Bulldozer vz. Sandy Bridge

[Sajuuk]

Dash, I have 5 computers at home, all varying degrees of ePeen-ness. Between my wifes, three sons, and my Skynet Killer capable, I believe I have enough experience with the different hardware to say, "stick with Intel".

Are you likely to even notice a difference at that level? perhaps not. Will you feel more confident with the Intel vs second guessing your AMD purchase based upon the Benchmark reviews? Probably. Intel has a superb track record. Not saying AMD doesnt. Ive personally seen AMD chips last longer than Intel, but then again they dont put out the same power, so its almost like saying, "I never used 4th gear in my car, hence it never fails, so its better"... eeeaanntt False.

Ive replaced my sons AMD CPU once, and another sons AMD was DOA after purchase, so I swapped it out for a different mobo and cpu combo and went Intel. Skynet is Intel. Its overclocked and not seen one issue.






^ Epic Win. Seriously. Best reply. Hard to argue Fact vs Fiction.



+ 1



I think this quote is "dissectable" in so many ways. But I "think" the point this is trying to make is clear. If your willing to sacrifice some performance for >$100, or cant wait another pay period to afford a better product. AMD is just fine. Dont all cars get you from A to B? Why do people buy nice ones? loyalty? cost? dependability? low maintenance? who knows.


Side note: Arent all "Fan boy" comments hypocritical in themselves? Its shameful really.

yup.


nyerk nyerk nyerk.

[lonerider]

Dash, I have 5 computers at home, all varying degrees of ePeen-ness. Between my wifes, three sons, and my Skynet Killer capable, I believe I have enough experience with the different hardware to say, "stick with Intel".

I'm sure you have built enough computers to have a good sense of what's good and what's not when it comes to hardware. In my case, I have owned and operated a small computer shop for 6 years (built HUNDREDs of custom/whitebox computers, upgraded/rebuilt HUNDREDS of branded ones), worked in a couple of companies as tech support specialist and network admin for over 8 years, etc (not going to post my full resume here, lol). I'd say my experience in the field of PC hardware would be enough to have led me to be brand-neutral (Intel vs. AMD). I've witnessed both had ups and downs for the past 2 decades... have to admit though Intel has the edge right now when it comes to overall performance.

But we are talking about a very specific application here, multiboxing. Running one instance of the WoW client per static core would be something I'm very curious to see... in one particular scenario, (at stock speeds) would an Intel i5-2500K running 8 WoW clients (2 clients per static core) outperform an AMD FX-8150 running 8 WoW clients (1 client per static core)? Cuz I could get an 8150+SLI motherboard at roughly $25 more than an i5-2500K+SLI motherboard combo. Which do you think would have the edge in the performance-per-dollar ratio?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I'm sure you have built enough computers to have a good sense of what's good and what's not when it comes to hardware. In my case, I have owned and operated a small computer shop for 6 years (built HUNDREDs of custom/whitebox computers, upgraded/rebuilt HUNDREDS of branded ones), worked in a couple of companies as tech support specialist and network admin for over 8 years, etc (not going to post my full resume here, lol). I'd say my experience in the field of PC hardware would be enough to have led me to be brand-neutral (Intel vs. AMD). I've witnessed both had ups and downs for the past 2 decades... have to admit though Intel has the edge right now when it comes to overall performance.

While we're exploring the Appeal to Authority fallacy, having worked at or as a vendor to tier 1 PC OEMs and their ODMs for about 14 years now and leading teams that have shipped hundreds of unique products and thousands of individual units through the software QA process (and seen the 3rd-level support data coming back from the field), I don't personally know anyone in the industry that will choose an AMD-based product over a comparably priced (i.e.: within ~20%) Intel-based product when it comes to their home machines or for friends/family units. Seeing the statistics on defect counts throughout the product cycles, I can only report that I've seen enough data that AMD is behind not due to any pogrom on the part of us Intel Fanboys.

That said, when I say "much less stable," we're talking about small percentages that would probably be buried in the noise of bad driver updates, buggy applications, thermal issues due to dust, cheap peripheral hardware, misconfigured timings in BIOS and general cruft most users abuse their systems with.

[lonerider]

I am not worried about overall statistics when it comes to how many defective chips are out there... my only question is about Performance of both CPUs (Sandy i5 vs. Bulldozer FX) on multiboxing several clients. I recently built two gaming rigs for a friend and for a brother... and a regular desktop for a co-worker. The two gaming rigs were 2500Ks and the regular desktop was a Sandy I3. That's because everyone in the industry knows Intels are a bit more dependable. But that is not my concern now, since this CPU/motherboard upgrade is going to be for me (obviously, I'm not concerned in troubleshooting my own rig). When it comes to my rig, I want a platform that will give me the most bang for the back (with a small budget, thanks to my wife). We all know that the i5 would beat the 8120/8150 in single and lightly threaded apps... but what about running multiple instances of a game (like WoW) and binding each instance to one core?

I try to stay brand-neutral, and would like to get a feel on real-world performance (not theorycrafting) on both chips with manually setting CPU affinity. I guess I'll find out for myself once the cpu/mobo arrives.

