Bulldozer 8 module CPU 50% faster than Core i7 950!

[watercooled]

Intel have a tendancy to charge ridiculous prices for their high-end stuff so even if the high end Sandy Bridge chips are faster, Bulldozer will likely offer much better value.

[krazy_olie]

Competition is good!

I would be surprised if AMD's absolute fastest will match intel (come april no doubt Intel will be topping what they have now), but hopefully in the mid and mid/high we'll see competitive performance/pricing and especially as motherboards should be cheaper.

The drastically different architectures could produce some interesting results too, and different applications will suit these.

However there's no doubt the new SB is a good chip, if you want a PC now I don't think waiting for bulldozer is really an option... if it is then you don't actually need a new pc

It's a shame the release isn't closer to Sandy Bridge but 5 months time is going to be a great time for a new build!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Competition is good!

I would be surprised if AMD's absolute fastest will match intel (come april no doubt Intel will be topping what they have now), but hopefully in the mid and mid/high we'll see competitive performance/pricing and especially as motherboards should be cheaper.

The drastically different architectures could produce some interesting results too, and different applications will suit these.

However there's no doubt the new SB is a good chip, if you want a PC now I don't think waiting for bulldozer is really an option... if it is then you don't actually need a new pc

It's a shame the release isn't closer to Sandy Bridge but 5 months time is going to be a great time for a new build!

Exactly.

However,sadly there are enough people on this forum and others like OcUK who don't want the new AMD CPUs to be good and want AMD to fail. They seem to want to gloat every time AMD makes a mis-step and make excuse for any decision Intel makes whether it is good for the consumer or not. Point any out flaws with an Intel system and they seem to get really defensive for some reason.

They tend to forget it was the alternate x86 CPU companies such as Cyrix and AMD which helped create the lower end market not Intel. It just shows you how important competition is.

Having used Intel based systems for the last few years AMD coming out with decent stuff is good for all us.

Even in 2008 I hardly recommended any AMD systems but in the last two years for the DIY on a budget AMD has been a very good option.

[[GSV]Trig]

tbh I'm not interested in AMD for my desktop, the Althon line did what was needed as far as competition was concerned, imagine how fast our PC's would be now if AMD hadnt been around..
What I want is the AMD stuff for netbooks to provoke a decent Atom/Fusion type fight where performance goes up and price comes down..

[DanceswithUnix]

I'd love it if this were true. Sadly the realist in me won't let me get excited until I see some real numbers from 3rd parties.

The realist in me also says that if AMD had samples performing like this prior to CES, then it would be insane from a marketing perspective not to give the world a sneak peak and rain on Intel's Sandy Bridge parade.

For anyone about to buy Sandy Bridge though, this news might have been enough to make them hold off a little bit longer.

But for AMD the news at CES was about the Zacate E-350 chip and all the low end lappies and tablets etc that it will go into. Best to leave Bulldozer for another venue rather than blowing all their announcements in one go.

[watercooled]

@Cat: Yeah I really don't get that either, unless they're completely stupid they must realise that AMD doing good is good even for Intel fanboys - they will get better performance cheaper anyway!! I try as best I can not to side with companies, I get nothing in return so why should I? However, Intel's filthy anti-competitive tactics, ridiculous high-end prices and just because they're near a monopoly makes me not like them. Anyone who wants AMD out of the market and for Intel to be the only CPU MFR must be a butty short of a picnic, there would be no competition so the trend in speed advancements would slow right down and it would leave them free to charge whatever they like, much as they do with their high-end parts now. It would be bad for everyone but Intel, and PCs wouldn't be near as cheap or fast as they are today without AMD. Also I've received excellent customer support from AMD on a number of occasions, and they're happy to go beyond what they need to to help you. IIRC I couldn't even find an Intel contact email to actually speak to a person rather than a glorified search engine. That doesn't make me an AMD fanboy though, I quite like ARM, VIA, etc for example and would like to see them do better in the 'proper' computer (i.e. desktop/laptop) market. It's a similar story with Nvidia but not to the same extent - I don't like that they engineered PhysX to work on only their cards and make it perform very poorly on CPUs, and the number of fanboys also puts me off but I can't really blame Nvida for that, I just don't like people who post the unfounded 'why did you go for AMD, Nvidia would have been much better...' comments you often see. Hiding Youtube comments with an AdBlock rule did help that though...

