Your Opinion: Bulldozer vs. Sandy Bridge

So as AMD's new 32nm architecture comes out with a whopping 8-16 cores at the end of 2010

16 core version is for servers.

Only 8 cores and less will be released for desktop

Not to mention that Bulldozer 8 core won't scale exactly as good as true 8 cores, because each two cores share a lot components unlike the current design . This has an impact on performance but the good thing about sharing components is that you would have much smaller die size

I do recommend that you read these articles if you want to know more about Bulldozer
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/14/amd_bulldozer_preview/page2.html
http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/2881?cPage=2&all=False&sort=0&page=2

Also, Bulldozer, is not coming out in 2010 but sometime in 2011
 
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I'm predicting a new socket: AM3+ or AM4 socket that will support dual and triple channel memory. I think AMD will still stick to it's backwards compatibility with it's sockets. So you could potentially use the new Bulldozer CPUs on an AM2+ and AM3 board. We'll just have to wait and see.
 
I'm predicting a new socket: AM3+ or AM4 socket that will support dual and triple channel memory. I think AMD will still stick to it's backwards compatibility with it's sockets. So you could potentially use the new Bulldozer CPUs on an AM2+ and AM3 board. We'll just have to wait and see.
No, I remember reading that they're going to put it on a socket called (or at least codenamed) AM3r2, but that any CPUs for AM3r2 won't be compatible with AM2 or AM2+. Only AM3. It's because Bulldozer is going to drop a ddr2 memory controller.

@Maroon1: Thanks for the info! It definitely seems that Bulldozer is going to pack a lot of performance into each core. I think a deciding factor for Bulldozer is going to be the price. Being AMD, they'll probably try to keep the desktop versions under $400. That should bring a good price/performance ratio with the expected GFLOPS Bulldozer's going to bring. I would mention that Sandy Bridge is targeted to the mainstream sector, but Intel's socket change is probably going to damage that "budget" vision. If there's one thing that I like about AMD, it's definitely their easy upgradeability.
 
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I'm predicting a new socket: AM3+ or AM4 socket that will support dual and triple channel memory. I think AMD will still stick to it's backwards compatibility with it's sockets. So you could potentially use the new Bulldozer CPUs on an AM2+ and AM3 board. We'll just have to wait and see.

They are skipping triple, going to quad channel. It will be backward compatible with AM3, but not AM2/+

Newer link
http://tech.icrontic.com/articles/what-we-know-about-amds-next-generation-processors/
 
Also, socket G34(the current magny-cours socket) will be bulldozer compatible in addition to AM3...kind of a thing to look at for people who will want to upgrade their servers in the future.
 
Also, socket G34(the current magny-cours socket) will be bulldozer compatible in addition to AM3...kind of a thing to look at for people who will want to upgrade their servers in the future.
G34 is...... interesting. First socket to put two of a CPU on one die. The rectangle thing is cool.:) Server CPUs seem to be where all the interesting stuff happens.
 
G34 is...... interesting. First socket to put two of a CPU on one die. The rectangle thing is cool.:) Server CPUs seem to be where all the interesting stuff happens.

No, there were quite a few non monolithic cores out there. The Pentium D was two processor dies on one chip, the Core 2 Quads were just two core 2 duo's on one chip, etc.
 
No, there were quite a few non monolithic cores out there. The Pentium D was two processor dies on one chip, the Core 2 Quads were just two core 2 duo's on one chip, etc.
Well, the difference with this one is that AMD took two dies that filled the entire square, whereas the C2D and Pentium 4 must have only filled half of it, right? Maybe Cedar Mill filled a quarter, but of course a Pentium Q would be waaaaaay too hot. :)
 
well Intel HAS always dominated the cpu market. Intel was the company that invented the cpu so AMD loses right there. ATI beat Nvidia because ATI always had more stream processors per card then Nvidia but their architecture and drivers weren't up to par. It was only a matter of time as I had predicted and sure enough ATI eclipsed Nvidia. AMD is already behind Intel in every respect. Intel has better architecture, lgas, dies, wafers, and cpu features. AMD does not have one area at which they are better like ATI had vs Nvidia. The i7's have been out for about 2 years and AMD STILL can't beat them.
 
well Intel HAS always dominated the cpu market. Intel was the company that invented the cpu so AMD loses right there. ATI beat Nvidia because ATI always had more stream processors per card then Nvidia but their architecture and drivers weren't up to par. It was only a matter of time as I had predicted and sure enough ATI eclipsed Nvidia. AMD is already behind Intel in every respect. Intel has better architecture, lgas, dies, wafers, and cpu features. AMD does not have one area at which they are better like ATI had vs Nvidia. The i7's have been out for about 2 years and AMD STILL can't beat them.

