AMD FX-8150 8 core processor ~ MinShock!! Geek

AMD FX-8150 8 core processor

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AMD FX-8150 Review Reviewed by: Matt Safford Review Date: October 2011 With today's computer processors, ever-faster clock speeds eventually run up against thermal limitations in chip design: Simply put, the faster a chip runs, the hotter it gets. Tech companies have clearly decided that one big path to processing progress will be by adding more processing cores to distribute the workload. Multiple-core processors are everywhere now: in Apple’s latest iPhone (the iPhone 4S), most high-end Android tablets and phones, and even budget laptops and netbooks. The desktop-computer front is where you expect processors to pack the most muscle, though, and CPUs with six processing cores have been available for a while now at the high end of the market. Intel has its $1,000 Core i7-990X Extreme Edition CPU, and AMD, at the time we wrote this in mid-October 2011 , sold a whole line of Phenom II X6 CPUs that top out at the decidedly more affordable $190 . (Check out, for example, our review of the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition .) AMD has consistently held its own in terms of value for performance, but Intel has long been in the lead when it comes to sheer processor performance, price aside. This has made CPUs like the impressively overclockable Intel Core i7- 2600K (about $315 , when we wrote this) and the previously mentioned Core i7-990 X Extreme Edition appealing options for professionals and enthusiasts who aren't price-sensitive, and who are running multi-threaded software that can take maximum advantage of multiple cores. Where else, then, is there to go but ahead in cores? With its latest high-end processor architecture, code-named "Bulldozer," AMD is offering up the first consumer-focused eight-core desktop processors . These are the 3.6 GHz FX-8150 ( the chip we’re looking at in this review, priced at around $245) , and the 3.1 GHz FX-8120 , at $205 . Six-core and four-core chips using the same architecture (one of each) will also be available at lower prices, as you can see in the chart below... With the Bulldozer launch, AMD now has a new CPU architecture and an eight-core chip for about a fourth of the price of Intel’s six-core Core i7- 990 X Extreme Edition. Is the company now repositioned to muscle its way back into the performance-desktop market? Maybe—but it will have to do it on the grounds of value, definitely not raw performance. If you were expecting the first Bulldozer processors to offer performance comparable to Intel’s much pricier CPUs, it's official now: Lower your expectations. In most of our tests, the FX-8150 ’s scores fell somewhere between Intel’s $219 Core i5-2500K and the $315 Core i7-2600 K. When it comes to raw numbers, Bulldozer doesn’t break any performance ground that hasn’t already been excavated by Intel—if at a higher price. But AMD’s new FX chips are part of a platform, including several new chipsets, that should catch the eye of gamers , for reasons we’ll touch on later. The Bulldozer family should also pique the interest of professional content creators. Those folks need good multi-core performance for use with video-editing software, Adobe's creativity apps, and other multi-threaded software. For these apps, the FX-8150 is a compelling choice for the price, if a $1,000 Intel chip is out of reach. As we’ve said before, however, when reviewing four- and six-core CPUs from both Intel and AMD: What you run on these chips really matters. If you aren’t taxing your PC with the types of software professional content creators use, then processors with more than three or four cores aren’t really the best value for you, because many of those extra cores will be idle too often. Adding even more cores won't help much. The FX Chipsets & Architecture "FX " isn’t just the name of AMD’s new high-end chip architecture—it’s also part of a new PC platform for AMD. The FX-8150 is compatible with new Socket AM3+ motherboards running, at the time of launch, one of three 9-series chipsets . Of these three chipsets, it’s the 990 FX that will be most appealing to enthusiasts and high-end gamers. Boards with the 990 FX chipset will be able to handle two graphics cards at full 16 x speeds. Many previous chipsets (from both Intel and AMD) didn't have the bandwidth to run two graphics cards at full speed, and they would limit one card to half its potential speed (8x), thus limiting the performance gains from adding a second card. Intel’s high-end motherboards based on the X58 chipset (and using the Socket 1366 CPU interface) also support two cards in this full-speed configuration, but motherboards for its newer Sandy Bridge (Socket 1155) processors don’t support more than one graphics card running at full speed. As a result, if you’re looking to build a high-end gaming rig and get