Bulldozer...

**HeavyG** · 08-23-11, 08:37 PM

The transcoding features of Sandy Bridge are pretty cool on Z68. Besides that, there are some cool power saving features that completely shut off your discrete cards when you are web surfing and stuff to save power, and enable them when you require more graphics power. This could save people hundreds each year.

I also like the Lucid technologies with Lucid Virtu and Virtual Vsync with Lucid Virtu Universal.

Lucidlogix

I believe that software is going to start taking full advantage of swapping between idle resources through your integrated and discrete GPUs to provide the best possible performance on many different applications, including games. Some things are just handled better through GPU stream processing vs your standard x86 CPU.

Being a hard core PC hardware nut, it is hard to stomach the fact that discrete graphics cards are the way of the past, but it is true. More and more systems will move the integrated APUs like Sandy Bridge and Llano. These technologies are in their infancy right now, but we will likely see tremendous growth within the next few years. Growth to the point where nVIDIA may be in more trouble than they are right now.

**WileECyte** · 08-23-11, 09:31 PM

John Carmack discussed the APU vs GPU at length in an interview with PC Perspectives... and his feelings are discrete cards are on their way out. As Heavy said... this is just the beginning.

**DancingCorpse** · 08-23-11, 11:08 PM

Originally Posted by WileECyte

John Carmack discussed the APU vs GPU at length in an interview with PC Perspectives... and his feelings are discrete cards are on their way out. As Heavy said... this is just the beginning.

You know, that does spark interest in if it will be solid enough by the time the next generation of consoles comes around. Could see some interesting things.

Sent from me Samsung Vibrant usin' Tapatalk

**WileECyte** · 08-24-11, 09:19 AM

For you tech nerds... here's some very technical details for Bulldozer:

Bilder: AMD

The site is in German, but the slides from AMD are in English.

The big thing is each Bulldozer chip will have 4 'Bulldozer units' which each have 2 cores apiece, so they will indeed be 8-core on the high end.

**QuickLightning** · 08-24-11, 09:40 AM

Originally Posted by WileECyte

For you tech nerds... here's some very technical details for Bulldozer:

Bilder: AMD

The site is in German, but the slides from AMD are in English.

The big thing is each Bulldozer chip will have 4 'Bulldozer units' which each have 2 cores apiece, so they will indeed be 8-core on the high end.

2 of their newly designed cores are currently considered the equivalent of 1 Intel core with hyperthreading though. It's not necessary "better" until we really see a benchmark on it... Just a different approach that does use up quite a bit more die space.

They're not entire "cores" and shouldn't be considered as such. It's just confusing marketing. They are missing a lot of portions that would go with an entire core. Like for example, the modules share one pool of L2 cache. Which means this cache will have a higher latency, be at a higher level and compete for resources. This is also true for the fetch and decode modules.

They do have a dedicated integer clusters though. That is a slight improvement over Intel's hyperthreading approach and should be interesting to see how it pans out.

So this high end based on those above slides should be around a quad core. Maybe performing slightly above in integer crunching.

**WileECyte** · 08-24-11, 10:30 AM

I figured you'd be the most interested in all this Quick since this is your field and all. The 'leaked' benchmarks are all over the place and most have been debunked as either fake or on really old engineering samples. Can't wait until the covers are removed and we can start seeing reviews from sites like Tom's Hardware and Anandtech.

**QuickLightning** · 08-24-11, 10:44 AM

Originally Posted by WileECyte

I figured you'd be the most interested in all this Quick since this is your field and all. The 'leaked' benchmarks are all over the place and most have been debunked as either fake or on really old engineering samples. Can't wait until the covers are removed and we can start seeing reviews from sites like Tom's Hardware and Anandtech.

Haha. While I might not be the biggest enthusiast when it comes to building high end PCs for personal use, I live for this stuff.

I have seen a lot of "benchmarks" but it mostly seems fake, biased (skewed in BOTH directions) or just early estimates that can't really be trusted for their accuracy. If it is successful, that is this module design surpasses the performance gain from hyperthreading enough to be worth the extra cost for die size, you can bet Intel would evaluate the implications.

It's really a toss up right now though. That extra die space can be used to squeeze in some additional features with a larger uncore. Nothing is given free when it comes to space on a processor. Whether those features are worth more to the consumer than what might be a tiny improvement in integer processing will be shown in the next few months.

If the gain they get over hyperthreading is non existent or minimal, you are just paying a higher premium (or AMD is eating lower profits) for no real gain.

**WileECyte** · 08-24-11, 10:50 AM

Yeah. This is really make or break for AMD. This is their first major IDP release since the original Athlon. Everything since then has been minor tweaks to the original Athlon design, which borrowed heavily from the DEC Alpha design. If this fails, it could prove to be quite costly for AMD, and that would be bad for the industry. Without competition, the market stagnates.