AMD Bulldozer benchmarks get analyzed

Last week, some benchmarks of an early Interlagos system using engineering samples emerged online. There has been quite a bit of discussion, as consumers and competitors alike are eager to get a good understanding of Bulldozer’s performance. It is only natural that people have attempted to divine future performance based on these initial results. Several people have asked me about my opinion on the data, and what it means. The short answer is that it is very difficult to conclude anything about Bulldozer, because the data is simply not useful for most people. We will explain why the benchmarks, software, system under test and the CPU itself all make the data fairly unreliable and the conclusions that can be drawn about Bulldozer..