AMD Bulldozer FX-8150 Processor Review Comment Thread

[Soultribunal]

Finally got a chance to read through the review along with the associated comments in this thread, and felt the need to add my voice to the overwhelmingly negative reception this release has garnered.

Quite frankly, outside of fanbois, I can't think of a single market niche which would be well served by BD. Even those of us who were hoping for some 8 core bigadv lovin' are facing much lower performance results for multi-threaded apps when compared core for core to our current hexa-core Thubins, as well as what appear to be abysmal power consumption results under full load.

Add to this the apparent SLI performance issues with 990FX chipset boards, and I'm left with a horrid taste in my mouth when it comes to BD.

Guess I'll just have to suck it up and try to get the Sabertooth to play nice with my 1090t.

IMHO, the only way AMD could pull a rabbit out of their hat from this mess would be for them to announce that they've managed to sqeeze 16 "cores" onto a single die without requiring a portable nuke plant for power.

I tell ya, this set will be my last support of the underdog that AMD Is.
If they cannot get there act together and get me good drivers with cards , and good CPU's. They will not get my support any longer for personal and client builds.

ST

 

[sswilson]

I tell ya, this set will be my last support of the underdog that AMD Is.
If they cannot get there act together and get me good drivers with cards , and good CPU's. They will not get my support any longer for personal and client builds.

ST

Same here, and even more so if they drop Thubin support / production in favour of BD. I've already been through that with the fiasco that was AM2 vrs S939. If they pull that same crap yet again, it won't be 5+ yrs to get me back, it'll probably be as strong a split as I had with Apple when they dropped the Apple II line in favour of the MAC (to this day I still refuse to purchase/service/recommend Apple products.... ).

 

[terrybear]

To be Devils advocate here for a second:

Anyone for a second considering &/or factoring in the 8120 95 watt version that cc has now listed at the same cost as the 125 watt model thru them $229.

What if the 95w 8120 can scale to the preformance levels of what the 8150 does in oc type senario's ..... lower price point, lower wattages would some of u's maybe say that would be more of a fairer processor to vs 2500/2600k ?

Again, i still wait for a shootout of the various board manufacters & other models + northbridge oc'ing before i fully write this off as being so "bad" as peaple can't help sayin ....

 

[sswilson]

To be Devils advocate here for a second:

Anyone for a second considering &/or factoring in the 8120 95 watt version that cc has now listed at the same cost as the 125 watt model thru them $229.

What if the 95w 8120 can scale to the preformance levels of what the 8150 does in oc type senario's ..... lower price point, lower wattages would some of u's maybe say that would be more of a fairer processor to vs 2500/2600k ?

Again, i still wait for a shootout of the various board manufacters & other models + northbridge oc'ing before i fully write this off as being so "bad" as peaple can't help sayin ....

I wouldn't ignore real unbiased testing which could put a positive spin on this mess when/if it comes out, but to counter your devil's advocate position, I'd suggest that AMD has already answered the impossibility of better performing, less power hungry 95W units by refusing to send any of the lower end procs out to reviewers.... don'tcha think they'd have done everything in their power to turn this mess into something more positive?????

Maybe they should focus on their APU offerings instead of trying to compete with Intel on desktop procs.... IIRC, C2D tech initially came out of low(er) power mobile proc R&D back in the day when AMD was beating the crap out of Intel's offerings......

 

[Soultribunal]

To be Devils advocate here for a second:

Anyone for a second considering &/or factoring in the 8120 95 watt version that cc has now listed at the same cost as the 125 watt model thru them $229.

What if the 95w 8120 can scale to the preformance levels of what the 8150 does in oc type senario's ..... lower price point, lower wattages would some of u's maybe say that would be more of a fairer processor to vs 2500/2600k ?

Again, i still wait for a shootout of the various board manufacters & other models + northbridge oc'ing before i fully write this off as being so "bad" as peaple can't help sayin ....

You are talking to a few of us who have supported AMD since before even the 939 days mate. There is no Devils Advocate to play on something that has consistently received the reviews it has.

I personally don't care to wait for NB overclocking, nor any other forced tweak like that. When I purchase my Components now, I want it to perform out of the box. I buy a CPU is has to perform the way it is sent, not when I tweak the crap out of it. I don't OC my VC's the second I get them , I shouldn't have to OC my damn CPU before it performs better than Last Years Tech....

Sure they might be able to get some optimizations out of better BIOS controls on their chips and a few other small issues but I doubt we are going to see what was expected of this Architecture.
My only hope is this isn't the last big huzzah from AMD.

Proud Owner of a FX-60, 4400+ , 9950, 810, 965, 1090T.

ST

 

[NI3]

They've F***ed up so bad that even their fans won't defend them :bleh:

It actually is sad though. :sad: With all the love that FM1, then E-350, it was looking like they might actually be getting better, then.... well, you know...

