990FX Motherboard Roundup with Thuban and Bulldozer – A Second Wind for ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Biostar

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• mmstick - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link

  The primary problem with AMD FX is that in order to use the full power of the FPU the program needs to be compiled with FMA4 support, else it is only using half of the FPUs, thus making it a quad core. Secondly, many Windows-based programs are compiled with the Intel C+ compiler, so although the FX may support AVX and many other instructions, the compiled program sees it as a non-Intel CPU so it disables those instruction sets, allowing Intel CPUs to be optimized, and AMD CPUs to remain deoptimized. This is what happens when you are up against someone with the most market share, whom has the ability to dictate what instruction sets they want programmers to use. As well, when people say they are going to buy Intel CPUs instead because they claim AMD didn't make a good processor, why do you think they can't be on top of performance? Without R&D budget there isn't much that can be done, and when you face someone who practically owns a monopoly, that makes it even moreso harder to compete.

• Omoronovo - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link

  The IC++ compiler has not done that since 2010 when they were forced to settle their antitrust dispute with AMD.

• DigitalFreak - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link

  " This is what happens when you are up against someone with the most market share, whom has the ability to dictate what instruction sets they want programmers to use. As well, when people say they are going to buy Intel CPUs instead because they claim AMD didn't make a good processor, why do you think they can't be on top of performance? Without R&D budget there isn't much that can be done, and when you face someone who practically owns a monopoly, that makes it even moreso harder to compete."
  
  Waaaaah. It's always someone else's fault.

• anubis44 - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link

  "Waaaaah. It's always someone else's fault."
  
  Well, sometimes it really IS someone else's fault. If the mafia had it in for you, and cut your brake cables and burnt your house down when you weren't looking, you'd say it's 'someone else's fault' too. Intel's blackmail and threats to suppliers who used AMD processors kinda screwed AMD over just a tad.
  
  That said, I think now that Jim Keller is back at AMD and head of AMD's CPU division, it won't be too long before AMD is seriously back in the game.

• Monkeysweat - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link

  I saw them on some of the benchmarks, why didn't you post them along side the AMD benchies for gaming?
  
  If we are looking at a roundup of the best of what AMD and it's partners have to offer, I'd like to see what the competing team brings to the table,, just leave em stock and even let the AMD ones get overclocked.
  
  I wouldn't even worry about cherry picking the Intel combos,, just something random.

• Beenthere - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link

  AMD has not abandoned the highend CPU market. Their focus may be broadening but that does not mean they will discontinue discrete highend desktop CPUs for at least several years. Eventually everyone except a small group will use APUs as they will deliver the best performance/value proposition. Only extremists will bother with a discrete CPU/GPU with higher power consumption, increased heat and little practical benefit for mainstream users.

• Articuno - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link

  It's a pretty nice chipset and the lower tier boards are quite cost-effective. Just wish Bulldozer was competitive with Intel, let alone their last gen chips.

• Mathieu Bourgie - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link

  Thank you for this article Ian.
  
  Are there any chance that we'll see a review of the newer FX-6200 CPU or at least have data for it in the CPU bench? Considering that it's 500MHz faster than the model that it's replacing and no major site (or any that I can see) did a review of it, it'd be interesting to see how it performs.
  
  I'm curious to see if it's a valid alternative, in any way, for $170, vs the Intel Core i5-2300 ($180).
  
  I don't expect any miracle for gaming performance, but for workstation workloads (Photoshop, video editing and the like), who knows?
  
  Thanks,
  Mathieu

• cosminmcm - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link

  There is a review at pcper, a good one. The processor is pretty weak, nothing exciting there. Thuban walks all over it.

• Mathieu Bourgie - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link

  Thanks, I didn't see that.
  
  Quite disappointing indeed.
  
  Here's about that Piledriver or Trinity are more competitive.