After six years of R&D, AMD must be miffed that the reviewers are not exactly over the moon about the first batch of Bulldozer.
The wraps are off the beast and while most of the reviews are "not bad" they are not exactly brimming with enthusiasm.
Tom's Hardware said that if someone put an i5-2500K and FX-8150 in front of him and the Core i5 costs $220, and the FX runs at $245 he would go for the Core i5. Ouch.
In the best-case scenario when the FX can fully use its eight integer cores, it generally falls in between Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K although sometimes the FX manages to outperform the higher-end -2600K.
HardOCP wrote that AMD had delivered what will be a disappointment to many and the Intel fanboys have won this round. If you expected something to outshine Sandy Bridge in terms of performance overall, it is just not there.
Part of the problem is that the software is not really there yet. Single threaded Bulldozer performance leaves a lot to be desired and it only does any good when Bulldozer can flex all its cores. Software will move there eventually but it is not there yet.
Techspot said that the the cheaper FX-8120 gives the Core i5-2500K a serious run for its money and it's a worthy alternative. Meanwhile the FX-6100 is also great value at $165, as it undercuts both the Phenom II X6s but it wasn't always faster.
But really it was hoping for a lot more from Bulldozer and AMD's eight-core processors. The FX processors come short of competing hand to hand with the now nine-months old Sandy Bridge processors, and in certain instances surpass their own Phenom II range.
All of the reviews say that the new chips are just the start and thinks it will get better. But heck, it has been four years and AMD was expected to really give Intel a kick in the nadgers with the release.
drashek esq.
On the other hand Intel's one and only true innovation was the cpu chip invented around 1971. The rest they copied from the competition the same way that Microsoft did. That's what a monopoly does best.
http://www.techwarelabs.com/amd-bulldozer-cpu-sets-overclocking-world-record-8-429ghz/
http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Breaks-Frequency-Record-with-Upcoming-FX-Processor/
So here we have a chip which performs as well as it's rival but costs less. And can be overclocked faster than anything on the planet.
I am failing to see the downside in this?
So let's summarize. The fastest Bulldozer chip is slower than Intel's *midrange* chip in most important benchmarks, takes significantly more power to run, and is more expensive. In single threaded apps which we use every day, Bulldozer is even slower than the old AMD Phenom II X6, which is, of course, slower than Intel's midrange part. There is literally no upside to the Bulldozer chip. None whatsoever.
I think that AMD saw the problems that needed reworking but decided that clockspeed would be enough to counter them for the time being but then a few months later they find that yields were too poor and had no choice but to launch as is.
The real news is that this CPU has also been optimized to work with world's fastest GPU and that just happens to be made by AMD too.
As a taste of what's to come please check out this link :
http://tinyurl.com/6zejc2g