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Time to start firing the PR guys! As is the case with all technical products these days, AMD used a lot of lofty-sounding numbers and specs to make its new 8-core Bulldozer chips sound friggin’ awesome in the company’s press releases. Eight cores, four modules, a 315mm die area, two billion transistors – actually, scratch that last one. Over the past weekend, AMD contacted several publications and said that, um, somebody screwed up. Eight-core Bulldozer chips actually only have 1.2 billion transistors. Oops.
The Inquirer provides the text of the message for our viewing pleasure:
Last week, AMD confirmed the transistor count in the AMD FX CPU line-up at 1.2 billion, a correction from the earlier count of 2 billion. The earlier figure of 2 billion transistors was unfortunately shared in error. This correction is not the result of a new revision to the Bulldozer design. The correct count of 1.2 billion applies to all recently introduced 8-core AMD processors that are based on the new Bulldozer core - AMD FX family of desktop CPUs and AMD Opteron family of server and HPC processors. We apologize for the confusion.
So, the bad news is that somehow, this slipped through the cracks until several weeks after the first reviews hit the streets. The good news is that since the drastic transistor reduction is due to clerical error rather than an actual revision to the chips, the results of our review still stand. The funny part is that 1.2 billion transistor number may still be a bit off. Joel Hruska at Extreme Tech took a look at the tech behind Bulldozer and speculates that the chips actually have at least 1.32 billion transistors – and that’s “before we add I/O, integrated memory controller, or HyperTransport.”
Thoughts? Is this an embarrassing gaffe or much ado about nothing?
Comments are closed on this article
avenger48
December 07, 2011 at 4:03pm
I hate to say it, but looking at benchmarks it almost would have been better for AMD to strap a few more cores onto Thuban, since it seems to do better per core than FX. This whole new architecture really didn't work for them.
chipmunkofdoom2
December 06, 2011 at 12:50pm
Not everyone needs the fastest chip on the planet. Check out the Bulldozer benchmark linked above and look at the pricing vs specs for Intel's brass vs the AMD flagship. Spec-wise, the chips are very similar, if the Bulldozer isn't better, especially in core count. Then, take a look at the prices. The i7-990x is many times more expensive (~$250 vs ~$1k) than the Bulldozer, with similar, a few greater, and a few poorer specs. The Core i7 has to be many times better (4x if you're going by cost alone) than the Bulldozer in every single aspect to be worth the price premium, and it just isn't. It by far is a faster and better processor, nobody is denying that Intel is the performance king. The thing the Intel fanboys miss is not everybody wants to pay many times more than a comparable competitor's price just so they can brag about having the fastest. Unless you're doing editing, floating point scientific calculations, or some other CPU intensive tasks, there's a very good chance you won't seen the performance increase anyway. Most video cards and hard drives are a bigger bottleneck to gaming and every day performance than CPUs. AMD has almost always held the price/performance crown. As much as the Intel boys want to see AMD crumble, it's not gonna happen.. not until Intel can release a more competitively priced chip to woo away the AMD customers. Intel flat out has a better chip. How much better, and is it worth the added cost? Well, those questions are why AMD remains in business.
NewbieLam
December 06, 2011 at 7:27pm
The fact that you are comparing an Intel CPU that 3 years old to an AMD cpu that is a month old, either mean you have no idea what you are talking about or you are just a bad troll.
illusionslayer
December 06, 2011 at 3:59pm
First of all, the 990X is outdated and should be considered obsolete at this point when the 3960X is around.
Second the 3930K, which performs at about the same levels as the 3960X, average about twice as fast as the FX8150 and is, coincidently, about twice the price.
Third, the 2600K does quite a bit better than the FX8150 in pretty much every test and is only $50 more.
I'll grant you that Intel's high-end entusiast chip is vastly overpriced given its performance, but to claim that it isn't worth the extra price is ridiculous. If it weren't worth it Intel wouldn't sell any of them and then they would either give up on that market or actually make the performance scale.
Even if you want to compare lower end chips, Intel is currently winning. The i3-2100 @ $125 beats the 965BE @ $130.
