The Bulldozer Review: AMD FX-8150 Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 12, 2011 1:27 AM ESTCache and Memory Performance
I mentioned earlier that cache latencies are higher in order to accommodate the larger caches (8MB L2 + 8MB L3) as well as the high frequency design. We turned to our old friend cachemem to measure these latencies in clocks:
| Cache/Memory Latency Comparison | ||||||
| L1 | L2 | L3 | Main Memory | |||
| AMD FX-8150 (3.6GHz) | 4 | 21 | 65 | 195 | ||
| AMD Phenom II X4 975 BE (3.6GHz) | 3 | 15 | 59 | 182 | ||
| AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (3.3GHz) | 3 | 14 | 55 | 157 | ||
| Intel Core i5 2500K (3.3GHz) | 4 | 11 | 25 | 148 | ||
Cache latencies are up significantly across the board, which is to be expected given the increase in pipeline depth as well as cache size. But is Bulldozer able to overcome the increase through higher clocks? To find out we have to convert latency in clocks to latency in nanoseconds:
We disable turbo in order to get predictable clock speeds, which lets us accurately calculate memory latency in ns. The FX-8150 at 3.6GHz has a longer trip down memory lane than its predecessor, also at 3.6GHz. The higher latency caches play a role in this as they are necessary to help drive AMD's frequency up. What happens if we turn turbo on and peg the FX-8150 at 3.9GHz? Memory latency goes down. Bulldozer still isn't able to get to main memory as quickly as Sandy Bridge, but thanks to Turbo Core it's able to do so better than the outgoing Phenom II.
L3 access latency is effectively a wash compared to the Phenom II thanks to the higher clock speeds enabled by Turbo Core. Latencies haven't really improved though, and Bulldozer has a long way to go before it reaches Sandy Bridge access latencies.
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dingetje - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
i agree with some that bulldozer is more like faildozer, but...let's keep supporting amd so the one getting piledrive'd in the naughty place will not be you when intel has zero competition left because you did not want to spend a little more for a little less....and let's be honest, it IS just a little.
if enough ppl drop amd, in the end WE will be the one paying for amd's lack of support.
at least amd is trying.....the question is, what are YOU going to do to stop intel becoming your bunghole-piledriving overlord?
wolfman3k5 - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
Supporting incompetence is like socialism (or even communism). Eventually those that are supported will sit around like dogs all day and do nothing but lick their hairy balls...dingetje - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
ah...someone has been brainwashed by watching to much fox news.communism baaaad boogabooga!! ....duhhhhh lol roflmao
sure, capitalism works...however, it only works when there actually IS competition.
i wish your (most likely already loose) rectum good luck.
wolfman3k5 - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
Apparently money won't motivate the Monkey Engineers at AMD, so maybe making fun of them will. I mean, where is their pride, right?By the way, I've seen real socialism, so I have a clue what it is. And it is what I just described. I don't like Intel because they are not healthy for our economy, yet their only competition just pulled a gigantic fuck-up.
dingetje - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
oooooo oooga boooga socialism is bad....it take away aaalll you money...it verrry baddd.....oooooogabooogaboooo!! LOLhave fun getting eaten alive by china after your capitalistic model became cancerous and will die from the inside out.
your country is bought and paid for and will be eaten alive by the "communistic" chinese who are in fact just the same as what the usa has become: a corporate dictatorship (not communism and certainly not socialism).
sorry, i didnt mean to scare you more than you obviously already are.
i would send you some lube to easy the pain, but i'm all out ;)
UberApfel - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
My god you're all so retarded...Dingetje; China has serious issues when it comes to the welfare of their people. China only owns 10% of our debt, and that is thanks to China becoming capitalistic as a nation.
Wolfman; Bulldozer is a server procressor. The server market is where the money is especially with the cloud and enthusiast-class desktops becoming rare. Intel has 30X AMD's market capital... they can afford to target multiple markets. AMD can't.
Bulldozer is superior with integer processing in both performance-per-core and performance-per-watt. Of course; I do wonder why desktop applications even need floating point... (numbers < -2^63 or > 2^63)
hasu - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
Like wise... killing or trying to control competition is also communism.radium69 - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
Jeebus, that power consumption is going through the roof!Also there were some rumors that it would go up to 8Ghz, I wonder if would use a Kw by then...
I want to see how they compare to each other when overclocked to 4,5 or more or less.
Also Anand, can you do a efficiency test? Various overclocking speeds and bench these while monitoring the power consumption. Might make an interesting article :)
ypsylon - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
Not really - even including AMD fanboys. AMD can't understand that to move forward you must abolish old stuff for good. Brand new and spanking Bulldozer has it roots in ancient K6. Do something new for crying out loud or get lost and stop wasting time. Don't release CPUs just for the sake of offering something. That is not the point of CPU market. Even Intel can shoot themselves in the foot with X79. Looks like it will be similar failure to FailDozer. Nobody will invest in entirely new platform for 10 maybe 15% performance boost over X58 which is the new 775 socket. Long live the S1366! Plenty of life and fuel left in Nehalems, plenty... If you wanted to buy Bulldozer then go and buy X58 platform. After nearly 4 years on the market it is [somewhat ;)] dirt cheap.Anand one thing: I find it puzzling that you reckon that Bulldozer will do well in server environments. With that kind of performance/Watt and inefficient power management? No chance in hell. i7/Xenons will eat FailDozers for breakfast.
wolfman3k5 - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
I'm not. I completely agree with everything that you've said.And, if I might add: Dear AMD, and dear AMD engineers (and lazy fucks that you are), throwing more cache at an already inefficient architecture is not going to solve your problem. Add to that that you people (yes, you AMD people) are calling a 4 Core CPU an 8 Core because you've added another Integer Unit to each core. WTF?! That's almost like calling a quad core Intel 2600K and 8 Core CPU because it has Hyper Threading.
I have been an avid AMD supporter since 1996. I have spent many thousands of dollars on your CPUs and other hardware that you people make. I'm done. Not another penny! Ever!