To note: I also built two identical servers (running Citrix XenServer) for a small client/outfit for their desktop virtualization project using just regular desktop motherboards paired up with PhenomII-X6 1100T CPUs. Let me tell you this, each "server" ran 10 virtual desktops without any hickups. 1100Ts are awesome for virtualization, so that's why you can't really dismiss AMD's CPUs even though they also showed inferior performance reviews against Intel CPUs on single/lightly threaded benchmarks.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I know we've had 10-boxing tests on i7-2600k CPUs with various other bits attached but I don't think anyone has done any side-by-side testing on otherwise identical hardware/setups. The best we've got is anecdotes regarding GPUs on various platforms, with the only demonstrable variable being VRAM size (where more = better).

You might PM Doz3rr and see how he likes his and which model he bought. http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/4...to-x6-was-nice

[lonerider]

^ Thanks, I read his thread and got some info... however, I wish he posted some fraps/videos or some screenshots with FPS numbers. I'm upgrading from a Q6600 too, so I should at least see a BIG leap in performance. The two 2500Ks I built... were somewhat of a mixed bag. The first one (for my friend) had the lower end liquid cooling from corsair (was on sale for $49 at the time)... I had it overclocked to 4.4Ghz stable for about a month, then my friend started telling me that most of his games would lock up (SC2, WoW) after 10-20 minutes randomly of continued gameplay. So I checked his temps and they were a bit high... I had it throttled down to 4Ghz and it went stable again (till this day, no more complaints). My brother's rig, I also had it OCed to 4Ghz, since he was only on the stock air cooler. It's still stable to this day, but he doesn't really game much. This is why I wanted to try something other than an i5, but with my rather limited budget, I only have the 8120 as an option... it saves me about $50 for the cpu/mobo vs. the 2500K.

Based on OC forums, the 8120 seems to overclock as well as an 8150. When it arrives I plan to just OC it to 8150 stock settings, with the bi-turbo enabled, including power saving features turned on. I don't want to raise our electric bill, so at least I can probably run it on the OEM air cooler for the time being. Once it proves stable in the next couple of months if I think I need more OC, then I'll probably get that Antec Liquid cooler for $62 on Amazon and crank it up a bit. Now, I'm getting really excited LOL.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I had it overclocked to 4.4Ghz stable for about a month, then my friend started telling me that most of his games would lock up (SC2, WoW) after 10-20 minutes randomly of continued gameplay. So I checked his temps and they were a bit high... I had it throttled down to 4Ghz and it went stable again (till this day, no more complaints).

I've had that happen a few times. Every case was either a bubble in the thermal paste or just a bad batch of paste that "dried out" under heavy use. It's common enough that it's now the first thing I check when I have those kinds of problems.

[Ualaa]

If you're going with a new system, go Intel over AMD, but spend the extra $100 or so and get the i7 2600K over the i5 2500K.

Since you're talking about 8+ boxing...
If you read the earlier threads that were linked, especially the Tom's Hardware review on Cataclysm Warcraft performance, you'll see the two-core i3 Intel system beat the -then- top AMD six-core system for one-boxing.

There aren't really any tests out there on running five applications at once, for warcraft.
But you can see people who play and have posted their own performance in the various performance/upgrade/will-this-be-good-enough threads for others who are curious.
People who have gone with i5/i7 based systems, have in general been far happier with their boxing performance, than those who went with AMD six-cores.
Sure that's not the AMD eight-core, but the extra four cores (see: i3 vs AMD, Tom's Hardware) didn't amount to any performance gains; not sure that an extra two cores will mean much.

An i5 2500K is a fairly good system if you're going to be five-boxing, without much else running in the background.
An i7 2600K, for about $100 extra, will be the system to go with if you're going to be ten-boxing or running fewer games.
The stock speed i7 was noticeably faster (while streaming, to boot) than the i5 (overclocked to 4.5GHz) was while just playing five games.
And the i7 overclocks just as easily, and is stable with a $40 air cooler (Corsair A70).

It's your money, so do what you want with it.
You're not likely going to find empirical data of AMD 8-core vs Intel i5 4-core.
But if you're going to be 8+ boxing, while asking the boxing community what to go with... everyone is saying Intel and no one is saying AMD, that's worth noting.

[lonerider]

well, I'll give it a shot with the FX, since Eta on the order is Tues next week. If results are disappointing, I can always return it and say it's a bad cpu/board. I'm really curious as to how itll perform as a multibox rig. I just cant see how an i5 would be superior running 2 wow instances per core vs. the FX running only 1 instance per core, even if the intel proc has obviously higher IPC. there are other popular sites that have benched the FX 8core cpu using highly threaded software and the FX came out ahead in performance vs the 2500k. So, if 8 instances of Wow are assigned one core affinity each, then it should get full utilization of all cores! I'll post results once I finish setting the new rig up.

[Pazgaz]

Bulldozer cores are not real cores. They are closer to being real cores than Intel virtual cores are, but they share some hardware between them. That means that they just can't perform as good as a single "real" core. Even AMD refers to each pair as module and is very careful about comparing them to independent cores.