AMD FX-series Piledriver CPUs Megathread: Links and FAQ

[Ashcrash]

Always had a soft spot for AMD, going back to a 300mHz K6-2, then an Athlon XP 1500+ at 1.33GHz. both were great machines that lasted years (in fact, i think the athlon is still running today, gave it to a co-worker). When i built my first performance system a few years ago, i went with amd for the whole pkg - fx-8150, asrock 990fxextreme9, radeonHD8650. Built the whole machine for right at $1,000. I figured an i7 setup would cost at least a third of that for the processor alone. So far, been a good fast machine (16Gb 1866 ram and a SSD help alot), other than now both 8650s have died on me.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Nice. I'm still rocking my 8320 and so far I haven't needed to upgrade. I'm thinking on going with Skylake on my next upgrade, but we'll see what shakes out with the next batch of AMD processors.

 

[TufenHuden]

The best AMD board is the Asus 990FX R2 Gen3 and I've it.
Got lucky at tigerdirect called up-they had one I rush on over
bought this bad boy.
Don't know why Asus stopped making this motherboard.
PCI-e 3.0 usb-3.0......
2nd best Crosshair V-formula/z......

 

[derek3ton]

Just built an i7 skylake but thinking of doing another for the kids and wife to use with a new FX 8320 or I just may re-use an old Phenom II X4 I have in my parts box. Decisions..... Decisions....

 

[Darkbreeze]

There's no question Intel outperforms AMD, that's just a fact. However, I'm currently running an FX-8320@4.5Ghz, and even with the high end applications and extreme multitasking that I do, I really have no issues. It will certainly be more than enough for the wife and kids. In fact, an Athlon X4 860k with a low end GPU card or even an FM2+ A series APU.

Then again, I guess that depends on WHAT the wife and kids will be using it for.

 

[Jopa]

Hello guys i have a question about my FX-8350. Is it normal that my CPU-Vcore Voltage drop from 1,4V to 0.8V when i am rendering or streaming? My pc lag ( frame rate drop to 10-12 ) even though my temps are normal? (sorry for bad english)

PC specs:
ASRock 970 Pro3 R2.0
AMD FX-8350@4.5 Ghz
Cooler Master Seidon 120V
Cooler Master Silencio 452
MSI GeForce GTX 750Ti

https://youtu.be/pW3GazIFwBU

 

[Darkbreeze]

No. If it's not under load, then perhaps, but under a render or stream load, it shouldn't do that. If you want to start a new thread on the topic and PM me with the link, I or another member will certainly be willing to help find the trouble when we have time. To start with, I'd make sure your control panel power profile is set to performance and you might try either enabling, or disabling, cool N quiet in the bios to see if that helps. I've seen CnQ affect a good many other settings that you wouldn't think it should, but does. Sometimes in completely oppposite was from what you'd think.

You might also want to set your Line load calibration to high or ultra high in the bios.

 

[Bem-xxx]

There's no question Intel outperforms AMD, that's just a fact...

The recent DX12 CPU benchmarks are awesome for FX users.

 

[Darkbreeze]

That's really nothing new. Those are largely GPU bound titles in any case. But nice to see they are still holding their own in some areas.

 

[IInuyasha74]

So DB, now you have gone to a new Skylake system, any comparison comments you might like to make between it and the older FX-8350?

Honestly, from what I know of Bulldozer/Piledriver, there are a lot of places in the design that AMD could have changed and improved performance. It wasn't the worst CPU ever though. Honestly, Piledriver at least is capable enough for post 2010 computing. It just got unlucky that it was facing off against Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.

 

[Darkbreeze]

It didn't get unlucky. Luck wasn't a factor. Not being able to keep up with architectural advancements was and has always been the downfall of AMD, with maybe a one generation exception back in the day when AMD actually had the better performance. Before and after that, not so much, and that wasn't actually due to anything AMD did better, in retrospect, it's more along the lines of Intel screwed the pooch with their architecture that gen and had to scramble to get back on top. Since then, they pretty much haven't relinquished that position.

Skylake kicks the crap out of Piledriver. Hell, Ivy Bridge kicks the crap out of Piledriver, so you can assume that Skylake kicks twice as much crap out of it. Everything is much faster since the upgrade. The only thing I don't see a tremendous improvement in is rendering SOME forms of video. Even that depends on the application and codecs being used. If Intel ever took it to task to drop prices down to AMD equivalents per core count, for one or maybe two generations, they could pretty well wipe AMD entirely off the map.

Let's hope that doesn't happen because if it did, following that would be a sharp INCREASE in Intel pricing as there would be no competition left to worry about.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Eh, I think that is going a little far honestly. They weren't better than Intel, but they were competitive throughout the 1990s. Phenom struggled against Core2, but Phenom II was competitive against first-gen Core i7s. True, they haven't been on top for a long time now, but they haven't been this uncompetitive, this lacking in performance ever I think.

Glad the system is running so well. I honestly wish I had one of those systems too, but Ivy Bridge does everything well. I can't find any justification to upgrade except that I would be happy looking at the spec sheet with a 14 nm CPU, DDR4 and high-tech motherboard. Maybe when we get 7 nm CPUs.

Haha not even sure they need to do that to put AMD down for good. If Zen isn't drastically better, then AMD is basically out of the game. If Intel did try that though, I don't think it would work out well for them in the long run honestly. Think about how fast your PC is now? CPU performance is increasingly very slowly, and people like me on 4 year old Ivy Bridge systems don't really feel any need to upgrade. If they drive up prices, a lot more people would make do with what they have, and Intel wouldn't see much in the way of sales to the consumer market. Give that 10 years, and they open they door to someone like ARM to drastically drive up performance and enter the consumer desktop market. I think Intel probably realizes that, and while I wouldn't be surprised to see them increase prices, they will probably lock it in at a price point that nets them lots of profit but is still highly affordable to consumers.

 

[Darkbreeze]

If they dropped the price of an i5 to the same price as an FX-8320 and the i7 to the same price as the FX-9590, for one year, AMD would be finished in the desktop processor market unless something miraculous happens with Zen, which I don't see happening. Honestly, I have the distinct feeling that Zen is going to be considered to be an overhype of EPIC proportions, and an abysmal failure in performance, perhaps matching early Haswell performance, but probably not. I hope I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anything yet that indicates anything that's going to offer competitive performance to current or even Devils Canyon equivalents.

It would be nice to see, but I don't expect it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Looking back over this, just wanted to add to our much earlier conversation that clearly AMD DID up the ante, bringing magnitudes better performance and a lot more multitasking capability due to a huge increase in IPC and MOAR CORES. Yes, they did exactly what the internet memes said they wanted, they brought the roar of the moar core. A lot more cores and hyperthreads in fact.

So I guess we can safely say that at least for now, AMD is fully back in the game and with all the recent shenanigans going on with Intel in relation to Meltdown and Spectre, it wouldn't be too surprising to see AMD gain back a little more market share after the next round of Ryzen chips come out with the integrated graphics and then Ryzen 2 coming later this quarter. Gonna be even more interesting than it already is.

Funny thing is though, I'm still seeing a LOT of people buying FX systems since they're so cheap now, and in less developed countries they are flooding old FX inventory into the market places. What's "funny" about it is that they still seem to be able to get the job done when paired with big cards, at least, with a moderate overclock. So it may be a while yet before we stop seeing Piledriver hanging around, although since Ryzen has come out that has slowed a great deal.