AMD FX-8350 Review: Does Piledriver Fix Bulldozer's Flaws?

[technoholic]

The real performer as i see will be the Steamroller. Looking at some slides from AMD, i believe they can really get back in the game with Steamroller. It seems, they seriously work on some significant improvements. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6201/amd-details-its-3rd-gen-steamroller-architecture

 

[blazorthon]

Sorry for being late to answer you.

I was actually trying to compare this case to a basic example. Without any undervolting or anything like that in hand. What I'm trying to say is that most people care more to performance than power consumption (of course for the card at the same price). Maybe my example is wrong because I rush it up, but you get the point.

That chart was based on AMD's roadmap. There is no evidence yet that AMD is going to make a large improvement from Piledriver to Steamroller. All I can tell is from this picture/slide.

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/4955/zambezi-slide-10.jpg

Yes it was a pretty nice run from AMD in the OC-ing section. Yes it could match i5/i7 single threaded performance (I've seen on techpowerup they got 8.4x in cinebench overclocked, so that's about the same as i5/i7 single threaded). But we are not talking about when the i5/i7 is overclocked. It will lead back (OCd vs OCd), even with whatever the temperature issues is (with IVB, I mean with the max OC you can get with it).

So It would be really nice if AMD released a Quad core (Dual Module) with a good single threaded performance, I really hope that they can make that in the next release (and of course I hope that picture/slide is wrong ).

Looking at the actual specifications of Piledriver is better than looking at the picture 😉
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6201/amd-details-its-3rd-gen-steamroller-architecture

Fixing the x86 decoder issue alone can bring a significant performance advantage like 15-25%, let alone accounting for the other tweaks in Steamroller.

A dual-module FX CPU having great performance per core is not easy the way AMD is going (at least not until Steamroller). It'd be easier (and faster for us who'd otherwise have to wait for Steamroller) to simply buy an FX-8120 or 8320 and disable one core per module.

Furthermore, doing this to an FX-81xx CPU as well as CPU/NB frequency overclocking is enough to let that CPU match i5s and i7s in stock versus stock and OC versus OC comparisons, not just stock versus OC. An FX-8120 or 8150 with one core per module disabled and a good CPU/NB frequency overclock (maybe around 2.8GHz or 3GHz) can keep up with i5s perfectly well when you overclock the CPU frequency of both the FX and the i5 greatly.

Also, I wasn't referring to undervolting and such with what I said about the graphics cards except where otherwise stated. It doesn't take undervolting to let a 7870 use less power than a 660 Ti while having similar performance at a lower price. The 7950 and the 660 Ti also use similar amounts of power and various other Nvidia versus AMD comparisons have similar situations. Only some of Nvidia's Kepler-GPU-based cards use less power than the AMD competition.

 

[demonhorde665]

hmm my main concern is motherboard compatibility , I';m looking on new egg , and considering a new rig to replace my current 2008 pc , however i'm not finding many main boards that support this cpu with out doing a bios flash. and grabbing one of these with the current main board offerings would elave me with no working parts. maybe tom's should throw on a list of mainboards that support new cpu's being reviewed , WITH OUT bios flashing.

good article and i definitely got my system upgrade eye on this line of cpu's just need to find a main board that i won't have to flash (because my current cpu is not AM3+).

 

[demonhorde665]

[citation][nom]jbx007[/nom]too bad they didn't open up with a lower price as the article hinted at.for now i'll pass. if it was truely under $200 i would consider it for my next low end system, but so far the price is well over $200 and not worth it.amd fx-8350 for $219.99http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] s-Desktopsintel i5-3470 for $199.99http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115234intel i5-3570 for $214.99http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115233intel i7-3770 for $299.99http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819116502[/citation]

you forget to mention the FX 8320 which is only 179 at new egg. should preform real close to the FX 8350

 

[rdc85]

hmm my main concern is motherboard compatibility ,..........

Quite true, I'm also waiting a response from gigabyte about bios update for support of this FX....

Changing board is not an option, I hope amd give a push to the mobo manufacturer.........

 

[sugetsu]

Cangelini, whats your opinion on this processor when it comes to the adobe CS6 suite? I am better off with an i5? I can't afford the i7 at the moment

Which parts of CS6? Really, it depends on whether the task you're performing is threaded or not (some of what you'd do in the Creative Suite is, some isn't).