the most out of two or more graphics cards, an AMD FX processor and a 990 FX-based motherboard would be a good start. Also of note, you'll find no on-chip graphics on the FX CPUs, unlike with AMD's low-end Fusion E- 350 and midrange A8-3850 processors. Like Intel (which offers on-chip graphics on its mainstream Sandy Bridge processors, but not on pricier options like the Core i7-990 X), AMD assumes enthusiasts and power users will want the robust graphics performance that only a dedicated graphics card will bring. Looking at the architecture of the FX processors themselves, the eight cores on the FX-8150 and FX-8120 (as well as the six cores on the FX-6100) aren’t quite as independent as the traditional processor cores in Intel’s multi-core chips and in previous AMD CPUs. AMD designed the architecture so that cores are paired together in sets of two, each sharing a bank of L2 cache. (L2, if you need a refresher, is a secondary stash of speedy on-chip memory where frequently needed CPU instructions get stored.) Plus, all eight cores together share from one 8MB pool of L3 cache. You can see the cache-memory scheme in the diagram below… Intel’s chips that are in the same price range as these new AMD ones top out at four cores. (Again, Intel's only six-core chip to date is the $1,000 Core i7-990 X.) Intel, however, offers a technology in many of its midrange and higher CPUs called Hyper-Threading, which allows software that’s specifically written to take advantage of it to send two separate processing threads to each core. As we said earlier, each of the FX-8150 ’s six cores has a base clock speed of 3.6 GHz. Like AMD’s previous-generation six-core chips, the FX CPUs feature dynamic clock speeds, using a technology AMD calls Turbo Core. In the case of the FX-8150 , the chip can auto-accelerate to as much as 4.2 GHz when the CPU is chipping away at a task that taxes only one or two of its cores. Intel’s version of this technology, which it calls Turbo Boost, has been available on its higher-end Core CPUs since mid-2009 . (In fact, both Intel and AMD license the technology for dynamic clock speeds from another major computing innovator, IBM.) Beyond the speed potential of Turbo Core, AMD says all FX processors will be unlocked for overclocking, like AMD’s previous Black Edition processors (and Intel's K-series CPUs). Users willing to tweak their machines while paying careful attention to cooling the CPU will be able to eke out extra speed from these chips, if they dare to try. (Of course, doing so without due caution could damage your CPU and void your warranty, so you won't want to overclock without doing some homework first.) We did all of our initial tests on this chip at stock clock speeds. Then, we spent some time overclocking it, aided by NZXT’s large Havik 140 CPU cooler . But before we get to overclocking, let’s take a look at how the FX-8150 performs at stock speeds. Performance We were rather excited installing the first Bulldozer CPU into a new AM3+ motherboard. The question in our mind: What happens in terms of hard numbers when four Intel cores tackle the same tests as eight AMD cores, but with the latter each joined at the hip by shared L2 cache? Because the Bulldozer chip required an all-new motherboard, we built a whole new test-bed PC to find out. The system we assembled to test the FX- 8150 and future AMD FX CPUs was built around an Asus Republic of Gamers Crosshair V Formula Series 990 FX motherboard. It was stocked with 8GB of Kingston HyperX RAM running at 1, 600 MHz. Windows 7 booted from a 7,200 rpm Seagate Barracuda hard drive, and the whole lot was packed inside an NZXT Panzerbox case. We ran our standard battery of CPU tests on this chip. (For more about them, see our guide to How We Test CPUs , or click on the individual test links in this review for details on each.) Overall, the FX-8150 held a slight edge in our testing against Intel's Core i5-2500 K, which at the time of this writing sold for about $220 online—about $25 less than the FX-8150 ’s expected price of $245 . The pricier Intel Core i7-2600 K, however, at around $315 , performed much faster than the AMD FX CPU in all of our tests. So again, if you were assuming Bulldozer was going to compete with Intel’s Sandy Bridge-generation Core i7 CPUs, it's just not happening, at least in this first round. We started our testing with the seminal Sony Vegas 8 MPEG-2 video-rendering test. This trial, using the multi-threaded video-editing software, is designed to tax all available CPU cores. (That’s eight in the case of the FX-8150 , and four in the comparable Intel chips.) The AMD FX-8150 finished our rendering trial in 2 minutes and 18 seconds ( 2:18) , just a second ahead of the Core i5-2500 K. The costlier Core i7-2600 K finished this rendering job well ahead, taking 1:52 . The results were similar in our Windows Media Encoder video-conversion test. This test takes