You know that LGA stands for Land Grid Array right? It's not something to be compared. It just states that the motherboard has the pins rather than the CPU. AMD did beat Intel for a while. In the P4 era, AMD had better processors. AMD still dominates the low-mid range CPU market.
 
well Intel HAS always dominated the cpu market. Intel was the company that invented the cpu so AMD loses right there. ATI beat Nvidia because ATI always had more stream processors per card then Nvidia but their architecture and drivers weren't up to par. It was only a matter of time as I had predicted and sure enough ATI eclipsed Nvidia. AMD is already behind Intel in every respect. Intel has better architecture, lgas, dies, wafers, and cpu features. AMD does not have one area at which they are better like ATI had vs Nvidia. The i7's have been out for about 2 years and AMD STILL can't beat them.
1)Wrong, the entire Pentium 4 era was a complete flop for Intel. The netburst architecture was extremely ineffecient, clock for clock, even an athlon XP was nearly twice as fast per Ghz, let alone the Athlon 64. Just because intel has had a hold in the market for a few years now, that doesn't change the fact of how long they stuck with an architecture that simply "sucked".

2) The nomenclature CPU has been around long before intel ever existed as a company. Intel build the first "CPU on a chip" so to speak with the 4004 however.

3) Wrong, drivers are not any reason why ATi cards have been slower.There is quite a difference between a stream processor used in an ATI GPU and a shader used within an nVidia GPU. Shaders are more powerful and much larger than a stream processor like ATi uses. There is no way to directly compare the numbers, this is why with the GF100 GPU's from nvidia with 512 shaders on die(with some disabled) is still a much much larger core than the HD58xx gpu line.

4)Processors take time to develop, just because the i7 has been out for awhile, AMD had to develop an interim product to bulldozer(the phenom II's). As far as features/instruction sets, bulldozer is going to have the same instruction sets as sandy bridge(SSE 4.1/4.2, AES, CLMUL, AVX) and will have instruction sets that sandy bridge will not have (XOP, CVT16 and FMA4). As far as wafers and processes, current wafer technology between AMD and Intel is roughly identical, bulldozer will be using the same 32nm SOI process that intel will be using for sandy bridge.


Well, the difference with this one is that AMD took two dies that filled the entire square, whereas the C2D and Pentium 4 must have only filled half of it, right? Maybe Cedar Mill filled a quarter, but of course a Pentium Q would be waaaaaay too hot. :)
No, the cpu die is no where close to filling up the entire chip, in fact, you could probably fit all the magny cours dies onto a single AM3 sized chip, but unlike the previous non monolithic dies used, in essence, each cpu die has a dedicated set of pins for power/data, which is why the socket is nearly twice the size of a standard socket. The octa core processors use two quad cores, and the dodeca core processors have two hex core dies.
 
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You know that LGA stands for Land Grid Array right? It's not something to be compared. It just states that the motherboard has the pins rather than the CPU. AMD did beat Intel for a while. In the P4 era, AMD had better processors. AMD still dominates the low-mid range CPU market.
Well I guess you could kinda consider it an advantage. I've accidentally bent the pins on a CPU a couple of times. LONG STORY. :) It is undeniable that AMD had the advantage with the Athlon 64. Intel stuck with Netburst for way too long. It depends how you define advantage, though. Since Netburst was a great marchitecture, it sold pretty well due to its high clock speeds. AMD actually never jumped ahead of Intel in market share. I also wouldn't say that they "dominate" the low-mid range market. When you get down to <$100 processors, the difference between an Intel processor and an AMD one with similar performance is only maybe a $10 difference. Still, the Phenom II series offers great bang for the buck.
 