The only reason AMD is still competitive at this point after the release of SNB is people like you simply believing that AMD has the price/performance crown.
livebriand
December 06, 2011 at 10:47pm
For netbooks like the E350, compared to dual-core atoms with nvidia ion gpus, they have the price/performance crown, and that's why my netbook has an AMD E350 CPU. The A series APUs might not be bad for low-end systems instead of i3s. However, for powerful systems, Intel is better, hands down.
illusionslayer
December 07, 2011 at 6:23am
I'd take a G620 and whatever I can get for the difference in cost over an A series any day.
And atom is shit, Ivy could provide some improvement there.
Carlidan
December 06, 2011 at 2:32pm
Have you check out benchmarks to intels i7 newer chips? Their price/performance is better than AMD's offering. So what's your response to those chips? Hey, I agree that AMD's intergrated GPU is better than intel. No one is going to deny that. But using the price/performance is moot since Intel seems to be competing at that market and seems to be winning too. Now we hear AMD might scrap desktop, most likely because they see they can't compete their, is now going after the tablet and smartphone market.
limitbreaker
December 06, 2011 at 6:56pm
AMD is only holding on a bang/buck with the Fusion APU chips. I used to always recommend AMD in the Intel Bloomfield era mainly because of cost/performance but also because AMD quad core/hexa core really did perform, i still see no reason to upgrade from my overclocked 1090t as it chews everything i trow at it. With the release of LGA 1155 and the 2500k/2600k intel not only gave a huge performance boost but also priced them very reasonably for a change. Bulldozer was supposed to save AMD but it didnt give us the performance it was supposed to and it can't compete on price without doing it at loss.
I now wonder if intel is going to start gouging everyone again after the demise of AMD.
Carlidan
December 06, 2011 at 7:04pm
I hope not. And what I've been reading, it's sounds like AMD is giving up.
warptek2010
December 06, 2011 at 12:16pm
Unfortunaely for AMD it won't make a difference against the Intel juggernaut. AMD probably needs to introduce a new socket and Hypertransport 3.0 (the very thing we rail against Intel for) to catch up. I would venture to guess that core for core, there probably is not much difference between Bulldozer and Sandybridge. It's all in how each accesses cache, memory, priority etc... and the resulting bandwidth that makes the difference.
illusionslayer
December 06, 2011 at 4:01pm
They are absolutely different at the core level. SNB has massive IPC performance compared to Bulldozer since AMD's philosophy is "Lol, fuck performance, add more cores."
warptek2010
December 07, 2011 at 12:16am
Well, I did say I was venturing a guess. I was basing that on mostly the GHZ factor since both chips tend to hover around the same GHZ speed ratings but Intel's seems the better performing cycle for cycle, I thought it had mostly to do with the way SB handles requests down the pipeline, and memory bandwidth.
illusionslayer
December 06, 2011 at 4:03pm
So, apparently, if you miss captcha, your post is still posted. So now there's a doulbe post here.
Supall
December 06, 2011 at 11:41am
Before the AMD-hate machine rolls in:
It's a shame that they screwed up such a spec, but it won't change the fact that people will ram AMD for the disappointed showing of its Bulldozer core. I think its a great core, but I went with an 1100T to save money and to see how bulldozer goes in the next year. I just hope AMD gets itself together in the coming years and truly become a competitive force again.
JohnP
December 06, 2011 at 7:36pm
Yeah, I was really disappointed at the final results. Not only did AMD overhype Bulldozer but the tradeoffs they made for servers did not pan out either. I really would have liked a much more robust chip coming from AMD but Intel is on such a damn good roll. Its been several years now since I have had anything AMDish in any of my systems. Now Intel is beating the uP market, it is time it goes after ARM chips (and good luck with that).
Carlidan
December 06, 2011 at 2:36pm
I don't hate AMD, hell I have an AMD video card. I just know which company is making the better cpu. I won't mind using AMD for media. Since I don't have to buy a video card since it's intergrated graphics should be able to handle it.
