The Bulldozer Story - and why AMD FX is better than you remember

The AMD FX 'Bulldozer' CPU architecture is known to be one of the biggest disappointments in technology in recent memory. But why was this the performance so poor, and was it really as bad as you remember?

This video is made for educational purposes. All images belong to their respective copyright holders and are used here under fair use.

[Aluze]

Who else is watching this in the background of the slaughter in late 2019?

[dfranzner]

The happy ending of all this, is that AMD took the modular design they pretended to use in the FX Series and ported to Ryzen Series. Of course, it's a way different design with the Infinity Fabric, but the idea is basecally the same.

[Pushing_Pixels]

5 years later and how the tables have turned!

AMD Zen proved to be a huge step up from Bulldozer (in every way), that was then iterated upon, with significant strides made each generation. The multi-chip platform has proven to be superior to monolithic designs in terms of cost and power efficiency, and can be scaled to insane levels (currently 64 cores per socket, with higher counts soon to be available). Most of the early weaknesses of the multi-chip design have been successfully mitigated, as interconnect bandwidth increased and cache latencies decreased. While OS scheduling initially caused some headaches, it is no longer an issue. If anything, it is now Intel facing such issues, with their adoption of "Big-little" core layouts, with different cores having different capabilities. Simultaneous Multi Threading has been made to work the way it should have from the start, and now outperforms Intel's Hyperthreading technology. 3D fabrication techniques have allowed for large caches to be stacked onto core dies (3x L3 cache size vs non-stacked), which particularly benefits gaming performance.

In terms of raw, per core performance, AMD and Intel's desktop offerings are not too far apart today. However, AMD has a very large lead in power efficiency, and this, combined with the ability to scale core counts to levels that are impossible with Intel's monolithic designs, has seen AMD outclassing Intel in the server space. Their market share in server has climbed from <1% with Bulldozer to close to parity today (enterprises are less inclined to switch technologies as often as desktop users are, due to concerns around stability and continuity of software compatibility, however more and more are making the switch, as it is now MUCH more cost-effective to use AMD Epyc).

Today it is Intel that is struggling as a company. The dramatic loss of market share, combined with failing to execute several important projects, has seen their revenues dwindle, to the point where they are now laying off large numbers of staff, shutting down unprofitable departments, and cancelling the development of some new products. They have lost their advantage in fabrication technology to foreign competitors, to the point where we are now seeing Intel use external fabs for some products, something that was unthinkable less than a decade ago. During AMD's Bulldozer years Intel became complacent, relying on their more advanced fabrication nodes while neglecting to seriously advance their CPU architectures. That culture of complacency was, in my opinion, largely due to the company being run by "number crunchers and professional MBAs", who took the focus away from engineering innovation towards "managerial box-ticking". It is hard to turn such a culture around, once it is entrenched, and the types of leaders they had at the company were ill equipped to even begin such a process. AMD has not become complacent. They are moving from generation to generation at a fairly rapid pace, always executing on their timelines and building a culture of continuous innovation into their long term development plans. They have shown, again in my opinion, the importance of having engineers and technologists at the forefront of the company (all of their senior leaders, including the CEO, are engineers), with the "number crunchers and professional MBAs" there to help the engineering teams succeed, not the other way round. Intel now has an experienced engineer at the helm, but it will take time and a herculean effort to turn the company around. It is highly unlikely we will ever see Intel as dominant in the market as they were around the time of this video. Still, they do have advantages AMD doesn't, such as controlling their own fabs, which allows for far higher production volumes than outsourcing. If they can become competitive again in that space it should help the rest of their business immensely.

[TheRatlord]

I just watched a video on Intel's monopoly practices. It might explain why the FX series is considered as unsuccessful. I have a FX 6300 and it is still doing the job for me. Just.

[CorridorCinematicsII]

Bought my 8350 in 2014. I typed this comment on my 8350 in 2020. Literally years of almost constant use through editing, effect making, encoding, sound development, streaming, and hard gaming shes been the most reliable and most powerful CPU I have ever owned. Literally bought it for $120. Good Job AMD. Price to Performance is still unmatched.

[losthatter]

My 8320 still chugs away in a media system. It was used for 4 years rendering in 3Ds max paired with v-ray as a rendering engine. Love this CPU. It has stood the test of time.

[denisszr]

Had my 8350 since 2012. Never had a problem with this thing. While my friends paid 250 bucks for their i7, I managed to get a 8350 for 150 + have extra money for the GPU. I'm happy with the buy. It was and still is serving me well.

