AMD settles Bulldozer CPU lawsuit for $12.1 million

[HEXUS]

Settlement works out at ~ $35 per chip, if the projected number of claimants come forward.

Read more.

[Tabbykatze]

We have to be caeful here, as far as I can tell there is no admission by AMD they are not individual "Cores" nor is there a ruling on what constitutes a "Core". There are a decent percentage of people who believe that the term "Core" does not apply to Bulldozer but there is not a ruling that the Bulldozer complexes and the cores within them are not "Cores" at all.

It seems that this lawsuit was getting more and more expensive and it was in AMDs and everyones best interest to drop the lawsuit because then there would have to be a legal definition on a CPU "Core" and it would have wide far reaching consequences.

[Bagpuss]

"It is thought that lawyers will take about 30 per cent of the $12.1 million pie, leaving about $8.8 million to be divided between the Bulldozer owners."

..the 1% and the plebs, indeed.

[philehidiot]

Corenographic images abound in this article.

[DanceswithUnix]

I sometimes wonder if we would be better off without any lawyers.

There was a similar lawsuit against the Pentium 4, which I also had no sympathy for. P4 was junk, benchmarks said it was junk, chip architects wondered what the heck Intel were thinking with almost every architectural detail, so if you bought one you frankly deserved a stupid tax.

Bulldozer was buggy, you had to be pretty keen or desperate for upgrade to buy one, but all the info was plainly there if you bothered looking for it. I waited for Piledriver, it did me well for years, my daughter is still using it.

[lumireleon]

BUT windows shows 8 threads??

[Corky34]

Is it just me that thinks $12m is pretty lenient, obviously nothing would've been better but $12m doesn't seem that much.

[DanceswithUnix]

Is it just me that thinks $12m is pretty lenient, obviously nothing would've been better but $12m doesn't seem that much.

I think the lawyers will consider $3.3M to be quite ample for their time, specially considering the case deserved to lose.

[Zak33]

BUT windows shows 8 threads??

my trousers show more.....

[Percy1983]

My FX8320 only cost me £26, I don't care how it works, I just know it does rather well for the money.

[philehidiot]

My FX8320 only cost me £26, I don't care how it works, I just know it does rather well for the money.

Yeh the 6300 was awesome in its day as you could get a cheap processor which worked well in games, a cheap mobo and build a cheap system for gaming. Now, I'm worried that lower end bargainous stuff is going away as AMD can now compete at the high end.

I'm not so worried about AMD's pricing, it's the ancilliary stuff. A mobo to work with the new Ryzen chips is extortionate and well, yeh. Fair enough. It's a good product and they can charge but I'm only seeing the price of gaming on a PC going up and up beyond what I'd expect from inflation. I'm not seeing the bargain basement stuff for people who didn't want excessive performance and tweakability.

Maybe I'm being too focussed on the high end but the days of being able to get a flexible cheap chip and mess with it seem to be over. And that is sad. I miss processors with no lid where you could open up overclocking options with a pencil.

Apologies for any errors in this, I'm in a dopey state where my brain overtakes my hands and I end up making silly mistakes. I managed to confuse someone completely on a simple point of nuclear reactor physics and I couldn't see how he was confused.

[DanceswithUnix]

My FX8320 only cost me £26, I don't care how it works, I just know it does rather well for the money.

Piledriver was a good series, despite being mainly a bug fix of Bulldozer. It was OK when new, but seemed to age rather well.

Maybe I'm being too focussed on the high end but the days of being able to get a flexible cheap chip and mess with it seem to be over. And that is sad. I miss processors with no lid where you could open up overclocking options with a pencil.

Right now a 2600 for £120 on a £70 B450 motherboard makes a pretty decent basis for a system. In fact, the 2200G I was gaming on coped with most things, just not VR Elite.

As for overclocking, these things pretty much overclock themselves. You are really just playing with getting the cooling right.

[philehidiot]

Right now a 2600 for £120 on a £70 B450 motherboard makes a pretty decent basis for a system. In fact, the 2200G I was gaming on coped with most things, just not VR Elite.

As for overclocking, these things pretty much overclock themselves. You are really just playing with getting the cooling right.

Yeh, I think I'm just doing the old trick of focussing on shiny, shiny, new and disregarding the stuff that was perfectly fine a few months ago.

I was reading that if you get an XFR processor there's no point in overclocking it as it'll do it itself properly and there's little more to be extracted. I've seen these claims before and always been disappointed (usually from mobo manufacturers) but maybe this is actually the real deal.

[DanceswithUnix]

I was reading that if you get an XFR processor there's no point in overclocking it as it'll do it itself properly and there's little more to be extracted. I've seen these claims before and always been disappointed (usually from mobo manufacturers) but maybe this is actually the real deal.

From everything I have read, you can manually overclock to a better all-core clock speed. By manually selecting that, you drop the single core boost and hurting the power management so it only really makes sense if you only do things like rendering all the time. That kind of kills the "you get something for nothing" point of overclocking to me if you lose single thread performance and your warranty and mostly gain heat output. I don't even turn on Precision Boost Overdrive, standard precision boost does a pretty good job whilst staying within the device official limits.

[Percy1983]

It does seem the AMD stuff has aged well as more things are taking advantage of muti core and less on IPC, When I got my 3570k I could have got an 8350 but didn't due to gaming performance. Before my 3570k went I built a secondary machine with a 8320 clocked to 4.4ghz and the difference seems much less now than it was back then.

I think it really shows the slow down in CPU performance increases over recent years, hence my my 3570k has only just been replaced (that and ram prices).

From everything I have read, you can manually overclock to a better all-core clock speed. By manually selecting that, you drop the single core boost and hurting the power management so it only really makes sense if you only do things like rendering all the time. That kind of kills the "you get something for nothing" point of overclocking to me if you lose single thread performance and your warranty and mostly gain heat output. I don't even turn on Precision Boost Overdrive, standard precision boost does a pretty good job whilst staying within the device official limits.

This is true, my 3700x is for photo/video editing/rendering and gaming, the benefit of all core overclocking only really helps rendering to which its rendering performance at stock is amazing anyway.

[DanceswithUnix]

When I got my 3570k I could have got an 8350 but didn't due to gaming performance.

I went for the 8350 because I was a cheapskate
The Intel chip had quite a lead in WoW as well back then, but not enough to make me spend the extra money. The 8350 was £140 and lasted me 5 years.