[kalniel]

However,sadly there are enough people on this forum and others like OcUK who don't want the new AMD CPUs to be good and want AMD to fail.

er.. who? I've hardly seen any posts that stupid on Hexus forums, it would be folly to tar more people than needed with that brush!

[watercooled]

I have seen a few posts like that, although on here I find most are more low expectations or distrust in AMD's claims rather than pure fanboyism. I do remember reading a few though, but I've found it's best to just ignore them.

[nibbler]

I don't know why but I just prefer amd to intel. Really can't decide why, but bulldozer should be good!

[badass]

I have seen a few posts like that, although on here I find most are more low expectations or distrust in AMD's claims rather than pure fanboyism. I do remember reading a few though, but I've found it's best to just ignore them.

It's not a distrust of AMD's claims in my part - it's just that there is no information avaiable about what their benchmarks are, there's no official backing on these figures from AMD and they haven't been independently verified. Secondly, they have compared their not out yet CPU to one that's now been superseded by a newer CPU all ready.
Compare this to Intel's launch of the Core2 duo. At about this point they had 2.67GHz CPU's up against AMD's fastest (therefore the fastest CPU's available) and were showing gains of around 40% in performance in demonstrations that weren't closed door.
I suspect that Bulldozer will make AMD competitive in the high end again but i doubt they will take the performance crown from Intel.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Here is a slide from AMD which hints at the performance of Bulldozer:

http://www.techpowerup.com/139053/Bu...ering-AMD.html

[Rob_B]

Here is a slide from AMD which hints at the performance of Bulldozer:

http://www.techpowerup.com/139053/Bu...ering-AMD.html

More 'pinch-of-salt' time though. It's a marketing slide so we know performance won't be as great as they say. Most companies pick the best benchmarks for their platform then cherry-pick. I imgine it'll still be a cracker though but I'm not sure how much it'll live up to expectations after this 'leak'

Surely they'd have demo'd it as someone mentioned before to rain on the SB parade but they haven't why? What is this improvement in 'gaming' or 'render' ?
It does even state 'estimates & projections' so we can't be sure.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems AMD Bulldozer will unveiled at Cebit in March:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-B...1-180651.shtml

It probably means that there is only a few more months until we find out whether Bulldozer succeeds or not.

[badass]

Here is a slide from AMD which hints at the performance of Bulldozer:

http://www.techpowerup.com/139053/Bu...ering-AMD.html

Hmmmmmm
The slide there says the intel Quad core i7 is on socket 1156.
Certainly not an i7 950 then. Maybe an i7 880 but probably not. Mind you the difference in performance between an i7 880 and an 860 isn;t that much TBH. More e-peen than a meaningful difference.
Note all of the other sources reference the i7 950 but the only one with the slide so far shows the Socket 1156 so I suspect someone's made a mistake and everyone else has copied it.

[scaryjim]

The feature list refers to socket 1156, but the performance numbers refer to i7 950 (yes, it says "i7 950" on the slide, so it's not a perpetuated mistake, unless AMD are making mistakes on their own marketing slides now...). Socket 1156 is the platform that current Phenom IIs target in market-segment terms, so when comparing a feature set it kind of makes sense to talk about that one. Given that all the performance figures are indicative I'd guess they simply chose a higher-end processor for performance figures to try to make themselves look better (real world there's very little difference between the i7 8xx and i7 9xx performance anyway...)

[JF-AMD]

It seems AMD Bulldozer will unveiled at Cebit in March:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-B...1-180651.shtml

It probably means that there is only a few more months until we find out whether Bulldozer succeeds or not.

Don't expect an "unveiling" of Bulldozer at CeBIT. I am not sure what the Europe team is doing but the official launch is in Q2, at most they might have a running system or show off motherboards, but HQ own the rollout of information and I am not aware of any plans at this point to release more information.