AMD FX-Series (Bulldozer) & 990FX Chipset (AM3+) Discussion

Too hard to tell at this poit and it all come down to what you will be using it for.

Internet surfing and DL'ing?... sure... should keep up with the 2600K

Video and 3D rendering... on paper at least yes..similar?

Gaming... who knows!

To be serious though... i have the same question as i have the upgrade itch again(every week!) and am looking at the 2600k again as a serious upgrade to last till next year...i know i won't be disappointed with the 2600k but will i regret my decision when the Bulldozer arrives?....i'll wait another week

 

We just have to wait for raw clock-to-clock performance. The massive turbo core boost should reduce the reliance on high thread counts like we saw with the Thubans.

In that sense, even if you don't plan on using 8 threads/cores/whateverthehelltheyarewithZambezi, the 8 cores are still going to provide better single/low-threaded performance than the FX-4000s because turbo has room to activate.

 

Im heading down the bang for buck route

$335 delivered 955 + ud5 990XFA = SEX

 

Have you got that board up and running yet?

 

What was that...

 

Hey lads,

Been so busy with life I haven't been able to keep up with the hardware scene for atleast 12 months..

My Q6600 is feeling a bit dated, so I'm gonna go the full ball and upgrade to a completely new platform.

Not really liking what Intel has to offer at the moment, and have been considering going for an AMD X6/6970 setup, but is it worth waiting for this new platform to come out? Octocore AMD's?

I'm in no rush as I'm sitting for my HSC in October, but BF3's releae date is 25th October, so thats my deadline

Is it worth waiting for this new X8 platform to be released or should I just take the plunge with an 1100T or something..

Cheers.

 

Don't buy the 1100T It's just a Q6600 at 4Ghz with a couple of extra cores, if you have waited this long, get the latest platform

 

Cheers for the input man. BF3 alpha-trial seems to struggle on my current setup. I thought my Q6600 + 4870X2 would last forever hahaha. As soon as I saw that they were up to the 6 series in videocards I felt so much out of the loop!

 

If I remember rightly I'm not so sure the 1100T's work per clock stands up that well against even the Core2 arch.

Would be interested in links to benches that say otherwise though.

 

Its pretty well known that the Phenom II stands up to the Core 2 series - out of box not clock for clock mind you. They might if you bump up the NB though, it was talked about it in a recent thread (which i cannot find for the life of me).

But yeah, keep your Q6600, overclock it and get a better card. IIRC 4870x2's are about the same as a 5850/5870 in perf but you have to deal with xfire and support. Which I wouldn't expect an alpha release to have either

 

Yeah, I use to get it up to 3.6ghz at only 1.41v!! I think it's time to give my PC a good compressed air dust and pump it up again.

 

I just had a bit of a look myself to do a bit of a refresher.

A Phenom II with 6 cores can outdo a Core2 with 4 cores when undertaking a well threaded task, but unless you were going to overclock, single threaded or poorly threaded tasks mightn't see enough benefit to warrant the money spent.

I'd wait at least until October where Bulldozer will undoubtedly trounce Core2 based CPUs, though it's almost certainly not going to "clean the clock" of Sandybridge and may not even be on par with it.

 

Is there any official date for AMD 8-cores ??

 

Nope but the calls for an October release sound pretty reasonable to me.

AMD themselves have stated that the release date will be done on the day they release the product (I kid you not.) In other words, there will be no advance release date statement made before the actual release of the product.

 

All the late step FX's tested have run 8 cores at 5ghz air, no clock for clock compares though, overclocked it will have to beat a overclocked Sandy in some tests, how many it does it in is the question.

 

I believe 5.2GHz on air for Sandy is possible but 5GHz for Bulldozer sounds pretty good, and there'll be the next edition CPU's Q1/2 2012 which might do even better.

Some benches I saw showed pretty awful work per clock for Bulldozer but they were early silicon so I'm not basing anything on what I saw there. I'm yet to see BD benches that have me head over heals, so I'll just have to be patient.

 

You won't get a sandy to 5.2Ghz without overvolting it long term, and they do just up and die constantly, I know people who have killed 3 so far and are waiting for RMA again

 

Oh, they're getting 5GHz for BD with no overvolt. That's not bad.

I've seen SuperPI results for a Phenom II @ 5.4GHz (not sure of cooling) that were about twice as slow as Sandybridge @ 5.2GHz so work for clock is important as well as how many clocks per second.

Can't wait to see verifiable benches for BD.

 

yep agreed.
2 SB (2600K) chips died on me, another is on the way.
who knows it might be 3 before that one even gets here, the 2500k i got while i was waiting for rma might decide to give out aswell.. im trying not to push it (but i said that before the last 2600 went)!

am keeping my eye out for bulldozer results, not overly pleased with sandy bridge platform, need a change. partly due to above mentioned flakiness/reliability issues, partly due to the mostly uninteresting overclocking, waste of time on subzero etc.. i only use it for benching really so this is a big drawback.

 

funny surprise to wake up to. 81xx to be around 300 USD - I'd say the 8130p, wouldn't be a promo otherwise



http://sites.amd.com/us/promo/processors/Pages/fx-rules.aspx