AMD FX-8150: Bulldozers enters the market [Test]

TEST Bulldozer is something most tech-savvy heard of. It is AMD's new architecture, built from the ground up, which is the first time since 1999 when they introduced the Athlon series and the K7 architecture, all processors until now been based on. Discussions have been many, so join us in our deep dive of AMD's new performance chip Bulldozer.

When we reviewed AMD Llano, we said that 2011 would be AMD's most important year ever. It is something we stand by today. But in addition to an important year, there has been a very eventful year. AMD chose unexpectedly that their CEO Dirk Meyer, who got the company back on its feet, had to go. Finding a replacement took over six months and the Chosen for the task to bring in AMD in the future, where Rory Read. Read has a background at IBM where he worked 23 years and five years from Lenovo. As COO of Lenovo, he was one of the main people behind the company's success in Asia.

In late September, although Rick Bergman, the company that was their product manager in the consumer market. He was a veteran from ATI, which certainly many old ATI fans knew who it was before AMD bought up the company. Speculation was hot around that he had to leave involuntarily. But it turned out, he left to take a CEO job at Synaptics, which develops touch-products and user interfaces.

Besides having lost two great icons of the company, so today it is launching its third new architecture in less than a year. December 2010 launched their first fusion product: Zacate based on their new Bobcat core and Cedar graphics core. In June came the much talked-about Llano, which is built on AMD's older Stars-cores and Redwood graphics. Today, the company perhaps most anticipated architecture for years, namely the bulldozer that is built on an entirely new processor core. Bulldozers are unlike Zacate and Llano processors without built graphic.

It's certainly not often a product has received so much attention, and AMD has also managed to keep the details secret until the very end. With Bulldozer architecture takes aim at the upper-middle class, and the lower enthusiast segment with what they call the world's first consumer processor. Bulldozers are not only important today, but it is the basic AMD will use additional CPU architectures and APU's. It thus becomes their new K7 who will lead the x86 market underdog into the future.

It is now time to begin the largest plunge in the Bulldozer, the company's most anticipated processor architecture ever.

AMD Bulldozer new improvements by 2014

AMD has set itself the goal of improving by 50% by 2014 Bulldozer architecture. The first reviews on the new CPUs have shown a picture not very rosy, the processors do not have exciting performance on the special architecture that uses a variety of shared resources between the core of each module. In addition, the power dissipation was higher than other Intel processors of the counterparty.

To counter this negative publicity and try to restore confidence in the FX brand, the company has now published a roadmap that talks about the improvements planned for the architecture until 2014, an ambitious timetable, given how much and how things can change suddenly in world of technology.

Looking at the graph shows that the various architectures Piledriver, and Bulldozer Steamroller, should improve their properties up to 30-50% by 2014 (subject to change without notice, of course).

Bulldozer FX: Today the official debut of the new AMD

After much waiting and more or less confirmed the time has finally come the debut of the processors AMD Bulldozer FX . The new generation of processors from the house of Sunnyvale comes at a good time because the producer sees in an excellent position in the desktop GPU and embedded systems, where he recently proposed a wide range of APU.

Desktop CPU instead of the segment that has been in the past two years has seen AMD use Intel's counter-part in the high-end, but at the same time take a very aggressive pricing policy that has borne fruit; just think that a processor Phenom II X6 6-Core has a cost just over $ 100.

But back to Bulldozer FX , as we will see a symbol that does not "point" only new processors from AMD Enthusiast but a broader vision that includes all the hardware platform of the PC , with a focus that could be called essential for the price / performance ratio.

The PC hardware market, particularly aimed at the demanding gaming in 2010 generated more than 16.5 Million of U.S. dollars with nearly half a billion Gaming assembled. In this cauldron of almost 500 million computers, however, two thirds are systems that are aimed in some way to contain the final cost of the machine within the $ 700, leaving the systems above $ 1500 a share of about 2% slice and market (about 20%) to mid-range, if that can be defined.

In this view comes with the AMD FX processors and chipset 990FX Dozers, specifically designed for the new platform.

AMD FX Bulldozer: official debut on October 12 in Europe

It 's official, the date for the debut CPU AMD FX is fixed, in Europe, October 12 at 18.00, AMD should launch three different versions of the CPU, FX 8xx0 8-core, 6-core FX 6100 and FX 4100 to 4 cores. The FX 8150 is a processor with 8 cores clocked at 3.6 GHz (4.2 GHz Turbo mode) and features 16 MB cache, the second "classified" AMD is the FX 8120, eight cores at 3.1 GHz (4.0 GHz in Turbo). Finally, the FX 8100 with a frequency of 2.8 GHz with a maximum clock of 3.7 GHz and 16 MB cache.

The AMD FX 6100 but has six cores at 3.3 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) and 14 MB cache, there will be a faster version called AMD FX 6120 which has the same TDP of 95 W, but come on the market first quarter of 2012. Finally, we would have the 'FX 4170, Quad-Core clocked at 4.2 GHz with 12 MB cache and TDP of 125W.

We just have to wait only a few days to see the actual performance.

Bulldozer AMD FX-8150 overclocked to 8429 MHz, the new World Record

8429 MHz , overclock this is the result obtained with liquid helium for the new eight-core processor, AMD FX-8150 , the record was reached on August 31 but the company announced the news just today. To reach the record was the "AMD FX Team "composed by Sami Maekinen, Brian Mchlachlan, Pete Hardman, Aaron and Simon Schradin Solotko.

Simon later said the record stating that the AMD FX has passed the test overclocking with liquid nitrogen and helium with no problems and we are still faced with a CPU very lucky. The processor has also passed the 5 GHz with air or water cooling enthusiasts, however, of less value than $ 100.

Here's the video:

AMD FX already preorder the FX-6100 FX-8120 and FX-8150

There are still a few weeks at the official launch of the new CPUs of AMD's Bulldozer , but some processors in the new series FX (codenamed Zambezi ) are already in the price lists of some online shop, allowing us to get an idea of prices (if confirmed after launch Journal).

The Zambezi models found in pre-order are the six-core FX-6100 and the eight-core FX-8120 and FX-8150 . The FX-6100 is listed at a price of $ 188.32 and has a core clock of 3300 MHz (3990 MHz Turbo Mode), 6MB L2 cache, 8MB L3 cache, 95W TDP, and integrates the controller for DDR3-1866 memory.

FX-8120 model for the price rises to $ 221.73, the specific report an operating frequency of 3100 MHz (4000 MHz in turbo mode), 16MB of cache (8MB L2, 8MB L3), and a TDP of 125W. For the FX-8150, which has the same characteristics as the previous model but with a clock of 3600 MHz (4200 MHz in turbo mode), the cost is $ 266.28.

No official pricing from AMD, so to have a real estimate of the cost of the new FX CPUs have to wait for the official launch, which will surely lead to a change in downward price listed above.