advantage of multiple cores, but it doesn’t push multi-core systems to their limits. Here, the AMD FX-8150 took 1 minute and 55 seconds (1:55) to convert our test video into its destination format. That was a trivial 2 seconds ahead of the Core i5- 2500 K (which took 1:57) , and it was again far behind the Core i7-2600 K’s time (1:35) . In a relative sense, the results in our next test, the synthetic Cinebench 11.5 test, weren't much different. (Cinebench, a very CPU-specific test, taxes all available processor cores and threads while rendering a complex image.) The FX- 8150 ’s score of 5.97 on this test was noticeably ahead of the Core i5-2500 K’s score of 5.37 , but it was clearly outclassed by the 6.82 achieved by the Core i7-2600 K. We then turned to our iTunes Conversion Test , which is a bit different in nature. It taxes only a single CPU core, and therefore is generally more bound to overall clock speed. With the AMD FX- 8150 ranging from 3.6 GHz base clock to a 3.9 GHz Turbo Core speed (and spiking as high, at times, as 4.2 GHz), we expected to see some muscle flexed here. However, the AMD chip took 2 minutes and 53 seconds (2:53) to convert our 11 test tracks in iTunes from MP3 to AAC format. That was a surprisingly slow result, so we ran the test several times to check—but we saw similar results each time. In comparison, Intel’s Core i5-2500 K finished this test task in 2 minutes even. Even previous- generation AMD Phenom II chips—four- and six- core ones—finished this test faster than the FX- 8150 . For example, the Phenom II X4 975 took 2:39 and the Phenom II X6 1100T finished in 2:45 . What do these numbers tell us, on the whole? Users with systems based on recent high-end Phenom II CPUs might want to wait until faster FX processors than these hit the market. The exception: If you spend lots of time running CPU- intensive workloads using software that can take full advantage of the extra cores, then the upgrade could still be worthwhile. For use with run-of-the-mill, non-multi-threaded productivity software and games , however, you just won't see a ton of benefit. Having finished with the stock-speed tests, we turned to overclocking. With the large NZXT cooler bolted to the motherboard and keeping the processor’s thermals in check, we were able to get a stable overclock up to 4.1 GHz, and Turbo Core topping out at times at 4.8 GHz. Of course, overclocking abilities vary from chip sample to chip sample, and given our review's time constraints, we weren’t able to spend days tweaking, like a seriously dedicated owner of an FX-8150 chip might. That said, at our best overclock settings, we shaved 10 seconds off of our Sony Vegas MPEG-2 test. That may not sound like much time, but keep in mind that our Vegas test's standard video clip isn't very long. That time difference will increase exponentially when your system is crunching through hours of HD video or a similar time- intensive task. Conclusion So, once our Bulldozer chip ground to a halt, what did we think? While AMD deserves credit for dialing the desktop-processor core count up to eight, the top chip in the first generation of Bulldozer processors isn’t quite the Intel Core i7 rival that some thought it would be. But given the limited number of consumers willing and able to spend more than $250 on a processor, it probably makes more financial sense for AMD to aim its CPU sights where most of the market is, rather than spending time and money crafting a chip that can compete with $1,000 mega-CPUs like Intel’s Core i7-990 X. If you’re looking to build a performance machine for content creation at an affordable price, or a gaming rig that also does double duty as a respectable video-editing workhorse, the FX-8150 is a very capable chip. Its eight cores will chew through tough tasks that tax all available CPU cores. Budget-conscious gamers and builders looking for speedy everyday computing, however, will still be better served by a CPU with fewer cores, such as the $115 four-core FX-4100 (the cheapest of the initial Bulldozer chips, which sports the same base clock speed as the FX-8150) or Intel’s $219 Core i5-2500 K. That being said, with both Intel and AMD leaning toward chip designs with four, six, or eight cores, AMD’s FX architecture might be a smart choice in the long run, as more and more software gets written to make use of a bunch of available cores. With Bulldozer and the new FX architecture, AMD has positioned itself to offer more cores per CPU than Intel in the price ranges that most consumers consider affordable (or, for that matter, even sane). Because the FX-8150 is the first chip we’ve seen using this new architecture, we’re curious to see what AMD will be able to achieve with future CPUs on this platform. If AMD can keep prices down while upping performance in tasks that make use of only a single core, the next FX chips might appeal to a much broader swath of users.