AMD BULLDOZER VS INTEL SANDY BRIDGE

This is the question of the year, is AMD Bulldozer faster than Intel Core i7? Or you could be asking, is Bulldozer faster than Sandy Bridge. Based on the some of the early indications and some rumoured leaks, I could give some very early insight of what to be expected from AMD next generation CPU architecture.


AMD gone further by making a whole new redesign which never seen before in any CPU. An AMD Bulldozer consists of modules instead of cores like what you found in modern CPU these days, like the quad core Phenom II X4, dual core Core2Duo and the latest king of the crown 6 cores Core i7 990X. A single module from Bulldozer consist of two integer scheduler and one floating point scheduler. The floating point scheduler is able to duplicate to two threads at the hardware level like what you have seen in Intel’s HyperThreading technology using some sort of SMT. Basically, a single module is bigger than a single core in terms of die size and smaller than a dual core. As far as performance goes, a Bulldozer module is definitely faster than a single core, but loses out to a typical dual core. AMD claimed that a Bulldozer module is more efficient than a dual core design that it only uses 12% bigger die size for the duplicated integer scheduler but giving out way more than 12% of threaded performance. Another reason for this design is that a typical multi core design will suffer from hardware wastage as idle resources will be duplicated across the chip, as was claimed by AMD.

A single module from AMD Bulldozer

That should be done for the introduction of AMD Bulldozer, I won’t be lengthy as this is not a “Information of AMD Bulldozer” topic. So here comes the comparisons and some early indication of what could be expected from AMD Bulldozer, could Bulldozer faster than Core i7 and Sandy Bridge? Lets find out.

The first point to be emphasized is the benchmark figures provided by AMD, there are no definite figures as it was secretly kept but according to TechPowerUp here, Bulldozer is faster than Core i7 950 3GHz quad core 8 threads with hyperthreading technology by 50%! That’s a very big claim but I feel no surprise. AMD Bulldozer is a threaded monster. A single Bulldozer CPU consists of a minimum of 4 modules, which is equal to 8 threads. I wouldn’t call it an 8-core processor as it doesn’t really sound like a core to me based on the technical specifications. Since each Bulldozer’s module consist of two integer scheduler units, it would be a no brainer that Bulldozer is able to handle 8 threads better than Core i7 950 which is a hyper-threaded 8 threads quad core processor. This is especially true in most of the applications we run on our desktop today which rely mostly on integer unit processing. AMD gives less priority on designing a better floating point unit for their new architecture mainly because AMD believes the future will be APU, where all floating point calculations will be done by the graphics processing unit instead.

From my point of view, the design of a 4 module Bulldozer will be almost on par to an equal-architecture with a true 6 cores CPU. Which means, if Core i7 is head on head with Bulldozer for single thread performance, Core i7 need at least a 6 core CPU to match a 4 module Bulldozer. But based on the 50% better performance claim by AMD, that also means Core i7 980X will be smoked out by Bulldozer. We can take that 50% claim with a grain of salt, but being faster than Core i7 950 is definitely creditable. And the next question is, what’s the clock rate for Bulldozer that AMD uses to compare to a core i7 950?

How about Intel Sandy Bridge VS AMD Bulldozer? Sandy Bridge is nothing new, its performance can be seen from the two years old Core i7. Similiar in performance but cheaper. And that’s good for someone looking for high end CPU at mid range price. Sandy Bridge definitely the better choice if AMD Bulldozer is priced at the higher range. And with a bonus Quick Sync technology, which lets you do video encoding/decoding at a speed many times faster than a high end graphics card from nvidia and AMD. Sandy Bridge, the Core i5 2500k could really give AMD a serious headache, the 50% claim is better to be true and best is if it runs at much slower clock speed too.


The next point that I would like to mention is the “FX” moniker. “FX” is a denominator used by AMD to label a high performance CPU. Remember the Athlon FX days? Athlon FX-55 and Athlon FX-57 both won CPU of the year back during AMD’s golden days. And AMD is bringing back this “FX” back to their new CPU lineup this year. And guess what, we could be seeing such high end CPU soon from AMD. I don’t think AMD will simply spoil their “FX” for being just mere marketing purposes, but that’s just a probability. FX-8130P, FX-8110, FX-6110 and FX-4110 are some of the CPUs you can be expected from AMD’s Bulldozer architecture line of CPU. And according to Xbitslab, Zambezi is able to offer 50% better performance in multimedia applications compared to Phenom II. Zambezi is the code name for the new Bulldozer architecture CPU. That just doesn’t sound right, as with the improved and heavily threaded architecture with only 50% improvements? Core i7 is able to leave a huge margin over Phenom II on some multimedia benchmarks especially on video/audio encoding. And that 50% faster than Core i7 claim by AMD makes me believe the benchmark of the 50% claim is definitely not a multimedia benchmark.

Is AMD Bulldozer faster than Intel Core i7? I wouldn’t doubt that if Core i7 is either Nahalem or Westmere. Based on the info gathered so far, I would say yes. It is faster than Core i7 based on my speculation and it better be true. However, Core i7 Nehalem is more than two years old while Westmere just turned 1 few months ago. A more suitable candidate for Intel is the Ivy Bridge. There are not much info thus far, but two things are certain; it is a 22nm die shrink and faster than previous generation of Core i7. It means trouble for AMD as Ivy Bridge is smaller, faster and cheaper to produce. We better pray miracles for AMD Bulldozer if we want cheaper CPU, competition brings benefit for the consumer.

taken from : www.techmostwanted.com