AMD FX-8150 Review: From Bulldozer To Zambezi To FX

[theconsolegamer]

[citation][nom]abheekg[/nom]It surely did not perform as good as we expected it to, but I'd say give credit where credit is due. We have to admit that this surely is an innovative new design and the world has seen nothing like it before. Yes, it surely is ahead of it's time and does tend to rely on software optimization. I'd say that's the only place where AMD went wrong. They should have worked closely with software devs in order to bring out the best of FX, but I guess their entire work force was dedicated towards bringing out FX, and it's definately not 'Game Over' yet for FX. Now that it's out, I guess AMD must work closely with the devs of benchmarking suites and Microsoft OS devs much the way Intel does.It's obvious that a brand new sophisticated modular design CPU can't really shine with current software. And Piledriver won't do magic. Yes it might improve IPC performance, but remember that it's going to be based on the same Bulldozer architecture at it's heart.As far as higher clock sppeds are concerned, I'm certain that good cooling kits could make FX achieve 5GHz, and we all know that really.I'd say FX is well ahead of it's time, and AMD definately proved to be the more innovative of the two here. Also, I'm mighty impressed that an 8C/8T CPU still maintains a TDP of 125W, even though the die shrink to 32nm does surely help. I think the future might bring out the star in FX. AMD definitely has to focus on software now, work on FX is far from done. If they want it to be successful, they have to push software development too, as that in my opinion is as necessary as the release of FX itself.You know, we as users must also not say things like "SHAME ON AMD" and "AMD=FAILS" and all such nonsense. All these tech companies consist of a highly skilled workforce, whether AMD or Intel or any company. Yes they do falter sometimes, but i don't really believe it is that time for AMD. As some other poster rightly pointed out, AMD has 1/5th the workforce as that of Intel. That workforce must do one thing at a time. Now that the product is out, it's time to concentrate on software. And that workforce does do a remarkable job with AMD/ATI, none-the-less! I know that FX has been a dissapointment for us who have waited for it for so long. I myself have been eagerly waiting since over 2-3yrs, when early discussions started. I remember it being expected in Jan 2011 and I actually got up at 4:30A.M. to check AMD's web page! When the FX promo web page came up months ago, I'd thought it's time now, we all know how long it's been delayed and how many times! I have checked that promo page almost every day! I even got all my accounts settled to pounce on it. So you could imagine how disappointed I am. But I guess I should have thought of this software earlier, these images have been out for months, & I've seen them countless times before. But, it sure has a long way to go!I'm sure it will do great if AMD pushes it, which they must now. Here's looking forward to better times for FX![/citation]Remember when Sega launched the ahead of it's time Dreamcast? Remember what happened?

 

[ohim]

Looking again at the numbers to be honest if they make a revision to be a little bit more faster i would buy this just to support the other side for the sake of competition, my main interest is exactly Photoshop/ Premiere Pro and AE ... programs in which the FX does quite fine work.

 

[ares1214]

Well atleast it makes things easy for people and just sucks at EVERYTHING.

 

[achim]

[citation][nom]laoo[/nom]Dear Tomshardware. Please learn how to properly configure Visual Studio before performing any tests. Go to Options->Project and Solutions->Build and Run and set proper value in "maximum number of parallel project builds" box. I've manage to achieve compilation time of 37 sec on 1090T. And even I've got down to 25 sec after turning on /MP option in each project. So please if you're doing some tests - do it right.[/citation]
@laoo
We build the project for x32 and for x64. This doubles the time.

Best

Achim

 

[acadia11]

How the ...k did this happen? Oh my god the CEO of AMD should be shot.

 

[awdrifter]

This is the new Netburst, 2 billion transistors and yet it's barely beating out the 900m transistors Thuban. AMD should've just die shrink the Thuban and clock it higher.

 

[acadia11]

AMD should just scrap this idea now anyway, clearly, FPU units are more important than INT units.

 

[halcyon]

Unfortunately, I expected as much.

 

[three0duster]

I actually liked AMD, but not being able to beat your own previous processor, very sad. I'm glad I didn't wait on this junker. AMD needs to learn the key to fast processors, optimize single core efficiency, then put more cores in the mix.

 

[kinggeorge]

this is bad - real bad. Very dissappointed in amd. They could not even beat the phenom II. This makes me want to just buy a MAC PRO and forget pc computing all together. I love my 1090t, but I am tired of buying AMD just to support the competition.They make the most powerful GPU's but their drivers suck. They make good drivers for their proc but the hardware sucks. Figure it out AMD or I am gone.