[sharkie]

Bought a FX-6300 back in 2013, it was a great budget computer. Paid only 750ish dollars for a basic setup with a R9 270x. Did everything I wanted to, even if it didn't do great in benchmarks. I was pretty happy with it.

[ChibiTheEdgehog]

My 8370 is really good for streaming when you offload the encoding to a gpu...those cores do work .. its too bad when AMD tries to take things into new directions they often are ignored .. they over the years have had some really good ideas

[TSteffi]

Well, i just upgraded from a FX-4300 to a FX-8350 last month and it does all i need.
If you are on an extreme Budget like me, the AM3+ platform is still an option to consider. It is well matured, no early adopters bugs, very stable and reliable in my expirience.
Sure, it will not hold up to modern i7 or Ryzen Chips, but on the other hand, you can build 2 complete AM3+ PCs for the same price as a top level i7 CPU alone. You will not crush any benchmarks with a FX-CPU, but you can run everything and it's not too bad. I really like my new system, and i think i will stay on that until the next generation of Zen CPUs are out.
Still my opinion, if you want a solid, reliable system for a cheap budget, and you care more about everyday expirience then benchmark results, stay one generation behind. That way you can get the full featured well built top tier parts, while still saving a lot of money and headache.
After all, i don't want to play beta tester on some new chips that were thrown at the market with severe bugs in them, even paying a premium for doing so. I'd rather take the well tested and matured option and save a lot of $$ on it.

[mediaman]

I had the 8350 for a long time. Just did a Ryzen 2700x build, and gave the 8350 build to my friend. I ran most games in high or Ultra with the fx8350 and a 970 gpu. As a gamer I thought the performance was great. I switched to the Ryzen because I was creating a lot of content for my channel and that’s when the 8350 started to show its age. Still a great gaming processor, especially if you are on a budget.

[TinchoX]

FX 9590 here, this nuclear reactor still kicking ass in 2017 @ 4.8 Ghz cooled with air!!
(Side note: FX 8120 OCed to 4.1 performed pretty good considering it's age!)

[PhunkBustA]

im still on a fx chip, probably not gonna upgrade for another year or so, and yes, the bulldozer has just gotten better and better over the years, it really is all about the timing, i bet you in 20 years people will be surprised how well bulldozer runs

[crispy-k]

i'm still running my 8350 (stock right now) and i don't really feel like i need an upgrade yet... Only for a few badly optimized alpha games... i wouldn't mind having the latest intel cpu, but the price... nah i'm good, i grew up with VHS tapes and IBM laptops so 60 fps is ok for me :P

[goldenstarmusic]

the FX processors are great in music production environments, solid and cheap

[charlietsai]

No one ever programmed the software to take advantage of FX's architecture. AMD wanted it to run more like a GPU, which focuses on parallel computing, that's why FX has so many cores and shared floating point units. I guess AMD just bet on the wrong horse, AMD thought parallel computing is the future, but people like to stick to the old way.

[sirguillaume]

Got a FX 8300 yesterday for about 65 bucks, new. Quite a bargain. I'm waiting for it to arrive, while I use my FX 4100 for its last days. AMD FX series is so much cheaper than Intel, and even on this 4100 I ran games like witcher 3, settings high, 720p just fine, with about 30 fps.
Living in Brazil, I'm no 1080p or 4K enthusiast, because it costs much, and I mean, MUCH more money here.

[rallisf]

If only AMD skipped the Bulldozer architecture all together and launched Piledriver, they would have like 40% of desktop marketshare. I am still happy with my FX-8350, multitasking and FHD gaming with no issues whatsoever. The Piledriver cpus where as much a breakthrough as was Athlon 64 back in 2003 but due to the epic failure of Bulldozer the year before, they received almost no credit for it and were'nt trusted by the market.

[bena.]

Everybody compared the bulldozer and piledriver processors to the second and third gens i3's back in the day.

Nice to see that all those people are still using their i3's nowadays with decent performance!

[TrevorLentz]

I still enjoyed my upgrade from a core 2 duo 3.0ghz to an FX 4100 3.6ghz. All I really remember is that I could not emulate ps2 on my core 2 duo, but my budget 4100 could handle the ps2 emulation. :D Upgrading to a used 8320 kept my gaming rig alive and well through most of 2017! A Ryzen 5 1600 upgrade was just too tempting to pass up though! :D