Windows 7 Hotfix Promises AMD Bulldozer Performance Boost
Microsoft has quietly issued a Knowledge Base article that promises greater performance of AMD Bulldozer processors under Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
"Currently, the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs is slower than expected," the article states, and explains that Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 do not support AMD's Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) scheduling feature.
The #2592546 fix solves the problem, according to Microsoft, and boosts the performance of the chip "to the expected performance level". However, as it is a hotfix and not an official patch yet, Microsoft says it may require further testing and only supplies the software upon special request and recommends that it should only be used by those who are "severely affected by this problem".
If that is not the case, the advice is to wait until the next software update is issued. In any case, the hotfix requires an installed Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1).
First tests of the patch reveal a mixed bag of results on AMD's FX-8150 processor. At least those benchmarks suggest that some games will see a slight improvement of performance, while others will decline. The strongest gains are apparently seen in PCMark7 (+14.0 percent) as well as ScienceMark (+10.4 percent).
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Would be somewhat interesting to see how the FX CPUs perform after the update. Whilst I have a socket AM3+ motherboard, I was somewhat reluctant to go for the FX8150 due to the mixed reviews and worse price/performance ratio to the point that I opted for a tried and trusted X4. Perhaps if this patch provides enough of a performance increase for the FX to truely threaten Intel and provide a huge improvement then perhaps I might be tempted to upgrade in the future.
On another note, is there any news yet on what socket the new Piledrivers will use?
pleasant news but not completely unexpected , I've heard that one or two people have benche'd this and are seeing 5-6% synthetic benchmark improvments on 7x64 this could help that AM3 board i bought with an eye on getting a dozer , but then stuck with my old stars quad with bunches of head room for my aggressive OC , if this translates to a real time contender maybe there will be somthing to this SMT shinnangins after all
from what i hear the performance gains are nominal and dont affect single threaded performance where it really does need it. yes its a good step forwared for people that have em. and people who use cad. but joe public who just plays games and watched the off dvd. its not gonna impact there performance much.