AMD - Bulldozer Chitchat

[jim]

Actually, I retract my previous statement - I've just done a bit more research, and I was more or less correct on the SATA3 point.

Intel P67 boards seem to only have 2 SATA3 ports, even if they cost nearly £200. They might be integrated now (plus point), but it's still half-arsed.

AMD 990X boards can have 6 SATA3 ports, no SATA2 at all, for under £100

Weren't a lot of the Intel boards also using Marvell controllers?

[kalniel]

Actually, I retract my previous statement - I've just done a bit more research, and I was more or less correct on the SATA3 point.

Intel P67 boards seem to only have 2 SATA3 ports, even if they cost nearly £200. They might be integrated now (plus point), but it's still half-arsed.

AMD 990X boards can have 6 SATA3 ports, no SATA2 at all, for under £100

How many SATA3 hard drives are mainstream users expected to have? I expect the more enthusiast level chipset from Intel to have more storage bandwidth (X79) - rumour says it has about 10 actually. There's nothing half-arsed about that. And why link to the pricey board? You can get p67 for £74

Weren't a lot of the Intel boards also using Marvell controllers?

The previous gen boards from AMD and Intel used Marvell controllers to initially provide SATA3, then later ones used them to boost the number if required.

[EvanJackPenn]

Intel P67 boards seem to only have 2 SATA3 ports, even if they cost nearly £200. They might be integrated now (plus point), but it's still half-arsed.

AMD 990X boards can have 6 SATA3 ports, no SATA2 at all, for under £100

Why is it so that AMD *seem* to be much cheaper across the board? I know that Intel has market dominance, but that doesn't qualify for bigger prices. I guess they have the sort of price=quality mantra, but they also alienate people by thinking they're just the expensive option. For example, ASUS's top motherboards in Z68 and 990FX variants. A £100 price difference?! I'm not all that aware of motherboard specs, but I assume the top of the range models to be similar.

My point is (excuse that waffle above) that AMD shouldn't have to rely on being seen as the cheaper option. They should instead show off about them having better specs and at a sensible cost - not budget.

[kalniel]

Why is it so that AMD *seem* to be much cheaper across the board? I know that Intel has market dominance, but that doesn't qualify for bigger prices.

Actually it does. They have the better performing products and the more valueable brand name. People thinking Intel is the expensive brand is actually good for both Intel and AMD - it provides room in the market for both of them, and Intel are quite happy with the extra margin they get as a result.

For the consumer, it might be nice for AMD to provide some competition, we'll get better value Intel parts, but not to the point where Intel move to kill off AMD.

My point is (excuse that waffle above) that AMD shouldn't have to rely on being seen as the cheaper option. They should instead show off about them having better specs and at a sensible cost - not budget.

They did back in the early Opteron days (infact, charged a premium over Intel), but they need the product to compete.

[jim]

How many SATA3 hard drives are mainstream users expected to have? I expect the more enthusiast level chipset from Intel to have more storage bandwidth (X79) - rumour says it has about 10 actually. There's nothing half-arsed about that. And why link to the pricey board? You can get p67 for £74

The previous gen boards from AMD and Intel used Marvell controllers to initially provide SATA3, then later ones used them to boost the number if required.

I'm linking to the most expensive P67 to make it clear that I'm not just selecting a budget board that doesn't have good SATA 3 support. Whatever you get from Intel right now will be a half-arsed SATA3 solution.

The X79 isn't relevant to this discussion, since my initial response was regarding Bulldozer vs i5 2500k, which means 990 variants vs P67.

[kalniel]

The X79 isn't relevant to this discussion, since my initial response was regarding Bulldozer vs i5 2500k, which means 990 variants vs P67.

Well let's see how much 990 boards cost compared to the likes of £74 P67 boards.

A fairer comparison might even be between bulldozer and whatever Ivy Bridge refresh boards come out - the i5 2500k is close to becoming a generation behind bulldozer at this rate.

[jim]

Well let's see how much 990 boards cost compared to the likes of £74 P67 boards.

A fairer comparison might even be between bulldozer and whatever Ivy Bridge refresh boards come out - the i5 2500k is close to becoming a generation behind bulldozer at this rate.

Hence why I compared the £80 990 to a £200 P67.

Whether it's a fair comparison isn't relevant - the original comment was by a poster who said he was no longer waiting for Bulldozer and would get an equivalent i5 K series. I've pointed out that it's not just about the processors, and the chipsets are far from equal.

All of that is true - what Ivy Bridge might bring is neither here nor there, since the original topic was about what you can get today instead of Bulldozer.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Technically speaking the cheapest 970 motherboard on Scan is around £72:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...e-20-(x16)-atx

The MSI P67A-G45 costs around £80 and does PCI-E 2.0 8X/8X Crossfire:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-p...-sata-raid-atx

However,the Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 does PCI-E 2.0 8X/8X Crossfire and SLI and costs around £89:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...e-20-(x16)-atx

The MSI 990FXA-GD65 costs £106 and does PCI-E 2.0 16X/16X Crossfire and SLI:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-9...e-20-(x16)-atx

http://uk.msi.com/product/mb/990FXA-GD65.html

The GA-990FXA-UD3 costs around £115 and does PCI-E 2.0 16X/16X Crossfire and SLI too:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...e-20-(x16)-atx

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...e-20-(x16)-atx

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Some interesting comments from Kyle Bennett:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=...71&postcount=3

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=...2&postcount=21

[watercooled]

Well I'd be surprised if a CPU of roughly the same generation at a lower price point was head and shoulders above a heavily overclocked chip from the competition. I'm expecting things to go more smoothly once the first generation of a massively different architecture is completed.

