AMD Bulldozer review thread.

[swaaye]

The problem is that games aren't necessarily parallelizable. Game developers have been very focused on it since the arrival of PS360. I wouldn't say the current games are rudimentary efforts anymore.

The most scalable game is probably RAGE because its texture transcode will use any number of cores. Unfortunately this is somewhat moot because it runs well on a dual core. Civ 5 was touted to be scalable too.

I play everything on 3 year old quads and don't plan on any upgrades because everything runs 60 Hz unless I crank the SSAA. Still GPU limited in most cases.

 

[Albuquerque]

Swaaye's findings mirror my own. I have a Q9450 that runs 3.4Ghz all day on stock volts (I can crank it to 4.0 if I want to bump voltage) and everything I play is GPU limited on my 1680x1050 Dell 2005WFP. That's not to say that I play EVERYTHING that you guys might, but I have very little use for more CPU power at this moment.

My next upgrade will be a GCN card so I can continue upping the SSAA.

 

[homerdog]

My preferred option would be to slap in an LGA775 quad and a new GPU. Problem is 775 quads are stupidly expensive at this point, and I could get a 2500K for cheaper than a Q9450. Hmm..

 

[Mendel]

@Jawed It´s not random crashes if it crashes every time you start a specific game.

I know random crashes can be painful too though, it took a while to narrow down my own Asus/ Intel based system problems to faulty main RAM (had to overvolt and raise latencies to 9-11-9-27 to make it work at 1600MHz without crashing randomly after 30min - 2 hours of gaming) It almost drove me nuts!

Anyways. so you´re saying it´s a motherboard problem that only occurs when used with a specific CPU? Well, I guess it would take testing with different motherboards to rule that out.

 

[Jawed]

Anyways. so you´re saying it´s a motherboard problem that only occurs when used with a specific CPU? Well, I guess it would take testing with different motherboards to rule that out.

Yes, something that no reviewer bothered to try. Can't blame them, really, when Bulldozer is such crap.

I expect BIOS and/or drivers will settle it.

 

[fellix]

/thread

 

[almighty]

You guys running old Intel Quads are missing the point of newer CPU's.

With a newer CPU you're minimum frame rates will jump up a lot.

My old 5850 crossfire on a Phenom 2 x6 over clocked to 4.1Ghz gave a minimum frame rate of 38fps.

Same cards, same drivers but this time with an Intel 2500k got a minimum frame rate of 48fps.

Average frame rate only improved by 3fps when moving from the Phenom 2 to the 2500k.

Average frame rates don't tell the whole story in regards to CPU choice.

I can gurantee that if you upgrade you WILL see an improvement.

 

[swaaye]

Actually, the tail end of the PS360 era has me thinking a lot of the time that I should have held onto the 8800GTX.

But ya I'm sure minimum rates would improve for some games with more CPU brute force.

 

[Rootax]

You guys running old Intel Quads are missing the point of newer CPU's.

With a newer CPU you're minimum frame rates will jump up a lot.

My old 5850 crossfire on a Phenom 2 x6 over clocked to 4.1Ghz gave a minimum frame rate of 38fps.

Same cards, same drivers but this time with an Intel 2500k got a minimum frame rate of 48fps.

Average frame rate only improved by 3fps when moving from the Phenom 2 to the 2500k.

Average frame rates don't tell the whole story in regards to CPU choice.

I can gurantee that if you upgrade you WILL see an improvement.

Very good point, thank you.Minimum FPS are not investigated enough in most reviews.

 

[Albuquerque]

You guys running old Intel Quads are missing the point of newer CPU's.
<snip>
I can gurantee that if you upgrade you WILL see an improvement.

I don't use website benchmarks to qualify or legitimize the hardware that I use unto others that I talk to over the internet. Rather, I use my hardware to play my games that others whom I talk to over the internet might enjoy.

Given the games that I play most, my minimum framerate is close enough to 60hz as to not bother me. Since I've never been, what some might call, a "frame rate whore", I don't need a consistent 120Hz (hell, I don't need a consistent 60Hz) to play my games. If I get dips into 20's and 30's, I can deal with it. If I discover that I can't deal with it, I'll turn down some MSAA / SSAA until it works again -- which near-always works, which means I'm not CPU bottlenecked.

Thus, my prior statement still stands: I have absolutely no more need for CPU power in my current gaming selection. It's at least possible that, had I kept my old E8400 that ran at 4.4Ghz on a 5% voltage bump, I'd still be happy with it too.

 

[hoho]

Minimum FPS are not investigated enough in most reviews.

Probably because it's often influenced by random events like OS doing some IO so a single number for a benchmark run is pretty much useless. FPS plots on the other hand are definitely good to have.

