AMD's Next Gen Steamroller CPU Could Deliver Where Bulldozer Fell Short

Oooh I am interested. This is looking nice, good luck to AMD.. we need competition in the marketplace.

I hope so. Competition would be awesome!

Nice to see them still rolling along I had kind of given up on them after being a die hard for many many years (Since Athlon XP if anyone remembers those)!

I remember my old Thunderbird CPUs and how quick they were.

Seems they really have given up on really competing seriously on enthusiast side of desktops. Considering that the desktop CPU-only chips will always be a generation behind :/

I don't know the details about chip-making. But when you think about all the AMD people out there who want the 8120-8150 of Piledriver and later Steamroller. It could make sense to at least just make one model of each generation and release asap. So lots of APUs and one high-end CPU so enthusiasts don't flee to Intel.

I had an Ath x64 3100.. nice little chip at the time.

This would be a great comeback. If they can pull thru. Im still an amd fan because of their price performance ratio.

The problem is gonna be Windows 8. For those that don't know the FP light "half core" design they used in Bulldozer and Steamroller has a serious performance issue in WinXP, Vista and 7 and MSFT has made it clear its a WILL NOT FIX except...in Windows 8.

So for all of you that don't want Metro? I'm afraid you should either avoid AMD or disable half of each module so it behaves like a "normal" chip because otherwise Windows treats it like hyperthreading which is bad. For those that don't know WHY its bad, imagine you buy a Steamroller 8 core. Now the best way for Windows to schedule 4 jobs would be ONE per module, that gives each of the 4 jobs its own FP unit. Instead thanks to the scheduler bug Windows will dump those 4 jobs on the first two modules, slowing them to a crawl, while the other two modules twiddle their thumbs...see the problem?

So until AMD gets rid of the half core design, or gets MSFT to backport the fix, I'll be hanging onto my Thuban for another couple of years and then if it isn't fixed going to Intel. Because I don't kn ow about everyone else but I have NO desire to turn my desktop into a cell phone with Win 8's Metro UI.

Hold with those above who are hoping that Steamroller will perform sufficiently well to make it an alternative to Intel's Sandybridge and Ivybridge - and other chips in the pipleline - the x86 chip market desperately needs competition ! But even if AMD does well, two chip competitors are far too few ; while an oligopoly is preferable to a monopoly, what is needed are new players in the market, like ARM in the low-power segment. Still, the return of AMD as a serious competitor would be a most welcome event ; in my next build I look forward to being able to replace my current AMD Phenom II X4 955 processor with a hot (and reasonably priced) CPU from AMD, rather than having to pay an Intel tax due to that company's quasi-monopoly position....

Henri

Last AMD processor I owned was the amd athlon 3200 socket 939. Fantastic chip but there hasnt been anything recently from AMD that has swayed me from Intel.

I never quit buying AMD CPUs. While I do have some Intel's here, my last two were AMD flavors.

My Phenom-II 980 Black does pretty well with the games I like, and the APU A8-3850 system that I put together for my wife is like a rock star in her office. She loves her new PC a lot.

If I was building a PC that had to have lots of performance characteristics, I would default to an Intel build, but AMD boxes are not as hopeless as some will make them out to be.

15% performance increase 'claimed'...... LOL, AMD IS FINISHED DOT COM

What a failure. So happy with my i7 2600k @ 4.5ghz (ON AIR!) that I would never DREAM of going back to AMD

Current and future AMD owners pay too much for too little performance. You can STILL buy x4 955 BE (Which are unlocked and OC them to 4.5ghz on air) and get better value + better performance than existing Piledriver/Bulldozer. Install a sandy bridge and then tell me you want to use their shoddy APU or under-acheving 'Dozer architecture. THey have nothing to compare to but more of the same performance.

Itr0ll:

So happy with my i7 2600k @ 4.5ghz (ON AIR!) that I would never DREAM of going back to AMD

Itr0ll:

Install a sandy bridge and then tell me you want to use their shoddy APU or under-acheving 'Dozer architecture.

I have a 2600K too. And yeah, I still want, and use my (not shoddy) AMD APU and Phenom-II 980 Black Edition PCs. Not every system has to be earth shatteringly speedy to be worth using.