Premier pro, Photoshop, after effects, indesign, adobe acrobat, lighting room, media encoder. Those are mostly the ones I'll be using the most.

 

[mapesdhs]

[citation][nom]ohim[/nom]I don`t like that Anand still uses CS4 as benchmark ... CS6 clearly shows that it benefits more and more from multicore CPUs[/citation]

Indeed, using CS4 is daft; CS6 is a very different animal. New rendering system, GPU options, etc.

Ian.

 

[ilysaml]

My Joy stopped by the time I saw the WOW & Skyrim benches, still the main issue for a gamer presets...
But PD did a nice job this time and took over the flagship i5 in most of the benches, now we can expect steamroller to take on the whole Ivy lineup if still 15% performance will be added.

 

[TechnoD]

well on the right track AMD keep it up and maybe you can jostle intel around a little.

 

[mapesdhs]

Anyone who thinks Intel isn't capable of doing something to counter any advantage AMD might have gained
with PD is smoking something. Intel can easily do a price drop or speed bump to put AMD out of it once again
if they wanted to. The amazing potential of the 2500K proved that beyond doubt. The silly IB paste issue was
a move to encourage upgrades; Intel could respond to PD with a chip that's not crippled in that way, higher
clock, etc. However, they won't bother unless PD causes a significant impact on revenue. Will it? That remains
to be seen. I wouldn't buy one, the power consumption figures put me off completely.

Ian.

 

[zolton33]

[citation][nom]army_ant7[/nom]I'm not sure if it is really multi-threaded, or if MMO's are necessarily multi-threaded just because they are MMO's. Take WoW for instance (I don't think it takes advantage of that many threads, but I'm not totally sure.).BTW, am quite an RS fan here... Got hooked into its world back then... I may return as a member someday. Just saying.[/citation]


They have changed so much in the past year alone its not even funny. I've been playing rs off and on for almost 10 years now. And i did not mean that rs is multithreaded just that it uses the cpu mainly to draw the graphics and such. So not a bad tester when it comes to pure cpu power in a game. If you put it in high def and go to a crowded place such as world 1 or 2 its a huge strain on a cpu. And it be nice to see which ones do not lag there lol

 

[refillable]

Looking at the actual specifications of Piledriver is better than looking at the picture 😉
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6201/amd-details-its-3rd-gen-steamroller-architecture

Fixing the x86 decoder issue alone can bring a significant performance advantage like 15-25%, let alone accounting for the other tweaks in Steamroller.

A dual-module FX CPU having great performance per core is not easy the way AMD is going (at least not until Steamroller). It'd be easier (and faster for us who'd otherwise have to wait for Steamroller) to simply buy an FX-8120 or 8320 and disable one core per module.

Furthermore, doing this to an FX-81xx CPU as well as CPU/NB frequency overclocking is enough to let that CPU match i5s and i7s in stock versus stock and OC versus OC comparisons, not just stock versus OC. An FX-8120 or 8150 with one core per module disabled and a good CPU/NB frequency overclock (maybe around 2.8GHz or 3GHz) can keep up with i5s perfectly well when you overclock the CPU frequency of both the FX and the i5 greatly.

Also, I wasn't referring to undervolting and such with what I said about the graphics cards except where otherwise stated. It doesn't take undervolting to let a 7870 use less power than a 660 Ti while having similar performance at a lower price. The 7950 and the 660 Ti also use similar amounts of power and various other Nvidia versus AMD comparisons have similar situations. Only some of Nvidia's Kepler-GPU-based cards use less power than the AMD competition.

As I told you before, About the graphics card thingy, I was trying to refer you that most people care performance more than power, so power consumption is not a big problem. I've told you this before and my example is not important, The only importance is that you get the point of what I'm talking about.

I think Piledriver's performance to Bulldozer Performance (and by seeing the picture that I gave you) doesn't give much difference at all. Piledriver is what AMD promised, which is 15%-20% Higher performance and efficiency. Maybe Steamroller is a good improvement over Piledriver and that's what I hope. But seeing at that picture, There is no evidence of that and AMD's Single threaded performance is not going to lead intel... Again, I hope they do lead intel, but not sure if they could.

Yeah I know, That's great to have that CPU/NB OC, But I haven't seen it beating or matching i5/i7 OCd (Single threaded). Not trying to be a fanboy, this is all I know. In fact I'm typing on a PC with FX-8120 in it . Peace!

