First Linux Benchmarks Of AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer

Here's the first Linux benchmarks of AMD's FX-Series Bulldozer desktop CPUs that launched on Tuesday. Specifically, it's Gentoo Linux performance results for an AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer.

The AMD FX-8150 Linux benchmark results can be found on OpenBenchmarking.org. It's an eight-core AMD FX-8150 on an ASUS Sabertooth 990FX motherboard with 4GB of RAM. Gentoo Linux was used with the Linux 3.0.6 kernel and GCC 4.5.3. Unfortunately, this system is not under my control and there's no direct comparisons available for this hardware system to any other AMD processors.

While there may not be any direct comparisons and these Bulldozer Linux benchmarks are coming in from an independent user running the Phoronix Test Suite and uploading the results to OpenBenchmarking.org, you can compare your system to this FX-8150 Gentoo desktop by running phoronix-test-suite benchmark 1110131-LI-BULLDOZER29 from the latest Phoronix Test Suite client.

Though thanks to the unique OpenBenchmarking.org feature-set, the OpenBenchmarking.org Performance Classifications (OPC) and OpenBenchmarking.org Performance Classification Index (PCI), you can see how this eight-core AMD Bulldozer compares to other Linux systems. Visit this link for the performance classification of this new octal-core processor.

With the OPC results, the "Processor Tests" are the important ones. The FX-8150 results overlayed on the OPC heat-maps indicate that the performance is high-end compared to all of the other systems on OpenBenchmarking.org that have run these tests in the past 120 days. The 7-Zip, NPB, OpenSSL, Tachyon, and Smallpt results highlight this processor the best while the performance in Crafty and EP.B NPB is not as desirable.

To much dismay, it doesn't look like AMD will be sending out any review/engineering samples of any Bulldozer processors to Phoronix. Evidently they don't care too much about Linux coverage for this less-than-stellar product launch. Scheiße! Perhaps now though it's fine to put out the AMD Trinity APU benchmarks for this next-generation Fusion hardware that's launching in 2012 and is already running Ubuntu Linux.

At least one Phoronix reader with an AMD FX-4100 will be supplying remote SSH access to his new system for a day once it's all assembled and running. This will hopefully be next week. Another Phoronix source, the one that provided the pre-launch A8-3500M Fusion access, has also offered up SSH remote access to an FX-8150 Ubuntu system next week. So at least there will be some more Linux results coming out (plus any independent users with new Bulldozer systems uploading their Phoronix Test Suite results to OpenBenchmarking.org), but it's less than desirable since it's much harder to facilitate a direct CPU comparison with whatever other system components may be in these remote Bulldozer desktops.

After a surge in traffic yesterday (Slashdot, et al) due to detailing AMD's WEC7 graphics driver that's a port of their open-source Linux driver, I was just going to go out and buy a Bulldozer. Though thanks to IDG TechNetwork, the main advertising partner for Phoronix.com and the Collective Media ad network imploding last night and not serving any ads (and still not serving any ads today!), that's no longer possible. Instead of getting a Bulldozer, I had to temporarily switch Phoronix.com over to one of the reserve/back-up ad networks, and instead get paid scheiße while being annoyed by my own ads for hotels, Flash games, and other scheiße! (You can help the situation by joining Phoronix Premium.)

For those that don't follow my Twitter, on a related note (to the ads, not Bulldozer), with Postal III set for release on the 3rd of November, I heard from the game company "Running With Scissors" this morning about their Postal III for Linux. Postal III is the game that's long been in development and is powered by Valve's Source Engine. It was previously said by the studio, the Source-based game would have a Linux client (their previous Postal titles were ported to Linux), but earlier this year the Linux fate was unknown. Once IDG returns to serving advertisements (hopefully today or I will have one very one frustrated weekend while continuing to churn out content), I'll share what was said about Postal III on Linux and whether you can expect to see it when the game launches in November.