Windows 8: Does AMD's Bulldozer Architecture Benefit?
Shortly after AMD's Bulldozer architecture launched, AMD had us anticipating a couple of hotfixes that were supposed to improve FX-8150's performance. But Windows 8 was the ultimate goal. Now that the operating system is out, does it help FX-8150?
Can Bulldozer Be Fixed By Windows 8?
Prior to writing AMD FX-8350 Review: Does Piledriver Fix Bulldozer's Flaws?, I approached AMD to gauge the importance of testing its new FX processor under Windows 8. Naturally, if it'd change the chip's performance profile, I wanted to run those benchmarks. The company made it clear that Windows 8 and its scheduler should behave like a properly-patched installation of Windows 7. As a result, I didn't prioritize those numbers.
In light of Microsoft's recent note that Windows 8 would immediately receive a number of post-RTM updates that might affect performance, though, I'm going to try to run some new numbers on AMD's latest in the days to come. Until then, Thomas has a look at FX-8150 in a baseline install of Windows 7, a patched Windows 7, and the Windows 8 RTM.
--Chris Angelini
I find the courtship between hardware and software vendors to be particularly interesting. On one hand, you have Microsoft Windows, which was originally written to support Intel's x86 architecture. On the other, you have Microsoft's DirectX API, which graphics vendors design hardware to support. Along the way, there are meetings, committees, and then conferences to discuss what needs to show up in the next generation of hardware, how that'll affect software, and what developers need to do to better exploit the former with the latter.
Before AMD's Bulldozer architecture was even made public, our editor-in-chief was in Austin, TX asking AMD's engineers how Microsoft's Windows 7 would react to this module concept, which clearly needed smart scheduling in order to utilize on-die resources in the most effective way possible. After all, it'd be fairly easy for a "dumb" scheduler to have two threads run on one module, tying up shared resources as other modules say idle. AMD didn't have a good answer at the time, replying only that it was working with Microsoft to address the software side of its hardware dilemma. And at launch, we still had no solution.
Not long after, though, Microsoft introduced a pair of patches that, first, properly recognized Bulldozer-based FX and Opteron CPUs, spreading one thread to each module before back-filling a second thread to already-utilized modules. The second patch selectively disabled Core Parking in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, keeping the modules from entering a C6 sleep state.
Once those patches were made public, we revisited the Bulldozer architecture in AMD's FX-8150 After Two Windows 7 Hotfixes And UEFI Updates with the hope that Microsoft's adjustments would let the hardware really sing. Unfortunately, they really didn't. But in the conclusion of that story, we reminded you that developers high up in Microsoft's ranks were saying Windows 8 would perform differently than Windows 7, even fully patched.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
It was a bummer, then, when AMD told us not to expect much from Windows 8 when it introduced FX-8350. But of course we wanted to go back and run benchmarks to follow up on our Bulldozer-based coverage. Can Microsoft's latest help make up some of the performance we were expecting to see back when FX-8150 launched, or are any possible operating system-related benefits already baked in?
Current page: Can Bulldozer Be Fixed By Windows 8?
Next Page Platform And Benchmark ConfigurationMicrosoft temporarily halts Windows 11 24H2 update on PCs with select Ubisoft games — avoiding frequent freezing and black screen glitches in modern Assassin's Creed, Star Wars, and Avatar titles
Rebootless updates come to Windows 11 Enterprise and 365 for security updates — Microsoft releases hotpatching for Windows 11 Enterprise 24H2 and Windows 365 Preview Editions
-
agnickolov Of particular interest to me is that compilation with Visual Studio does slow down a bit on Windows 8. Not what the story was about, but still a valuable tidbit...Reply -
Crashman boogien8LOL awesome! the last line of this review is epic!That last line is the result of AMD creating unrealistic expectations for Windows 8. Things have gotten somewhat better for AMD since Piledriver launched, it's too bad that this article was written before that launch :)Reply -
silverblue I wouldn't mind seeing if, with Windows 8 and the 8350, hardware can take full advantage of the software instead of the other way around. I was a little dubious about blaming Microsoft in the first place - this isn't quite the Vista scheduler and Phenom all over again.Reply
Good article. :) It does seem that the patches create more problems than they solve, so I'd be inclined to ignore them if I had an FX on Windows 7. -
esrever Nice to see this finally tested, looks like the performance boost isn't significant enough to matter but at least there is a 1% increase. AMD can use all the minor performance boost they can get at this point.Reply -
belardo Throw in the Intel i5-3550 and 3570K CPUs with Win7 and Win8 and see what the numbers say... wouldn't that be fair to see the difference as well?Reply
DjEaZy... gonna get me a FX 8350 anyway... it's cheep as dirt and i have the platform... Yeah, if you already have the board and memory, its mostly logical. But for someone going for a rebuild... it is not, especially if you live near a Microcenter.
I paid $190 for my i5-3570K CPU, $90 for my Z77 gigabyte motherboard which out-does AMD 900 Series boards. Z77 have native USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, PCIe 3.0... AMD doesn't have PCIe 3.0 until 2014. And unless you get an A-Series CPU, you don't have native USB 3.0 either.
This, an AMD boards are a bit more costly and more complicated.
The OTHER AMD problem is that they are packaging clean CPU coolers with their CPUs... they are loud!! So add $25 for a good replacement. The extra costs for electricity doesn't help.
-
The Emperor's New Clothes9538570 said:Nice to see this finally tested, looks like the performance boost isn't significant enough to matter but at least there is a 1% increase. AMD can use all the minor performance boost they can get at this point.