No, the cpu die is no where close to filling up the entire chip, in fact, you could probably fit all the magny cours dies onto a single AM3 sized chip, but unlike the previous non monolithic dies used, in essence, each cpu die has a dedicated set of pins for power/data, which is why the socket is nearly twice the size of a standard socket. The octa core processors use two quad cores, and the dodeca core processors have two hex core dies.
Thanks for the info bomber. :good: I've seemed to be wrong about things a lot today when it comes to CPUs. :o Does the manufacturing size of the CPU determine how large the die is, though? For example, could you fit more 22nm cores on a die than 32nm ones?
 
Well I guess you could kinda consider it an advantage. I've accidentally bent the pins on a CPU a couple of times. LONG STORY. :) It is undeniable that AMD had the advantage with the Athlon 64. Intel stuck with Netburst for way too long. It depends how you define advantage, though. Since Netburst was a great marchitecture, it sold pretty well due to its high clock speeds. AMD actually never jumped ahead of Intel in market share. I also wouldn't say that they "dominate" the low-mid range market. When you get down to <$100 processors, the difference between an Intel processor and an AMD one with similar performance is only maybe a $10 difference. Still, the Phenom II series offers great bang for the buck.
Well, netburst was never a great architecture, the pipeline was FAR too long, which reduced instructions per clock, and really killed performance. I remember when the P4 was released, clock for clock, the Pentium 3 was faster.
Thanks for the info bomber. :good: I've seemed to be wrong about things a lot today when it comes to CPUs. :o Does the manufacturing size of the CPU determine how large the die is, though? For example, could you fit more 22nm cores on a die than 32nm ones?

Manufacturing size just determines overall size of the transistors, which in turn allow the size of the die to be smaller. The size of the die is not really as important as is power consumption and such, although a smaller die allows more processors to be fit onto a single wafer. The die is the actual piece of silicon that is the processor, so in a sense, yes you could fit more 22nm cores, however with each evolving architecture the number of transistors increases, which means that core sizes stay relatively similar.
 
Well, netburst was never a great architecture, the pipeline was FAR too long, which reduced instructions per clock, and really killed performance. I remember when the P4 was released, clock for clock, the Pentium 3 was faster.
I didn't say it was a good architecture, I said it was a great marchitecture, which means that although it wasn't that great it got a decent market share for its high clock speeds. Thanks for the info on the manufacturing size! :good:
 
which means that although it wasn't that great it got a decent market share for its high clock speeds. Thanks for the info on the manufacturing size! :good:

Now you know thats not the reason Intel kept its market share for 6 years making slower clock for clock prosessors what even ran hot. Look what happen to AMD the last 4 years doing the same thing.

Unfair business practices ring a bell. Paying off AMD 1.25 billion by passing up going to court with them. Being found guilty court case after court case. Intel threatened almost all manufacturers with retaliation if they even thought of using more % of AMD processors.
 
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No, I remember reading that they're going to put it on a socket called (or at least codenamed) AM3r2, but that any CPUs for AM3r2 won't be compatible with AM2 or AM2+. Only AM3. It's because Bulldozer is going to drop a ddr2 memory controller.

I wonder if the 1055T/1090T is going to become the CPU of desire in a few years for those still running AM3 mobos, kind of like how this is reflected in the overinflated prices on used Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 939 CPUs.
 
I wonder if the 1055T/1090T is going to become the CPU of desire in a few years for those still running AM3 mobos, kind of like how this is reflected in the overinflated prices on used Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 939 CPUs.
Probably not, since you should still be able to use Bulldozer on AM3. I know what you mean, though. With Intel there are also a bunch of examples: Pentium D for motherboards that don't support C2D, socket 478 Pentium 4s, etc.
 
I wonder if the 1055T/1090T is going to become the CPU of desire in a few years for those still running AM3 mobos, kind of like how this is reflected in the overinflated prices on used Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 939 CPUs.


not sure...i still want a 4800+ tho...would be nice to wake up my old 939 board with the 4000+ in it tho...
 
I just heard this in regards to Bulldozer:

Bulldozer. It is going to be 9 cores with the 9th (central) core controlling the other 8. The 9th core will be 128-bit and the rest are 64-bit cores.
 
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