AMD Starts Shipping First Bulldozer CPU

MrSeb writes "After an awfully long wait, AMD has finally begun shipment of its Bulldozer-based Interlagos (Opteron 6200) server-oriented CPU. If you believe AMD's PR bots, it is the world's first 16-core x86 processor. Unfortunately, and possibly because of reports that AMD is struggling to clock its Bulldozer cores to speeds that are competitive with Intel's Core i7, there's no word of the 8-core desktop-targeted Zambezi CPU. If AMD doesn't move quickly, Intel's Sandy Bridge-E will beat Zambezi to market and AMD will lose any edge that it might have."

Sandy Bridge-E

[Anonymous Coward]

If AMD doesn't watch out their mainline $200 processor will be made obsolete by Intel's $1000 EXTREME CPUs!

Re:Sandy Bridge-E

[CajunArson]

You may laugh but think of it this way... if that $1000 Gulftown CPU from March of 2010 can still beat an 8 core Bulldozer that comes out 19 months later, then you would only have to realize a marginal benefit of about $1.75 per day to make it economically worth your while to have bought the "overpriced" Gulftown chip. (that includes the cost from Intel motherboards that tend to be more expensive and the extra RAM for a triple-channel configuration). Nevermind the fact that 6-core chips have been sold for $600 for some time as well. I can think of a bunch of professional applications that can easily show a $1.75 / day benefit from the extra cores. Maybe not for playing games, but for a lot of real applications.

  Bulldozer should beat the consumer-level SB chips at perfectly threaded integer benchmarks, but it remains a very open question if it will be able to beat the almost 2 year old Gulftowns at the same tasks, and it is an almost foregone conclusion that it won't beat the 6 core SB-E chips at those tasks. Factor into account the 315 mm^2 die size of EVERY Bulldozer (not just the 8 core ones, but the cheap 4 core ones too since AMD only has 1 die design) and the immaturity of AMD's 32nm process and things could be expensive for AMD on the desktop. That's why it makes sense to ship the server chips first where AMD has some hope of getting higher ASPs.

Re:Sandy Bridge-E

[Anonymous Coward]

I've (honestly) just been asked what our expected budget requirements are for hardware for the next year. Please inform me where I can go to use the patented Intel time travelling technology so that I can retroactively use things before I decide to purchase them.

Re:Sandy Bridge-E

[bhcompy]

That $200 is still a fuzzy number given the motherboard prices. You can get a very good AMD chipset(880/890) for $100 and have all the latest features(USB3, SATA3, etc) while being forward compatible for quite a while(manufacturer dependent, but Bulldozer(AM3+) is compatible with AM3 chipsets with BIOS updates). With Intel, you're still paying more for the equivalent and next year you'll need to get another motherboard to upgrade that processor because of constant socket changes.

Re:It is all about the die size

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Intel's vast capital reserves mean they typically have a generational lead in process tech, and get the increased efficiency / decreased temps of a die shrink "for free". AMD have to out-innovate them just to produce an equivalent CPU, let alone a better one. Unfair, but that's how (near-monopolistic) business works I guess.