction cache there is a chance of generating an excessive
number of cache cross-invalidates when running specific workloads on the
cores of a compute module.

This excessive amount of cross-invalidations can be observed if cache
lines backed by shared physical memory alias in bits [14:12] of their
virtual addresses, as those bits are used for the index generation.

This patch addresses the issue by zeroing out the slice [14:12] of
the file mapping's virtual address at generation time, thus forcing
those bits the same for all mappings of a single shared library across
processes and, in doing so, avoids instruction cache aliases.

It also adds the kernel command line option
"unalias_va_addr=(32|64|off)" with which virtual address unaliasing
can be enabled for 32-bit or 64-bit x86 individually, or be completely
disabled.

This change leaves virtual region address allocation on other families
and/or vendors unaffected.

Signed-off-by: Andre Przywara <andre.przywara [at] amd>
Signed-off-by: Martin Pohlack <martin.pohlack [at] amd>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <borislav.petkov [at] amd>

more...

Monstru (lab501 reviewer)'s Q&A:

Q: Why does Lab501 get to break NDA?!
A: In order to break an NDA you have to sign one first...

Q: I suppose there is also a small chance that all the final BIOS updates for the BD won't be released until the day of the launch
A: Actually no, there is no chance, because you need reviewers to have time to test this stuff before publishing a review. Nobody makes reviews in one day...
Trust me, we retested many times, because we found this hard to believe even if the results unveiled under our eyes. We checked everything countless of times, and still get the same results. Unfortunately, this really is how Bulldozer is performing, and that makes me as sad as any other enthusiast in this industry!

Q: Monstru on AMD's "damage control":
A: Now the saddest thing is not only the performance, but also the way in which AMD tries to manage this. I heard from a little birdie that some folks at AMD will start calling press tomorrow morning to ask them how reviews are going and try to do some damage control (this reminds me of Nvidia calling press before GTX480 launch). Actually many of the press guys I talked to are a little bit puzzled and don't really know how to approach this situation. From my point of view it is pretty clear, the truth (no matter how much it hurts) is the only way.

 

[Gvaz]

Wait....people actually listen to Linus?

 

[eastmen]

welp we will know in 24 hours. Seems silly not to just wait , esp when looking at those benchmarks when amd wins they set the y axis to show a smaller diffrence vs when intel is wining and the diffrence is much bigger.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Clock-for-clock, Sandy Bridge is undeniably faster than Bulldozer, but if AMD prices it cheaply enough and it's a decent overclocker, it will find the same niche that Phenom II X6 found. People who only care about pure performance will still buy Intel. In other words, business as usual.

 

[Fëanor]

It probably has been asked somewhere in the thread, but I have this mobo from Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P, will it support AMDs new line of CPUs?

 

[mug]

It probably has been asked somewhere in the thread, but I have this mobo from Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P, will it support AMDs new line of CPUs?

Bulldozer is AM3+, that board is only AM3.

 

[Fëanor]

Thank you for the answer.

 

[eastmen]

Clock-for-clock, Sandy Bridge is undeniably faster than Bulldozer, but if AMD prices it cheaply enough and it's a decent overclocker, it will find the same niche that Phenom II X6 found. People who only care about pure performance will still buy Intel. In other words, business as usual.

clock for clock doesn't matter , what matters is what the clocks are.

the i5 2500k is 3.3ghz and the i7 2600k is 3.4 ghz . Bulldozer is 3.6ghz for the FX 1850 .


Amd is trying to price this between the two. I don't think they would do that if performance wasn't between the two. So i'm waiting to see what goes down.

 

[eastmen]

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=22143484&sid=e1d1c6144ed4fbe53e9f48bfd22295d9#p22143484

Got to play with a review sample. Not mine. I'm not NDAed.

The figures above posed by w00key do seem legit, but they're worst cases. In most games, BD trades places with a 2500K, in my own Fallout New Vegas testing, it beat my Phenom II X4 (3.7 GHz) by around 20%. The 2500K beats my Phenom II by the same 20%.

