AMD - Bulldozer Chitchat

[Biscuit]

is that pic warped or are they actually that rectangular?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

only 512K L2 cache per "core"? I thought BD was meant to have 2MB per module, giving 1MB per "core"...?

The specifications were copied off a Magny-Cours listing.

[EvanJackPenn]

is that pic warped or are they actually that rectangular?

I would believe that they are rectangular. If you look at the text on the chip it is all in proportion.

[scaryjim]

G34 is a rectangular socket - quite a few server ones seem to be, I know the old P4-based Xeons were on a rectangular socket (604, or something). Presumably it's easier to do the traces for mutliple HT links or something...? :shrug:

[kalniel]

is that pic warped or are they actually that rectangular?

Yes - they are two (square) dies in the same package, like the older magny cours:
http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-15...eron-6100.html

[EvanJackPenn]

I wonder if it'll be like the current AMD chips for games - the Phenom II x4 @ 3.7GHz performs better than the Phenom II x6 @ 3.3GHz...

So in terms of bulldozer: 4100 (3.6GHz, quad) > 6100 (3.3GHz, hex) > 8100 (2.8GHz, oct)

[watercooled]

If the game is single threaded but CPU dependant then yes, but few new games are like that now; if a game is CPU heavy it makes much more sense to make it multi-threaded for modern CPUs.

[scaryjim]

Depends on if they've got turbo core working properly or not. A lot of the reviews found that, despite the X6 advertising turbo up to 3.6GHz, they didn't actually get much past 3.4GHz. Assuming they've sorted that out, you need to look at the turbo speeds, not the base speeds, to compare performance in most games. Best bet is to stop speculating and wait for them to be released & reviewed

... if a game is CPU heavy it makes much more sense to make it multi-threaded for modern CPUs. ...

Only if the game engine can benefit from parallelism, which would depend on the type of game...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The quad core Bulldozer CPUs have more L3 cache available to the cores,ie,8MB of L3 cache is shared between 4 cores only.

[kalniel]

The quad core Bulldozer CPUs have more L3 cache available to the cores,ie,8MB of L3 cache is shared between 4 cores only.

Nope. Quad cores have less L3 shared cache as well.

[shaithis]

Only if the game engine can benefit from parallelism, which would depend on the type of game...

I would have thought any game could take advantage of it. Even choosing something like pacman for instance, each ghost "worker routine" could be spawned as individual threads.

The problem is programmers not writing code with it in mind.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Nope. Quad cores have less L3 shared cache as well.

The quad core Bulldozer CPUs have the same amount of L3 cache as the 6 core and 8 core versions. AMD did the same thing with the Phenom II and the Phenom II X2 has the highest amount of L3 cache per core.

[watercooled]

Depends on if they've got turbo core working properly or not. A lot of the reviews found that, despite the X6 advertising turbo up to 3.6GHz, they didn't actually get much past 3.4GHz. Assuming they've sorted that out, you need to look at the turbo speeds, not the base speeds, to compare performance in most games.

I think a lot of that has to do with Windows constantly moving threads between cores, if doesn't allow the CPU to keep the core at the Turbo frequency for everything. You can see this clearly in some applications - they run much better if you lock the thread to a core rather than allowing Windows to choose.

[EvanJackPenn]

. Best bet is to stop speculating and wait for them to be released & reviewed

But speculation fuels my desire!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

But speculation fuels my desire!

What?? You have a speculation powered phone??

[EvanJackPenn]

What?? You have a speculation powered phone??

Yes I do. I would take a photo with my phone, but then I realised - it is my phone