 

[mapesdhs]

Beats me why someone marked me down for stating the blatantly obvious. Why else has 2500K pricing not moved _at all_
for the last several months? Because it doesn't need to.

Intel can & will respond if it feels that's necessary, but if not then little will change.

Ian.

 

[zolton33]

[citation][nom]mapesdhs[/nom]Beats me why someone marked me down for stating the blatantly obvious. Why else has 2500K pricing not moved _at all_for the last several months? Because it doesn't need to.Intel can & will respond if it feels that's necessary, but if not then little will change.Ian.[/citation]
Better questions is why weren't the sandy bridge cpus reduced in price to start with and why were the ivy bridge line so closely priced to the sandy bridge line? My guess is that because they saw no competition in those cpus they decided to milk all sides for as much as possible. Typical intel and reminds me what sort of monopoly they had prior to amd arriving. Intel always loves to stamp high prices on their cpus and that has not changed. They may drop prices slightly but i would not expext much in the way of price drops from intel.

 

[army_ant7]

They have changed so much in the past year alone its not even funny. I've been playing rs off and on for almost 10 years now. And i did not mean that rs is multithreaded just that it uses the cpu mainly to draw the graphics and such. So not a bad tester when it comes to pure cpu power in a game. If you put it in high def and go to a crowded place such as world 1 or 2 its a huge strain on a cpu. And it be nice to see which ones do not lag there lol

The CPU is used to draw in RS? I'm not sure, but a few years ago, then implemented a High Definition mode and you could choose between using DirectX and OpenGL. This makes me think that it leverages GPU's already. I also remember being able to use HD better (or just plainly use when I couldn't before) after upgrading my GPU to 9600 GT back then. I remember RS running smoothly on an my old Athlon 64 X2 machine back then even when crowded, though I could remember wrong.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]mapesdhs[/nom]Beats me why someone marked me down for stating the blatantly obvious. Why else has 2500K pricing not moved _at all_for the last several months? Because it doesn't need to.Intel can & will respond if it feels that's necessary, but if not then little will change.Ian.[/citation]

The 2500K has moved a little. It's dropped a little. Not a lot, but it has dropped.

[citation][nom]zolton33[/nom]Better questions is why weren't the sandy bridge cpus reduced in price to start with and why were the ivy bridge line so closely priced to the sandy bridge line? My guess is that because they saw no competition in those cpus they decided to milk all sides for as much as possible. Typical intel and reminds me what sort of monopoly they had prior to amd arriving. Intel always loves to stamp high prices on their cpus and that has not changed. They may drop prices slightly but i would not expext much in the way of price drops from intel.[/citation]

Sandy/Ivy are similar in price because they're similar in performance. How high those prices are is arguably too high because of Intel "milking" AMD's disadvantages, but the similarity in price between Ivy and Sandy is still because of their similar performance.

 

[killerbytex]

This is rigged ! how about putting 8150 @ 4ghz

 

[zolton33]

[citation][nom]army_ant7[/nom]The CPU is used to draw in RS? I'm not sure, but a few years ago, then implemented a High Definition mode and you could choose between using DirectX and OpenGL. This makes me think that it leverages GPU's already. I also remember being able to use HD better (or just plainly use when I couldn't before) after upgrading my GPU to 9600 GT back then. I remember RS running smoothly on an my old Athlon 64 X2 machine back then even when crowded, though I could remember wrong.[/citation]
I'm still using an athlon 64 x2 4400+ toledo lol and it does alright but still lags at times. And as far as i know rs still uses the cpu to draw every thing i've noticed no changes in switching from my on board 6100 geforce to a 6450 card. Although not strongly graphicly i've noticed it does cause the cpu to use alot of resources so multi tasking while playing lags you a lot.

 

[zolton33]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]The 2500K has moved a little. It's dropped a little. Not a lot, but it has dropped.Sandy/Ivy are similar in price because they're similar in performance. How high those prices are is arguably too high because of Intel "milking" AMD's disadvantages, but the similarity in price between Ivy and Sandy is still because of their similar performance.[/citation]
Yes they perform almost the same except the power usage and a few have a higher clock speed. But still not a price drop of the sandy with the release of ivy? Its clear they are milking the disadvantages of amd and taking advantage of their customers.