It's hilariously overclockable. Jury-rigging the biggest heatsink I could find, a ~7 year old Coolermaster Hyper6+ (which doesn't fit AM2/3) hacked into a pretty cheap Gigabyte GA990XA-UD3, I got 4.85 GHz out of it. At that kind of clock, the 2500K was looking for its parents with tears in its eyes, losing out on single threaded benchmarks by 10% and multithreads.... well, it wasn't really funny anymore. I'll share with you this:

Code:

x264 encoding
1080p
BD 4.85        12:33
2500K 3.8      18:56
PII X4 3.7     21:30

720p
BD 4.85        8:40
2500K 3.8      11:01
PII X4 3.7     15:15

* I'd like to have overclocked the 2500K more, but I was limited to a pretty shitty motherboard which looked to be an Asus but had no identifying marks and Intel's stock cooler.
** x264 June 2011 used. VirtualDub passing through AVISynth to the CLI x264 binary. VD was using a MoComp deinterlace filter which scales linearly to, according to the author, at least 24 cores.

It's competitive. For some workloads, you're going to want Intel. For others, AMD at last can out-perform Intel. I didn't have a 2600K to test, but if I had, I'd imagine BD would have beat it.

Of course these are all overclocked figures. Blame contractual loopholes.

Edit: Oh yeah, not allowed to say which model BD I was playing with. Also, to address the below, I couldn't boot the 2500K box with a multiplier any higher than 38. Even with scary voltages. I blame the Hybrid-EFI BIOS or some quirk of the board.

these are much better results. Tommorow will be interesting

 

[ZoddGutts]

Hmm might get this if overclocking is crazy high. Will work well with game emulators especially with Dolphin.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

That water cooling kit is starting to make sense.

 

[Wolf Akela]

Does the water cooler come with every one of them?

 

[Gvaz]

Hmm might get this if overclocking is crazy high. Will work well with game emulators especially with Dolphin.

Especially since it seems to support sse4.1 and similar shit FINALLY

 

[chaosblade]

clock for clock doesn't matter , what matters is what the clocks are.

the i5 2500k is 3.3ghz and the i7 2600k is 3.4 ghz . Bulldozer is 3.6ghz for the FX 1850 .


Amd is trying to price this between the two. I don't think they would do that if performance wasn't between the two. So i'm waiting to see what goes down.

I really, really don't think price means anything. Phenom II competed with socket 775 parts and the 955 debuted at $250. That wasn't a competitive price at the time, which is why the price dropped pretty quickly.

And that OC'd performance is pretty good, but comparing it to a 2500k that is over 1GHz slower doesn't tell you anything. Leads me to wonder why they didn't just clock the things higher out the gate if they have so much potential.

Anyway, I'm tempted again if only because the high OCing potential. I want a CPU good for emulation and that is one of the few tasks where pure clockspeed is king. Guess we'll get a better idea of how far it goes once reviews are out, but I figure it will be whatever they say minus 300-500MHz.

 

[herod]

Oof, that's a lot of heat for no clear benefits. When is Ivy Bridge due?

 

[JaseC]

Oof, that's a lot of heat for no clear benefits. When is Ivy Bridge due?

March-April.

 

[1-D_FTW]

Oof, that's a lot of heat for no clear benefits. When is Ivy Bridge due?

March is a fairly reasonable expectation.

 

[McHuj]

Leads me to wonder why they didn't just clock the things higher out the gate if they have so much potential.
.

I bet that was the original plan.

Right now, it's probably one (or both) of two things. One they're trying to keep the TDP at 125 W, but increasing the clock and probably the voltages the thing is going to burn a lot more power. The other issue is probably manufacturing yields. They might not be able to produce enough chips at the moment that can meet speeds at the standard voltages.

This could be all related to Global Foundries issues with the 32nm process. Llano has very poor yields, Bulldozer probably suffers from similar issues.

 

[specialguy]

It's funny how clockspeed, once considered a dead end, has been slowly ramping back up in recent years.

Sounds like many of these bulldozers will overclock past 5ghz, for example.

 

[Gvaz]

Didn't someone mention they got it up to like eight or so?

 

[Refreshment.01]

Ok, they shine when overclocked but how easy it is? What would be the point if one would need a 50 heat sink to get some good OC out of it?

Edit: When does Intel's latest process reduction kicks in as well as the new 3D transistor tech?

 

[fizzelopeguss]

I really, really don't think price means anything. Phenom II competed with socket 775 parts and the 955 debuted at $250. That wasn't a competitive price at the time, which is why the price dropped pretty quickly.

And that OC'd performance is pretty good, but comparing it to a 2500k that is over 1GHz slower doesn't tell you anything. Leads me to wonder why they didn't just clock the things higher out the gate if they have so much potential..

Power and Heat, trivial things to an enthusiast or a gamer looking to squeeze more frames out. Not so good if you're making a nice and tidy retail package.