Thread: Bulldozer...

I for one am planning on staying with discrete graphics for the foreseeable future.

Originally Posted by Gumby

I for one am planning on staying with discrete graphics for the foreseeable future.

As well you should. I don't see myself switching from a dedicated video card for a LONG time. Which goes to say there is a lot of wasted die space on all of the new processors for any high end gamer... More so on the AMD processors though.

I wouldn't say the space is wasted. If you're not using your discrete card for 3D, it's overkill to power the thing if you have an APU that can handle most 2D tasks more than adequately. I foresee this being more the norm than the exception going forward.

hmm... maybe the GPU part of the APU could fold protiens while I game using the CPU part of the APU and my discrete GPU for gaming...

As for BD vs Ivy. Not even going to be the case. BD is going to go against SB IMO. If anything Trinity would be the chip to be going against Ivy, not BD. (Trinity is the next step for AMD, combining BD chips with a 7xxx series APU) I think I may be remembering wrong, but Trinity should be desktop and laptop like Llano is. Should be interesting though, BD slides just show that it'll match up to the i7/i5 but it doesn't designate which series (1st gen, SB, or Ivy). But in my opinion it should be going against SB, especially since Ivy is going to be 22nm. Not 32nm like SB and BD.

Correct me if I'm wrong on some facts though. I get hazy with info after too much reading.

Originally Posted by 619summon

also some on the apu's are pretty nice getting a 4x3.3 w/6850 is not half bad.

What's "4x3.3 w/ 6850" if that is a 3.3 a8-3850 + 6850. You're better off with running discrete since the 6550D was only meant to run with the 6670 to make a HD 6690D2. Also, I only see a few games that actually get benefits from the Hybrid CF. That's Crysis and Metro 2033, most games would be smoother running just the 6670 by itself. Drivers need some more tweaking to get more efficient.

Originally Posted by WileECyte

I wouldn't say the space is wasted. If you're not using your discrete card for 3D, it's overkill to power the thing if you have an APU that can handle most 2D tasks more than adequately. I foresee this being more the norm than the exception going forward.

Personally, I'm not worried about the power my graphics card sucks up. I would rather a much larger portion of the die be used on chipset features moved on to silicon and raw processing power. If it were up to me, I would buy processors without ANY graphics and stick with a dedicated card.

Originally Posted by Shinobi

As for BD vs Ivy. Not even going to be the case. BD is going to go against SB IMO. If anything Trinity would be the chip to be going against Ivy, not BD. (Trinity is the next step for AMD, combining BD chips with a 7xxx series APU) I think I may be remembering wrong, but Trinity should be desktop and laptop like Llano is. Should be interesting though, BD slides just show that it'll match up to the i7/i5 but it doesn't designate which series (1st gen, SB, or Ivy). But in my opinion it should be going against SB, especially since Ivy is going to be 22nm. Not 32nm like SB and BD.

Correct me if I'm wrong on some facts though. I get hazy with info after too much reading.

Difficult to say since I don't have much data on AMDs roadmap. I would place IVB against BD though and consider Haswell to compete with Trinity in the future.

The fact that IVB is on 22nm with trigate technology is irrelevant. AMD is nearly an entire process behind Intel, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't compare processors releasing around the same time frame to one another. The fact is, AMD's BD and IVB will both be sold at the high end market side by side in the same time frame. BD may be pitted against SNB until IVB hits the shelves though... assuming they reach market on time.

with the graphics card thing, for me it is mainly beneficial in the laptop market more so then anything. I could be wrong, but I believe my current one runs all graphics just off the discrete (?) card, which caused it always have shit battery life (that and it came with only a 6-cell). From what I've read newer laptops have set-ups to run off the integrated for normal tasks, and switch over to discrete when you want to run games, etc.

As for desktop, I'd imagine it main help would be to save on power bills and that is about it (And I'd assume a graphics card isn't going to significantly affect your power bill, could be wrong). Just opinion though, could be way off base.