They bulldozered.

 

[terrybear]

You are talking to a few of us who have supported AMD since before even the 939 days mate. There is no Devils Advocate to play on something that has consistently received the reviews it has.

I personally don't care to wait for NB overclocking, nor any other forced tweak like that. When I purchase my Components now, I want it to perform out of the box. I buy a CPU is has to perform the way it is sent, not when I tweak the crap out of it. I don't OC my VC's the second I get them , I shouldn't have to OC my damn CPU before it performs better than Last Years Tech....

Sure they might be able to get some optimizations out of better BIOS controls on their chips and a few other small issues but I doubt we are going to see what was expected of this Architecture.
My only hope is this isn't the last big huzzah from AMD.

Proud Owner of a FX-60, 4400+ , 9950, 810, 965, 1090T.

ST

No I agree with you ST, i myself realy for the longest time always ran stuff at stock setting, but even with the black editions i find its easy to do oc's & still be relatively stock.

For the longest time I also found it irritating to read the following for buying a cpu "Oh you gotta buy a intel cpu cause they overclock like crazy". Somehow in the last decade plus peaple have made overclocking a "mainstream" thing & if you don't your somehow stupid not to. I know myself that is why i always tried to buy the top model cause of not wanting to overclock.

But nowadays alot of the companies have made it to stupidly easy to do cpu, gpu, ram & ect.overclocking by the cpu, gpu & board manufacterers.

 

[sswilson]

You are talking to a few of us who have supported AMD since before even the 939 days mate. There is no Devils Advocate to play on something that has consistently received the reviews it has.

I personally don't care to wait for NB overclocking, nor any other forced tweak like that. When I purchase my Components now, I want it to perform out of the box. I buy a CPU is has to perform the way it is sent, not when I tweak the crap out of it. I don't OC my VC's the second I get them , I shouldn't have to OC my damn CPU before it performs better than Last Years Tech....

Sure they might be able to get some optimizations out of better BIOS controls on their chips and a few other small issues but I doubt we are going to see what was expected of this Architecture.
My only hope is this isn't the last big huzzah from AMD.

Proud Owner of a FX-60, 4400+ , 9950, 810, 965, 1090T.

ST

Heh.... yeah, I'd call myself a long time supporter of both AMD & ATI.

First proc I ever fried was a 1G T-bird.... S754 semprons were my first real exposure to overclocking, and my name's still out there on the internets WRT DFI-Street's 3G club (S939 3700+ San Diego) if a person wants to search hard enough, but I was running AMDs almost from the very start.

On the ATI front.... I spent years convinced that ATI cards produced a vastly superior image quality, and fondly remember sneaking an AIW card into the house....

 

[Guest]

No I agree with you ST, i myself realy for the longest time always ran stuff at stock setting, but even with the black editions i find its easy to do oc's & still be relatively stock.

For the longest time I also found it irritating to read the following for buying a cpu "Oh you gotta buy a intel cpu cause they overclock like crazy". Somehow in the last decade plus peaple have made overclocking a "mainstream" thing & if you don't your somehow stupid not to. I know myself that is why i always tried to buy the top model cause of not wanting to overclock.

But nowadays alot of the companies have made it to stupidly easy to do cpu, gpu, ram & ect. by the cpu, gpu & board manufacterers.

Big rgr on that, overclocking is now mainstream. IMO cpu really became overclockable with AMD's mobile xp line, stupidly low wattage and unlocked multipliers. Then again pci/agp lock could have also been a good starting point for overclocking. Not to say it wasnt happening for years before but IMO those were the factors that helped push overclocking to where it is today.

That said I for one am glad the jumper days are over for ocing.

 

[Soultribunal]

Big rgr on that, overclocking is now mainstream. IMO cpu really became overclockable with AMD's mobile xp line, stupidly low wattage and unlocked multipliers. Then again pci/agp lock could have also been a good starting point for overclocking. Not to say it wasnt happening for years before but IMO those were the factors that helped push overclocking to where it is today.

That said I for one am glad the jumper days are over for ocing.

Oh I am not arguing that its considered the mainstream now SG. I am all for OC'ing and love the BE chips and Extreme chips for their easily achieved OC's.
But out of the Box this should have Clock for Clock Trounced at least Thuban.....Instead we got a sqeek by...

Sometimes I want to OC, sometimes I don't.
I can Have my X6 humming along at 4.0 thanks to ASUS's easy tools for OC'ing AM3 chips.
I have my friends X2 unlocked and rocking on the same token.

But, on my i7 I have it stock. 2.8.

It all depends. It was more fun to me when it was a challange (939, getting the RAM just right with the CPU and all the other mess). Now its push button simple for most stuff. Now I just want it to be "FAST" out of the box.

Ya know?

ST