[EvanJackPenn]

I'm sure you've seen the article on supposed price. I'll link it here, just in case.

But I found some nice quotes:

AMD doesn't price for competition these days. They slot their products into price points that match their performance in relation to the competition. Whether that's cpus or gpus. This tells a good bit of what to expect from BD.

so about £201.50 for the 8150 and £167.7 for the 8120 if AMD dont screw us over (and providing this is actually a correct US price!).

So taking just the estimated cpu price and ignoring motherboard prices for now, it would be nice to see the chips comparable to:

FX-8150 vs I7 2600 Sandy Bridge (£225... the 8150 is quite a bit cheaper really, hmm)
FX-8120 vs I5 2500k Sandy bridge (£165 very close pricing)

Will be interesting to see how well BD performs... im debating whether or not to get the 8170/50/20 as i have watercooling there should be alot of room to overclock but since its their first relatively new design in along time then the first gen might be bad with head room... hmm price is the deciding factor perhaps!.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Sooo BD is just on par with SB? pointless? shouldnt it be faster considering ivy bridge is around the corner and no doubt be faster then SB?

[scaryjim]

Sooo BD is just on par with SB?

We won't know that until it is released and benchmarked You're inferring performance based on an early, unofficial, pricing indication. If it's accurate then we know this is a mainstream product aimed at competing with SB. Beyond that we can't say, but there's no reason to think AMD wouldn't price competitively if they had a competitive product. If first gen BD is as fast as i7 2600, then that's a good show from AMD IMNSHO...

EDIT: also, you're extrapolating from a quote about AMDs pricing that is (again, IMNSHO) bull manure. Slotting your products in at an appropriate price for their performance level *is* competitive pricing, and AMD has done it very well in the budget market for years. They've had to, they haven't had a competitive product at the top end Now they're pricing up near Intel's top end, it suggests they've got a product that can compete up there...

We also don't know how quickly AMD will turn around a second gen product with either IPC boosts or much higher clock speeds. CAT's started another thread around here about SB-E which suggests that it's not actually going to be that much quicker than SB, and is far more oriented to the server / workstation crowd. And yes, there's Ivy Bridge somewhere down the line, but we don't know how far and we don't know how much of an improvement it will be. For now, AMD competing the the same ballpark as Intel will be a good start...

[j.o.s.h.1408]

cool ok i just want competition. i will admit now that i am a bit of a intel fanboy BUT i LOVE competition as it helps intel get up their arse and compete and IMO intel hasnt done much since my own 920 i7 came out.

[Hicks12]

josh, hope you arent taking Evans quote all to seriously (the second quote is from my post in that thread... its only a "prediction"/expectation on my part).

We have no idea on how BD will perform, heres a slightly relevant situation:
Nvidia worked on the fermi architect, first release was late and very power inefficient and generally an underwhelming performance chip, AMD already had the 5 series out and it was kicking ass to put it mildly, however after the minor revision of fermi (i.e gtx460 and 5 series) it became clear that fermi had a future and performance/power was all improving dramatically and it is now on par with the AMD equivilant.

Bulldozer is a new architect from AMD and their last real change was before 2004 iirc, so they have been working with the same design (obviously refining) for 7+ years! I haven't followed intel very much after not being able to afford a new system , i believe the first core i series (was it based on Nehalem i.e called Bloomfield, so many names ) was their latest architect and well AMD were so far behind it didnt matter how much better the performance was, it was good but as you have seen the refinements have made core i series awesome performance .

I see this going a few ways:

1. AMD release a god damn awful chip that barely beats their current phenom series but after a few years it will be refined to an acceptable level, i.e when enhanced BD comes
2. AMD release a wtf omg ownage chip and Intels current series SB and future Ivybridge is way behind on performance and AMD hold this for awhile while refining their chip loads
3. AMD releases a chip that competes solely with the current SB chips, and refines their newer chips to compete with the future Ivybridge.

Enhanced bulldozer is out next year iirc so its entirely possible for AMD to strike back

edit: must add that i am an AMD fanboy at heart, i went Intel and if you exclude my crappy motherboard (terrible overclocking, cant unlock my amazing e8400 on water lol) then my cpu is awesome and was at the time, struggling a bit now but for most games its solid just actual productivity can stand to improve . I have tried to stay AMD as much as possible, athlon days were the best so im hoping AMD can bring themselves back to that level and beat Intel so i can jump back on their systems.

However i will buy what ever provides the best cost/performance ratio, I dislike Nvidia as their drivers are pants and alot of things could be improved (hoping to drop the 460 for one of amds 7 series if they're good for bf3 haha) but i still bought the 460 as it was solid and cheap.

We will just have to see how well AMD do

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There might be an announcement today:

http://twitter.com/#!/AMD_Unprocesse...80895834128385