The AMD FX (Bulldozer) Scheduling Hotfixes Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 27, 2012 12:47 PM ESTSingle & Heavily Threaded Workloads Need Not Apply
Remembering what these two hotfixes actually do, the only hope for performance gains comes from running workloads that are neither single threaded nor heavily threaded. To confirm that there are no gains at either end of the spectrum we first turn to Cinebench, a 3D rendering test that lets us configure how many threads are in use:
With one thread or 8 threads active, the FX-8150's performance is unchanged by the new hotfixes. I also ran TrueCrypt's encryption/decryption benchmark, another heavily threaded test that runs on all cores/modules:
Once again, there's no change in performance. Although you can argue that CPU performance is most important when utilization is at its highest, most desktops will find themselves in between full utilization of a single core and all cores. To test those cases, we need to look elsewhere.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
79 Comments
View All Comments
Beenthere - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link
The Win 7 Hot Fix speaks for iteslf. As noted it's a small bump - but it's free. It's not AMD's fault that Microsucks O/Ss sucks. It's reported Linux does a better job of scheduling, probably because it's used on a lot of servers with heavy work loads.I always tell people to buy what makes them happy. If you're happy with a product from a convicted criminal corporation and chose to support their efforts to eliminate consumer choice and drive up PC hardware prices - that's your choice and you're perfectly free to do so. Bashing AMD is not going to change reality however, no matter how disappointed you are in them.
In reality ANY of todays current model CPUs have more than enough computing power for 90+ percent of PC users. If all you do is run benchmarks then you could be misinformed...
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2120866/i...
gamerk2 - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link
Funny, considering different Linux distributions use different schedulers. Lets not also forget there is OVERHEAD to doing a lot of processing within the scheduler, and keeping track of thread/resource use can be a pain.sor - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - link
Huh? The process scheduler in Linux is dependent on which version of the kernel you have. Any current distribution should be using CFS. You may be confusing this with the options of IO schedulers.B3an - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link
Oh grow up you immature moron (typical Linux user!). And Apple are FAR worse now than MS ever was, as well as bigger. BTW it's not the 1990's anymore,frozentundra123456 - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - link
I cant believe people are still blaming Microsoft for bulldozers failure. It seems to me that the responsibility of a company is to bring out a product that works in the current environment, i.e. that works efficiently with win 7. Especially when you control a small portion of the market, you should make a product that "just works". You shouldnt expect the software to be rewritten for your product. And Intel doesnt seem to have any problem making processers that work efficiently with the current environment.Morg. - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I like the *could* be misinformed -- if Intel didn't want benchmarks and reviewers to like them, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't do anything for it ;)cigar3tte - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link
I don't normally bother, but there is way too many here...Worth wild = worthwhile
It's = its
Their = There
Your = you're
Losses = loses
And yeah, it's more of a free fix than free performance. Bulldozer users are getting back what was lost, rather than gaining something.
snouter - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link
"there are way too many"I don't normally bother either.
jonup - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - link
You can always look at a glass as half-full or half-empty.@typos: Sad part is that some of them are native speakers.
gevorg - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link
Can the Sandy Bridge CPUs benefit from this by any chance?