 

[swaaye]

Rather, I use my hardware to play my games that others whom I talk to over the internet might enjoy.

Indeed. If I was still playing huge games of SupCom, I'd probably have a 4.5 GHz i5 around to feed the game's ridiculously inefficient pathfinding. It needs stupid fast per core performance out of 2-3 cores. But I kinda lost interest in fighting that uphill battle.

Upgrading for say RAGE, Deus Ex, and the other PS360 games seems really wasteful to me. RAGE is 60 fps on a dual core Phenom. Deus Ex has stuttering problems inherent to its engine. Blah, etc.

I'm looking forward to seeing if Skyrim is faster than Oblivion. I won't be surprised if it is considering it's still a PS360 game and it's another evolution of the same engine. Fallout 3 runs smoother than Oblivion.

 

[HMBR]

some games in some situations have huge benefits with a faster CPU like a 2500k, compared to core 2 quads, phenoms, FXs...

a few examples
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/842-20/jeux-3d-crysis-2-arma-ii-oa.html

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fx-8150_10.html#sect0


it's amazing how slow the FX is running Metro with the extra physx effects on

 

[swaaye]

What I see is a Core i7 that is still not pulling 60 fps so it's somewhat disappointing. Actually I beat 80% of that game on my 8800GTX, helped by only being at 1360x768 on my TV, but still.

 

[Malo]

I'm looking forward to seeing if Skyrim is faster than Oblivion. I won't be surprised if it is considering it's still a PS360 game and it's another evolution of the same engine. Fallout 3 runs smoother than Oblivion.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 series was made on the Gamebryo engine, who went out of business years ago and Skyrim is made on the Creation engine which is a new engine done inhouse by Bethesda. It's their first title to boast the new engine afaik. Apologies if I'm completely incorrect but that's my understanding.

 

[HMBR]

What I see is a Core i7 that is still not pulling 60 fps so it's somewhat disappointing. Actually I beat 80% of that game on a 8800GTX.

you just need to get a 2500k and overclock it
60fps should be easy, while the overclocked FX may reach 30

(or you could also turn off the physx option and run it smoothly with a Athlon II X2)

but anyway, on the links I posted there are other games with significant differences... so there are cases when you are not limited by the VGA and a faster CPU is worthy, and the 2500k for 200 usd is a GREAT buy,

 

[Albuquerque]

I'm sure you can find even more games where the i7 is faster than the Q series. I mean seriously, it IS FASTER than the Q series -- but we're not having that discussion, are we?

The problem is that it's not just the cost of the i5-2500k. It's the motherboard and ram too. I already have a great X38 board and 8Gb of ram that I really like. I don't have any real need to spend another $200 for a processor, $139 for a decent overclocking motherboard and $70 for decent overclocking ram to get another ~30% worth of performance on the games that I might play.

When Ivy Bridge comes out, I'll take another look. But as it stands right now, the price / perf gain for me is insufficient.

 

[almighty]

I don't use website benchmarks to qualify or legitimize the hardware that I use unto others that I talk to over the internet.

Neither do I, All the results I speak of are MINE and from my personal experiences.

An average CPU will always have the oomph to push high frame rates when a game scene is quiet, But you load the scene with action and you watch old CPU's start to choke.

 

[almighty]

I'm sure you can find even more games where the i7 is faster than the Q series. I mean seriously, it IS FASTER than the Q series -- but we're not having that discussion, are we?

The problem is that it's not just the cost of the i5-2500k. It's the motherboard and ram too. I already have a great X38 board and 8Gb of ram that I really like. I don't have any real need to spend another $200 for a processor, $139 for a decent overclocking motherboard and $70 for decent overclocking ram to get another ~30% worth of performance on the games that I might play.

When Ivy Bridge comes out, I'll take another look. But as it stands right now, the price / perf gain for me is insufficient.

If you've got the GPU power to go with the CPU you'll be pushing A LOT more then 30%.

Given an over clock and enough GPU power a 2500K would produce well over 50% more performance.

 

[Albuquerque]

SIgh.

You mis-bolded the important part of that sentence; let me help you:

The problem is that it's not just the cost of the i5-2500k. It's the motherboard and ram too. I already have a great X38 board and 8Gb of ram that I really like. I don't have any real need to spend another $200 for a processor, $139 for a decent overclocking motherboard and $70 for decent overclocking ram to get another ~30% worth of performance on the games that I might play.

Please, remind yourself that we aren't talking about (in pure terms) how much faster the i7 is than the Q series -- that isn't an argument that we're having AT ALL. We're talking about how much that speed increase would net-affect the games that I play.

And I'm not needing more CPU power on the games that I play, so please stop trying to sell it to me.