(ex_bubblehead, only just noticed your comment after a post preview and typo check, hope my reply is ok!)
C.A.'s own summary for the launch of the 8350 summed it up well IMO:
"Would FX-8350 be my first choice in a new build, though? Probably not. Although I’m impressed by the work AMD’s architects have done in the last year, performance remains too workload-dependent. And, inexpensive energy aside, I’m going to go with the more efficient implementation when all else is close to equal."
That's what surprised me looking at the benchmark results at the time. One moment the 8350 matches a 2600K, another it loses to a non-HT 2500K because its IPC is behind, or its modular design means the shared resources are not well exploited in situations such as AE where one would normally expect decent performance from a multi-core CPU. Zen appears to move completely away from this, which is very good news for AMD. I certainly look forward to buying one, seeing how it fares, especially if it's priced even remotely competitively with whatever Intel has at the time. AMD has had certain mbd/chipset advantages in the past aswell (eg. many years ago I bought an AM2 board with a 6000+ instead of an E8400 config because it was the only way I could obtain proper PCIX); I really hope they can see the opportunities here, eg. providing a lot more PCIe lanes so users can exploit all sorts of storage options without sacrificing lanes for multiple GPUs (and I don't necessarily mean for CF/SLI, rather for GPU acceleration).
For content creation, time is money, and time to insight is important. Using an 8350 back then instead of a 3930K would be weird IMO (assuming initial affordibility). The 3930K did cost quite a lot more, but for this kind of task it was a sensible investment. For those who couldn't afford SB-E, the better efficiency, higher IPC (helps interactive performance, etc.) and lower power consumption made SB/IB a no-brainer. Next year though, Zen could easily look like the winner in these other aspects even if it's not actually faster overall; combined with any price advantage, it should do well.
One area where Intel goofed way back was not fitting boards with a decent number of native SATA3 ports; allowing X79 to fester for so long with just two was crazy. I talked to a guy who did actually buy an AMD setup purely because the mbd in question had lots of native SATA3 ports (obviously from the AMD chipset, at least eight I think it was), instead of via poor 3rd-party controllers as was so common on Intel boards (Marvell/ASMedia chips are terrible). Intel has finally fixed this by now of course, but perhaps AMD can do an equivalently sensible thing for AM4, like allow the inclusion of multiple M.2 ports, etc.
RedJaron :
... If the FX line had the better architecture for these tasks, then they should be able to finish them faster than an Intel chip running at the same clock and with the same number of cores. Instead they consistently are slower in those tasks despite having a clock advantage.
Indeed, the only tests in toms' 2012 review where the 8350 is competitive are Photoshop and 7zip, but elsewhere it's way behind, eg. WinRAR and AE (for the latter it's beaten by a 2500K). But then even where the 8350 isn't much slower, once one takes into account power consumption and efficiency, it's a general loss. I kinda read C. Angelini's review as being like what the 8150 should have offered a year earlier.
As a lesson in design decisions, BD and then PD are interesting. An ex-AMD employee said the company had reverted to using a lot of automated design tools, which made it difficult to do late stage optimisations and resulted in maybe a third more transistors being employed.
The information about Zen so far seems to suggest AMD has pulled completely away from this quagmire of poor IPC, low efficiency, high power consumption and a workload-dependent performance profile. I shall infer they're just designing
better than they were before. Good news for CPU competition next year I hope. It will be interesting to see how Intel responds, either by big price cuts, or at last perhaps via a proper performance boost (all they really have to do if they wanted to is release an unlocked XEON, but I doubt that'll happen; more likely they'll try tweaking and meddling as they've been doing for the last 5 years, which if so would help AMD a lot), even if that's by using a higher-TDP socket to unleash something more interesting.
RedJaron :
... The newer 8350 ties the 2600K, but it's also running 600 MHz faster.
That's why I like the 2700K so much, 5GHz every time, so easy to oc, simple TRUE and one fan, it's almost embarassing. I can see why the value of P55 boards has gone up a lot in recent years, ie. those who do oc'ing purely for the technical challenge probably regard most recent Intel CPUs as just too easy and boring, but many of them probably skipped P55 at the time, so now they're going back to explore (just my speculation, but otherwise the bidding on eBay is inexplicable). None have been as easy as SB though, 5 mins with an M4E and I have a 2700K at 5GHz stable every time, built seven of them so far, giving the same performance as a stock 6700K for CB R15 (scores 880), with no complicated cooling issues.
It's ironic though that used SB-Es are even cheaper. Leaving aside mbd availability, we have 3930Ks going for as little as 72 UKP on eBay these days, hard to ignore if one's focus is rendering on a tight budget, especially when a 32GB 2400MHz RAM kit is so cheap now. Alas like I say, finding X79 mbds atm is much harder than it was a year ago.
I suppose this is what people mean by Intel competing with itself, and why they made IB such a heat spewer, to try and roll back the oc scene (delidding vids on YT show load temp drops of 30C+), but all that's done along with boring updates since then is disuade oodles of SB owners from upgrading, ditto those who bought Gulftown systems.
Ironically this very same issue will help AMD, ie. if Zen holds true to this early promise, not only will a heck of a lot of AMD owners upgrade, but I've no doubt plenty of Intel users will dip their toes in an AM4 build aswell. By being behind for so long in the midrange and top-end, AMD producing something good should mean strong demand. I just hope they manage the supply side sensibly to avoid price hiking, something which would spoil what should otherwise be a successful comeback.
RedJaron :
... As a locked chip, the Xeon's stock cooler was just fine and fairly quiet as well. ...
That's the funny thing about XEONs, locked as they are, stock coolers result in scarily low noise much of the time. When I use my Dell T7500 (which has two X5570s), I often forget it's turned on because it's so quiet.
falchard :
The main advantage the FX has that allows it to be above the Core i5's is its 8 cores. It loses to most Core i7 due to hyper threading. So the Xeon would be equivalent in that sense.
Though an easy label, it's not really accurate to say the 8350 has 8 cores. Rather, it has 4 modules, with shared fp resources, lower IPC and a design that means some workloads can't easily exploit the modular design (anyone know if that's a coding issue? Or purely hw?), which is why it so often fails to beat Intel's 4-core products of the day. The design made the 8350 quite strong for certain integer tasks though, eg. Handbrake. But this workload-dependent performance probably put a lot of people off.
Given it's attractive price at the time, I might have been tempted by an 8350, but I didn't like the power consumption, etc. Zen though is looking much better in all respects. Sure, Intel will have moved on by next year somewhat, but this is obviously early silicon so it's likely AMD can and will do more before launch.
For the first time in a long while, I'm hopeful AMD can get back in the game, which is the most +ve I've felt about the company in a long while. Some have pointed out that previous products were hyped and then proved disappointing, which is true, but I'd be astonished if AMD did that again, it'd be market suicide. This time things actually appear reasonably sunny on the horizon for them.
Ian.