AMD Realizes That Bulldozer Has 800 Million LESS Transistors Than It Thought!
94 replies, posted
[quote]
AMD's new flagship Bulldozer "FX" series of processors have turned out to be mediocre performers in almost every review and benchmark going, sometimes even getting bested by the existing Phenom II and certainly no match for their Intel competition. To add to this tale of fail, it now turns out that AMD didn't even know how many transistors they have! Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech received an email from AMD's PR department and this is the revelation he had to share with us: This is a bit unusual. I got an email from AMD PR this week asking me to correct the Bulldozer transistor count in our Sandy Bridge E review. The incorrect number, provided to me (and other reviewers) by AMD PR around 3 months ago was [B]2 billion[/B] transistors. The actual transistor count for Bulldozer is apparently [B]1.2 billion[/B] transistors. I don't have an explanation as to why the original number was wrong, just that the new number has been triple checked by my contact and is indeed right. The total die area for a 4-module/8-core Bulldozer remains correct at 315 mm².
[URL="http://www.techpowerup.com/img/11-12-02/fx03122011.jpg"][IMG]http://tpucdn.com/img/11-12-02/fx03122011_thm.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL="http://www.techpowerup.com/img/11-12-02/cpuspecs03122011.jpg"][IMG]http://tpucdn.com/img/11-12-02/cpuspecs03122011_thm.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
Yes, something as basic as how many transistors are in their flagship product wasn't known about until [I]months[/I] after the launch! This kind of info would be common knowledge within the company by the time the first tape-out is ready during the design and testing phase, so surely this cannot be and there must be some other explanation? If this is an attempt to make the processor look better by showing it "doing more with less", then this PR stunt has backfired spectacularly and it would have been better to have left the "error" as it was. Paradoxically, FX processors are a sales success and are flying off the shelves as we just reported, [URL="http://www.techpowerup.com/156119/AMD-Bulldozer-A-Surprisingly-Sell-Out-Sales-Success.-Victims-Phenom-II-amp-Athlon-II.html"]here[/URL].
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Source: [url]http://www.techpowerup.com/156123/AMD-Realizes-That-Bulldozer-Has-800-Million-LESS-Transistors-Than-It-Thought-.html[/url]
tldr: AMD fails hard.
Well they're always the last place you look.
Well, this may explain why they don't perform as well as expected, but it still doesn't excuse how horrid they are.
I think this may be a by-product of trying to cover up their hardware manufacturing process and whatnot from competitors.
they need to fire the transistor counter >:(
How could AMD mess up so hard. If this is PR then its pretty dumb for them to do so.
Why they didn't just finalize the product or update it with a new revision later is beyond me
How did they not realise that it was a shitty chip during in-house benchmarking?
[editline]3rd December 2011[/editline]
Could it be that the 'missing' transistors exist on the die but are seperated from the operational section of the die by faulty manufacturing?
and i still dont feel bad for them leaving the desktop cpu market
[QUOTE=jordguitar;33547694]and i still dont feel bad for them leaving the desktop cpu market[/QUOTE]
I do, guess what will happen to the prices of all Intel CPUs?
[QUOTE=Sector 7;33547590]they need to fire the transistor counter >:([/QUOTE]
I prefer the British term of "sacking"
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;33547723]I do, guess what will happen to the prices of all Intel CPUs?[/QUOTE]
They know that if they even think of doing that with tablets going batshit crazy right now taking up alot of the market share, it will be suicide. Yea they might be the only desktop cpu maker for consumers right now but they wont raise it just because amd got a case of the stupid and dropped out
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;33547723]I do, guess what will happen to the prices of all Intel CPUs?[/QUOTE]
This, but do you think Intel will see AMD as a serious competition with shit like this?
[QUOTE=jordguitar;33547760]They know that if they even think of doing that with tablets going batshit crazy right now taking up alot of the market share, it will be suicide. Yea they might be the only desktop cpu maker for consumers right now but they wont raise it just because amd got a case of the stupid and dropped out[/QUOTE]
Intel will have no competition. Time to fuck it's customers in the ass with high prices.
[QUOTE=seano12;33547772]Intel will have no competition. Time to fuck it's customers in the ass with high prices.[/QUOTE]
They raise the prices on desktop cpu's and normal entry level pc's prices go up. That in turn drives people AWAY and over to the mobile market with the ipad and other tablets thus defeating the whole point of raising the prices anyways.
How do you miss something like this
[QUOTE=Mr. Smartass;33547807]How do you miss something like this[/QUOTE]
I don't think anyone missed this really, I think somewhere along the design process of bulldozer people started to realize it's not gonna perform anywhere near what they wanted and it was too late to start over so they put a little too much focus on marketing to try to cover it up.
Which, as we can see, worked [I]really[/I] well.
Isn't this basically false advertising and ground for a lawsuit?
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;33547880]Isn't this basically false advertising and ground for a lawsuit?[/QUOTE]
I don't think AMD advertised based on the transistors, it was just something pointed out in reviews.
False advertisement cases rarely ever work with details this minute anyways. You'd have a much better chance at suing Nissan for that plane landing in the back of a truck thing(if they didn't specifically say that the events were simulated). Changing the transistor count really doesn't matter when it comes to the general public perception of the product.
Just when i thought amd was kicking intel's ass in both price and performance.
[QUOTE=kingcobra;33548163]Just when i thought amd was kicking intel's ass in both price and performance.[/QUOTE]
They haven't really been a big threat to Intel ever since Intel launched the [I]Core 2[/I] series.
Though back in the [I]Pentium 4 HT[/I] days, it was a whole different story.
[QUOTE=Van-man;33548337]They haven't really been a big threat to Intel ever since Intel launched the [I]Core 2[/I] series.[/QUOTE]
Not exactly, when AMD announced Phenom (or was it Phenom II?), they completely annilated the Core 2 series at the time until Intel released the new generations of Core 2 processors.
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;33548642]Not exactly, when AMD announced Phenom (or was it Phenom II?), they completely annilated the Core 2 series at the time until Intel released the new generations of Core 2 processors.[/QUOTE]
That was a fair short amount of time, but yes they did have a small time back on the throne.
I wanted one of these for chrismas.
Should I still get one or is 1.2 billion transistors bad?
[QUOTE=nutcake;33548827]I wanted one of these for chrismas.
Should I still get one or is 1.2 billion transistors bad?[/QUOTE]
Don't, get i7 or i5.
Or just wait for Ivy Bridge.
[QUOTE=nutcake;33548827]I wanted one of these for chrismas.
Should I still get one or is 1.2 billion transistors bad?[/QUOTE]
Get a i5 2500K
Wehehelll this explains why the Bulldozer got bulldozed. Someone's getting fired.
[QUOTE=RaDiVaX;33549232]Don't, get i7 or i5 2006k.
Or just wait for Ivy Bridge.[/QUOTE]
What if his motherboard doesn't support Intel CPU's?
[QUOTE=Freakie;33549875]What if his motherboard doesn't support Intel CPU's?[/QUOTE]
They buy a new one.
Oh man, I wonder what will happen if they decide to release a revision with 2M transistors. Almost 2x performance? One can dream.
[QUOTE=LEETNOOB;33550343]Oh man, I wonder what will happen if they decide to release a revision with 2M transistors. Almost 2x performance? One can dream.[/QUOTE]
Maybe then it'll actually perform better than the i5.
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