I'm glad that you're happy with your Intel rig. Mine is pretty nice too.

What some users can't seem to understand is the simple fact that a healthy AMD is good for us all - both AMD and Intel users (and what I suspect is the majority of us who have chips from both makers in our various machines). As I mentioned above, the present x86 CPU situation is an oligopoly, which is hardly the ideal, but it is far better that a situation characterised by a monopoly, in which nothing other than (non-existant) good will on the part of the monopolist determines prices and quality. Those who boast that they wound «never» condescend to use an AMD chip are doing not only the rest of us, but also themselves a disservice....

Henri

KBennett,

Microsoft released a patch for W7 earlier this year that fixed the scheduler issue. Performance improved by 1-3% in moderately threaded workloads. That's all you get, that's all you're going to get. Bulldozer's problems are directly tied to certain architectural decisions and cache performance.

Have to love those Intel fanboys first off u r right that amd does not preform as hi as some highly priced intel chips but i can do things with my amd 8 core that i cant do with my i2700 for one i can open 3 games at once on 3 monitors with no lag cant do that with my i 2700 lags like a ***,so my amd 8 cores loves me to feed it all the software i can and still runs great try that with your intel cpu.

Comparison video or it didn't happen. :)

Joel H:

Comparison video or it didn't happen. :)

LOL!

When comparing Intel and AMD CPUs, I suspect a lot of the gamers here will find this recent Tech Report article of great interest : http://techreport.com/articles.x/23246 ....

Henri

Your link is a good read, but it only reinforces what most already know. AMD's FX CPUs have left them trailing Intel by a lot.

The good news is that the FX4170 and the 980 Black are a decent deal and I can say from personal experience that they do perform well.

You may not top the benchmarks with either of them, but they play games at decent frame-rates (with a good GPU installed in the system) without getting too hot.

I think, realneil, that the main point of the article was to show that frame rate is not an adequate measurement of the gaming experience and that frame latency is a superior metrological instrument for this purpose. Thus it has - if I understand it aright - a wider relevance than just the current situation obtaining between Intel and AMD CPUs (which I hope will at least in part be rectified by the Steamroller series) ; it teaches us - or at least should teach us - not to stare ourselves blind on frame rates. If more reviewers adopt these methods and the general public (or at least its enthusiast component) becomes aware of these facts, perhaps manufacturers will be forced to provide us with better processors (but they'd better not have rounded corners !)...

Henri

mhenriday:

I think, realneil, that the main point of the article was to show that frame rate is not an adequate measurement of the gaming experience and that frame latency is a superior metrological instrument for this purpose.

And the results of their testing was damn close to standard testing methodologies anyways. Intel still rules the roost and AMD CPUs don't.

My point was that (leaving benchmarks of any sort out of it) both of my AMD gaming CPUs, the 980 and the 4170 deliver a good 'real world' gaming experience if you have a decent GPU in the system. People keep pointing to benches and they ridicule AMD's efforts, but I say that they're OK with me.

Spot on my friend, not everyone is aiming for the highest benchmark scores, some people need solutions that fit their need and are affordable. Intels prices though better then before do not compare to AMD, especially in regards to economy builds. AMD CPU's perform very well and are more then sufficient for most average users, Intels lead has captured the enthusiasts but the low to mid range belongs more to AMD. Piledriver looks very promising but steamroller will have a new architecture, that IMO will put AMD back into the minds of the benchmark obsessed. I have my x6 1055t @ 3.65 GHZ and it outperforms i5 2500k in every benchmark and is excellent for video rendering.

Yes, but they also stated it is not the equivalent to Windows 8 core parking and module accessing, the hotfix is a meager attempt at rectifying the addressing issues by accessing modules as though they were SMT threads and not physical cores, the CMT design is flawed because it ignores the current standard for fetching and decoding found in most OS's. Linux is much better in this situation, the FX thrives in a Linux environment. Also, I have benched the FX on a Windows 8 machine, there were HUGE gains, Im talking 15-20% on most benchmarks, the BD architecture is fundamentally flawed several ways but if utilized properly is a real power house, the next step which will be addressed with Piledriver will be the TDP and IPC, but we will not see a true revision of the architecture until steamroller.