 

[razor512]

Guess I will be upgrading to a phenom II x6 (For all of the hype and performance claims, this CPU turned out to be a major fail, especially considering the price)

What AMD needs to ask it's self is Why would anyone buy our CPU for $245 when you can get a core i5 2500K for $210 that is much faster?

 

[chillmelt]

AMD is basically telling its enthusiast customers to get a life, grow up, and stop gaming, because that's not what they made the FX line for. The performance tells us this is more of a server chip. lol, good one AMD! I really mean it.

 

[chillmelt]

AMD is basically telling its enthusiast customers to get a life, grow up, and stop gaming, because that's not what they made the FX line for. The performance tells us this is more of a server chip. lol, good one AMD! I really mean it.

 

[chillmelt]

AMD is basically telling its enthusiast customers to get a life, grow up, and stop gaming, because that's not what they made the FX line for. The performance tells us this is more of a server chip. lol, good one AMD! I really mean it.

 

[southernshark]

Maybe AMD can sell itself to a company in Asia.

 

[southernshark]

[citation][nom]chillmelt[/nom]AMD is basically telling its enthusiast customers to get a life, grow up, and stop gaming, because that's not what they made the FX line for. The performance tells us this is more of a server chip. lol, good one AMD! I really mean it.[/citation]

It shows that a company is really "smart" when it tells its customers off.

I doubt they will be as snippy with the bankruptcy judge.

 

[j_davis_1980]

I am going to Intel shop now!....

 

[badtaylorx]

anybody wanna buy a 990fx............cheap................im goin sandy...................seriously AMD......fu

 

[drakefyre]

[citation][nom]darkguset[/nom]Disappointed, but not giving up... Intel was in a similar position a few years back. I hope things will change again some time sooner rather than later.[/citation]

Intel really wasn't in that similar of a position... They couldn't compete with AMD with Netburst, but it only took them one architecture change to kick AMD's butt again, with Conroe. Admittedly it took them ages to do it, but AMD has now tried multiple architectures... and they can't beat Intel still :/

 

[silverblue]

Pandering to gamers will no doubt cause a good deal of animosity towards AMD which won't go overnight. Still, Bulldozer was designed from the offset as a "mega-tasking" microarchitecture, which would explain its relative strengths in encoding, encryption and various synthetic workloads.

I read on SA that Bulldozer snoops back to main memory at the same time when performing cache lookups, just in case something is not present. I like the idea, however wouldn't this (plus the 2.2GHz NB and cache) present a bottleneck? Having said that, it's good to see a better IMC than with Phenom II (though that wasn't exactly difficult, was it?).

 

[dickcheney]

[citation][nom]chillmelt[/nom]AMD is basically telling its enthusiast customers to get a life, grow up, and stop gaming, because that's not what they made the FX line for. The performance tells us this is more of a server chip. lol, good one AMD! I really mean it.[/citation]

People still game on AMD? LOL

 

[grody]

I had a feeling that Bulldozer was going to have issues. When development is delayed that long, it must have had some deep architectual issues they were trying to patch (which probably explains the evolved turbo mode). I don't think this review should surprise anyone.

I am looking forward to the fallout from this boondoggle. I bet you heads are gonna roll, HP style.

 

[Kewlx25]

This makes me cry. Oh-Well, BD will still make a great firewall box.

 

[striker410]

The hell is this? AMD, you let me down. Rolling out processors that have NO improvement from the previous gen makes me sad. Sigh, I guess this is the final nail in the coffin, isn't it. No bueno.

 

[Device Unknown]

Guru3D has benchmarks with the Overclocking results. I'm impressed. 4.6 on air. Putting it equal to i7 2600K on most benchmarks. (obviously you can OC the 2600K but that's not my point)
FX would be a true contender if they shaved 30-45 off the price. I definitely would get one at $180, not 220.
My take on this is AMD released a platform, an architecture base that will allow for expansion and easy modification to it. So I'm all about giving AMD a fair shot. lets chalk up 8150 as base experiment with which AMD will continue tweaking, and with time software will catch up. I want to predict that within 2 years AMD will be evenly matched again. Right now i5 2500K is $219 the FX-8150 I think is the same @ $220? That leaves us with 2 options in my humble opinion. the i5 2500K for Gaming and the FX for more productivity workloads.
So if you are a gamer get i5-2500K
if you are a worker get FX-8150 (or server)
I have 3 Intel based computers in my house atm. I would like to use AMD FX (hopefully, depending on availability)in my Thermaltake sponsored mod over at Modders-inc.
Please don't count AMD out of the game yet guys.