AMD Revises Bulldozer Transistor Count: 2 Billion Down to 1.2 Billion

AMD’s Bulldozer launch was met with much criticism as its FX processors didn’t manage to perform that much better than their predecessors, much-less become better competition for Intel. Post-launch, AMD has done its share of trying to mend the lackluster launch, stating that the CPUs are more future-looking than the competition. That’s all and good, but unfortunately few people are willing to buy a new product based just on how it might perform in the future.

Adding to the confusion, AMD has just updated the transistor count on its FX processors. The original count was 2 billion, which led many to wonder what most of them were doing. But AMD has now backtracked on that number and refined it to 1.2 billion – a rather stark decrease if you ask me. What caused this sort of mistake?

Poor estimation, it seems. It sounds simple, but that’s what AMD is stating. Granted, most transistor estimates might not be that accurate, but a decrease of 2 billion to 1.2 billion is rather extreme. Despite that change, the die size does remain the same, and it’s in all regards large compared to the previous generation.

What’s this mean to you? In general, not much. The transistor spec alone doesn’t mean much, but rather it’s the architecture that does. And as has been proven before, that architecture doesn’t show its true strengths at the current time, as in the vast majority of tests, Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture still reigns supreme. How AMD will improve things going forward is still not decided upon, but for the sake of competition, we hope the right decisions are going to be made.

For math junkies, be sure to check out Real-World Tech for a break-down of how the math does and doesn’t work.