14 DAY TRIAL // One of the biggest points that raised confusion over how underwhelming Bulldozer turned out to be was its humongous transistor count, but it looks like the number from reviews may have been wrong.
Getting the facts wrong for their own products isn't something that companies could possibly be thrilled about, but Advanced Micro Devices seems to have done it.
According to AnandTech, the transistor count posted in reviews, the 2 billion number, was erroneous.
Instead, someone from the Advanced Micro Devices PR team (such as it is) reportedly sent an e-mail which asked for the figure to be corrected.
Instead of 2 billion transistors, Bulldozer is stated to possess only 1.2 billion.
The die area, at least, remained the same for an 8-core/4-module Bulldozer: 315 square millimeters.
It is a bit strange that it took Advanced Micro Devices so long to spot the error.
It was three months ago that the 2 billion transistor count was given, so every web page, whether from reviews or online listings, went with that figure.
At least the decreased transistor count may partially justify the underwhelming performance of the FX-8150.
Nonetheless, even at 1.2 billion, this is still a higher transistor density than the one of any 45nm chips.
As far as consumers are concerned, this doesn't actually change much.
As such, the Sunnyvale, California-based company will just have to push forward and improve the Bulldozer with each new iteration.
The company already decided to launch one with integrated graphics. Also, this would not be the first time it releases an apparently weak processor architecture, only to make it better and better every year or so.
Yes, AMD said it would no longer be bothered competing with Intel, but contrary to how people feared this meant it wasn't making CPUs anymore, it definitely does plan to stick to x86.