 

[army_ant7]

I'm still using an athlon 64 x2 4400+ toledo lol and it does alright but still lags at times. And as far as i know rs still uses the cpu to draw every thing i've noticed no changes in switching from my on board 6100 geforce to a 6450 card. Although not strongly graphicly i've noticed it does cause the cpu to use alot of resources so multi tasking while playing lags you a lot.

My old rig had an Athlon 64 X2 4600+, IIRC. So we weren't that far off in that department coincidentally. 😀 Hm... Just checking, the "6450" you mentioned is a Radeon HD 6450 right? (Sorry, just making sure in case there has actually been an old GeForce 6450.) The HD 6450 is just a tier above the Intel HD 4000 and in the same tier as the top Llano GPU's. So it isn't quite so powerful (no offense intended).

I wonder though... You had the options of DirectX or OpenGL selected right and not just software rendering (whatever that option was called)? I also wonder if the version of Java Runtime Environment has anything to do with it (just in case you weren't fully updated).

 

[Guest]

Supposedly windows 8 scheduler does a better job at figuring out what to do with bulldozer's slightly odd "cores."

I would have liked to see the difference between win 7 and 8 and see if that is true and if so, how dramatic a difference.

 

[zolton33]

Well when you are using an old 939 board with pci express generation 1.0 not many choices in gpu upgrades lol. And i'm fully up to date on every thing. Its just that rs has always been cpu intensive. When going from place to place its normal to run into the now loading as the cpu creates the next area. And while looking things up while playing lag always happens but is normal.

I've played for close to 10 years and for a java based game it draws a lot of cpu resources to get the job done. Not sure how newer cpus handle it but i know the older ones get pretty well used playing it. I always play it on max settings so no wonder the loading here and there but they are no big deal. They now have voice overs in some parts now so that is adding to it. Plus the updated graphics and new player and monster skins.

Not sure when you last played but in the last year alone they have made huge leaps and bounds in updating and upgrading rs. Although i'm happy about some of them (being able to level firemaking by adding a log to a fire for better exp and not having to move with each burnt log) i'm not so happy on others such as higher membership costs and the wilderness brought back. But it is still a lot of fun to play around with.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]army_ant7[/nom]My old rig had an Athlon 64 X2 4600+, IIRC. So we weren't that far off in that department coincidentally. Hm... Just checking, the "6450" you mentioned is a Radeon HD 6450 right? (Sorry, just making sure in case there has actually been an old GeForce 6450.) The HD 6450 is just a tier above the Intel HD 4000 and in the same tier as the top Llano GPU's. So it isn't quite so powerful (no offense intended).I wonder though... You had the options of DirectX or OpenGL selected right and not just software rendering (whatever that option was called)? I also wonder if the version of Java Runtime Environment has anything to do with it (just in case you weren't fully updated).[/citation]

Army, the Llano A8s with dual-channel DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24 perform more like the Radeon 5550 than the weaker 6450 😉

 

[army_ant7]

I would report the spam, but I'm to lazy to go all the way to the review comments, since I'm on the Forums... I wish they put a report button here in the Forums...

@zolton33
Oh... I thought you were experiencing tremendous lag, not loading. Loading was pretty normal with my old rig as well. It might actually have to do more with your Internet connection (more precisely, your game requesting data from RS's server and downloading it).

Wow! They did that with Firemaking already? Now that's an improvement, considering how you had to make so many lines of fires. Hehe... Membership got more expensive? 🙁 I think I still reached the time when Wildy returned.

I actually thought about RS when I read the news about the Java Virtual Machine being implemented with OpenCL so that it could run whatever's GPGPU-able in current Java programs. I wonder if RS will benefit. 😀

@blazorthon
Thanks for the clarification. I just looked at the Graphics Hierarchy Chart as a quick reference, though your more precise info is appreciated.

 

[zolton33]

Yeah so many changes lol and they have a wiki now with all the quests and skills information now so no more depending on runehq or tipit. If you sign up for a new account with an unregistered email you also get 14 free days of membership on that new account. And if you do that you start in the new starting area of burthorpe which has been completely reworked so you can learn about all the skills.

Worth trying if you are returning to get use to all the new things they added and changed to rs. Also the romeo quest has been removed and replaced with a different one and dorics quest has also been removed and redone so after that quest you are directed to an area where you can train smithing for free.