Hardware AMD previews Fusion details

AMD teased us the other day with some details about its forthcoming Fusion CPUs Bulldozer and Bobcat

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/08/24/amd-previews-fusion-details/1

 

I am intrigued, but also sceptical. Does Intel have anything planned for 2011?

 

I can see some very good laptops using Fusion.
I hope this makes AMD mainstream again. Good competition is essential, and has been lacking in recent years.

 

Sandybridge.

 

ATi 5670 + Phenom II 550 costs 200 Euro and makes up for a great sub 500 Euro PC, which you can even cram into small SFF-box without troubles.

Aslong as they don't deliver this kind of power with their AllInOne-chips, why would I be interested in them for a mainstream desktop?

 

it seems likely that I will still be going for an i3

 

I think its is crucial that AMD clarify and distinuguish the market for the bobcat platform, I can't stand cheap and nasty netbooks rocking the atom processor and although my M11x i5 just mulches tasks tha atom can't handle it wasn't easy to choose because of the massive price differential, if bobcat can really bring usable performance in on a budget this choice would be a no brainer.

The bulldozer platform sounds promising, hope it comes in time for upgrade time next year and would be super keen to see AMD put up a competive product in this market again too.

 

Smalltime gaming laptops and media laptops... Sony Vaio's could use the smaller chips surely? Well anything media like?

 

Error on page 2, end of third paragraph - looks like a link insertion gone wrong.

/pedant

 

If AMD can capture a good proportion of the mobile devices market and knock the atom off it's pedastal then that would be great because they really need a strong revenue stream so they can stop using ATI as a crutch.

With Sandy Bridge coming up with restrictions on overclocking then maybe AMD should be looking to produce a chip in each of their ranges geared towards that market because lord knows what the overclockable sandy bridge CPU's are going to cost.

So should i wait to see if Bobcat turns out well in netbooks or just go for the i3 mini-ITX build? cause frankly i wouldn't touch the atom with a barge pole

 

A few more errors too in the first 3 paragraphs!

*AMD wanted to a more elegant design
*suffered from a bugs
*features Radeon graphics and an updated the execution core

 

Isn't 1155 planned for the end of of this year? and 2011 socket planned for next year at some point?

 

you need an good air cooler as well to dissipate the heat, only reason i use AMD is for fast but still cheap systems and cool, the AMD ATHLON II X2 250 fits that fine as the stock cooler can easy handle it, i ignore Phenom's due to the heat issues (problem with Phenom II was not fixed as all they did was up the clock speed so heat issue came back so negated the 45nm downsize) gaming systems norm use I5/i7 as cooling them is none issue even with stock cooler

both bobcat and bulldozer look very interesting thought, hopefully they fix the heat issues and give users the correct heatsink to cool it

 

So it looks like we will have to live with just one CPU supplier. Intel is so far ahead when you look at desktops and servers that AMD needs something truly special to survive. From what I read so far, looks like current i7 is potent enough to outperform all new incoming in 2011 CPUs from AMD. Honestly if you want reasonably stress free road map then buy i7 now. Pick cheaper or more expansive motherboard depending on system size. LGA1155/6 is a dead end and while LGA1366 will be - officially - dead soon (LGA2011/2 is coming) it will live for a long time because there is whole load of software which can't max out 4 cores on i7 which means there is plenty fuel in the tank for S1366 (think about it like a modern version of still alive and kicking S775). And there is always OC to get even more later, because clock for clock i7 delivers much more computing power than i3/i5 which means that you don't need to upgrade for at least one generation of chipsets.

 

I'm hoping for bulldozer to be good, not looking forward to 34896 intel sockets and possibly limited overclocking from intel in the future.

 

because clock for clock i7 delivers much more computing power than i3/i5 which means that you don't need to upgrade for at least one generation of chipsets.

Actually I would put forward the propostion that it will be atleast 5/6 years before games (inparticular) properly and regularly stress out a quad core i7 920 and above.

Anyone go longer than that?

 

It wouldn't surprise me if it goes a bit longer, current games are not even maxing out certain Core 2 Duos/Quads yet, let alone i3's, i5's or i7's.

Although once a critical mass of quad core install's are out in the wild, it would surprise me if game developers started actually coding for quad core's as a differentiator.

 

Why do you guy keep referring to Bulldozer as an APU / Fusion. From what I understand it is this:
Bulldozer is a new ground up design CPU designed for Servers and Workstations - Interlagos: 16-core server processor, Valencia: 8-core server processor, Zambezi: 8-core client processor.
You can't call Bobcat and Bulldozer both Fusion or APU. Your confusing the readers. Bulldozer is a CPU.
Bobcat is the CPU (prob 2 Bobcat cores at first) part which is put alongside a undisclosed GPU to make up AMD's first APU (Ontario).
Llano is the third chip design which you can call a APU which is made up of improved Phenom II cores and GPU's.
Thanks.

 

Man, I remember hearing that somewhere before. Oh wait, it was in the P4 days... and then then Core2 days... and now the i7 days....

AMD isn't going to roll over an die if they don't have the outright performance crown, people.

Considering we don't have any information at all about performance, this is just uninformed speculation by you. According to all reports, Bulldozer at the very least matches Nehalem in terms of technology in some areas and outstrips it in others. We'll just have to wait until we get some performance numbers to make any real decision. For the record, though, people at AMD seem to be quite happy with the state of the Bulldozer silicon they have in-house right now.

What's actually pretty amazing is that the execution engine of all of AMD's processors is actually relatively unchanged from even the K7 days beyond a number of tweaks and the usual widening. That's what I call ROI.

 

Hmm, an interesting point (if made a touch forcefully) - AMD wasn't especially clear about Bulldozer's APU/Fusion credentials, and the slides certainly don't show a SIMD engine or GPU portion for Bulldozer designs, so you might be right.

I'll ask AMD if the future isn't really APUs next time I see them!