New Bulldozer/CFvsSLI Review Coming - Your Input is invited

apoppin · Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 11:10 pm

BoFox wrote:

Simply put, Bulldozer is an abysmal failure. I don't think AMD enthusiasts were ever let down this much. It's worse than Phenom 1 and HD 2900XT ever was.

That is debatable; i remember 2900XT very well and i was one of the few who liked mine (i sent back my 8800-GTS 640MB that cost about $50 more and kept the on-sale from Best Buy VisionTek XT and got Orange Box with it)

i can see AMD's FX market for upgraders who already have an AM3+ MB; if there is some way to update the BIOS of the older AM3 boards, they might sell more
:hello:

BoFox · Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 1:24 am

apoppin wrote:

i can see AMD's FX market for upgraders who already have an AM3+ MB; if there is some way to update the BIOS of the older AM3 boards, they might sell more
:hello:

Barely.. the Bulldozer is SO MUCH of a let-down that if they already have an 1100T they'd probably not want to "downgrade" to a Bulldozer! :lol:

(At least until Windows 8, that is.. and by then, there might be Bulldozer 1.1, like with Fermi 1.1 or GF110/GF100b).

apoppin · Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 9:53 am

Think of the older Phenom IIs. There are a lot of AMD fans. And AMD can *easily* make Bulldozer chips attractive
- just drop the price of FX-8150 to $199
:think:

They don't want to do that ,, but can survive on it.

apoppin · Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 6:06 pm

i just now figured and easy way to test if there is something wrong with 6970 CF scaling; my new installation gets the same crap scaling .. and i was just about going to test SLI ..
(hh)

i have a HD 6990 that reaches HD 6970 CF speeds
. . . back in a few
:blush:

apoppin · Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 7:09 pm

We know that there are no issues with a single HD 6970; only poor scaling with CrossFire. I am running my HD 6990 at 825/1250MHz stock speeds in Slot 1. We now have a single-slot solution video card with a bit less performance than HD 6970 CF.

This is very preliminary, however, I am getting slightly lower results at 2560x1600 than CrossFired HD 6970s BUT I am getting higher results at 1920x1200.
:hello:

This is very interesting and it points to a MB PCIe bandwidth starvation issue - as though the second card was running at 4x, not 16x. I am next going to run more benches with HD 6990 at 880/1375 - true HD 6970 CF speeds - and report back.

Verrrrrrry interesting!

SickBeast · **Joined:** Sun Jul 20, 2008 11:57 pm **Posts:** 3997

apoppin wrote:

Think of the older Phenom IIs. There are a lot of AMD fans. And AMD can *easily* make Bulldozer chips attractive
- just drop the price of FX-8150 to $199
:think:

They don't want to do that ,, but can survive on it.

Yeah, a bunch of fans to whom they falsely promised a drop-in upgrade in the form of Bulldozer.

They have *lost* me as a fan. I will actually probably be going with Intel for my next build.

I wonder if IBM could buy out AMD's x86 license. I can't see this charade going on for too much longer. It's become a joke.

apoppin · Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 10:07 pm

Some AM3 boards evidently will support the FX CPUs.

And so far, it does look like the FX-8150 is hitting the same wall with HD 6990 (at HD 6970 CF speeds) that Hd 6970 CF did. The scaling could be due to bad drivers or to a weak CPU. The only issue that i see is that the Phenom II hits the same wall and it didn't before.

SickBeast · **Joined:** Sun Jul 20, 2008 11:57 pm **Posts:** 3997

apoppin wrote:

Some AM3 boards evidently will support the FX CPUs.

And so far, it does look like the FX-8150 is hitting the same wall with HD 6990 (at HD 6970 CF speeds) that Hd 6970 CF did. The scaling could be due to bad drivers or to a weak CPU. The only issue that i see is that the Phenom II hits the same wall and it didn't before.

How? Do people have to cut two of the pins off? Because AM3+ CPUs have two additional pins.

The whole situation annoys me.

AMD needs to fire their marketing department, and allow their CPU designers to design CPUs that perform well and perform efficiently.

Marketing departments can literally destroy companies. Look at what happened to GM.

apoppin · Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 10:39 pm

SickBeast wrote:

How? Do people have to cut two of the pins off? Because AM3+ CPUs have two additional pins.

The whole situation annoys me.

AMD needs to fire their marketing department, and allow their CPU designers to design CPUs that perform well and perform efficiently.

Marketing departments can literally destroy companies. Look at what happened to GM.

Edumacate yourself:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/MSI-AM3- ... 2632.shtml

Quote:

Just a few weeks after Asus has announced that some of their AM3 motherboards are compatible with AMD's upcoming desktop processors based on the Bulldozer architecture, MSI makes a similar announcement and states that 10 of the company's present AM3 boards can support Zambezi chips after a simple BIOS update.

When Asus first made this claim, many doubted that such a thing was possible since AMD has told consumers time and time again that Bulldozer processors will require a new platform based on the 900-series chipsets.

Furthermore, AM3+ chips were supposed to have an extra pin which wouldn't make them physically compatible with regular AM3 motherboards.

However, it now seems like the extra pin that everybody, including AMD, was referring to isn't actually present on Zambezi processors and the CPU has the same pin arrangement as the current Phenom II and Athlon II chips.

Of course the support may not be 100% as JFAMD stated (officially back in April):
http://motherboardnews.com/2011/04/12/t ... herboards/

Technically all you need is a BIOS update

SickBeast · **Joined:** Sun Jul 20, 2008 11:57 pm **Posts:** 3997

I don't know who or what to believe any more in terms of this stuff. I'll believe it when I see it at this point.

I highly doubt MSI will bother updating the BIOS for my motherboard. I suppose stranger things have happened, though.

BTW I did read somewhere that there were two extra pins on Bulldozer.

New Bulldozer/CFvsSLI Review Coming - Your Input is invited

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