Is AMD FX Still Viable For a System Build? Rev. 2.0

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I hope so. I honestly want them to be competitive again. I used to use nothing but AMD. Problem is, they got caught with their pants down, with Core 2, and never really recovered. They have been so badly mismanaged, over the years. 🙁
 
Zen looks like it may be good, but you see things like this.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/amd-and-nvidia-quit-sysmark-benchmark-group/

Some guys are saying they pulled that before bulldozer, and a lot of people thought bulldozer was a flop. I think bulldozer was ok, just over hyped. But you have to wonder if they are getting ready to fail.
 


AMD's CEO herself said that with Zen AMD needs to get that idea out of people's minds that AMD is just a budget option. I want competition in both the high and low-end market segments.
 
For now hey, if they can get to say Ivy Bridge/Haswell performance levels at launch, and have another launch on the table within the next year to bump up performance more that would be good. The thing is with cpu's, just like cars etc. Unless you are going for the top to elevate that product in consumer's minds, how will they know about it even if you have good products? Marketing is something else they could work on, but I digress.

Edit* If they are competing with Haswell i5's that should be good if they can get on a tick tock cycle like intel, then they should start catching up.
 


Maybe in IPC. I don't expect Zen to beat Intel in IPC at all (they even stated Zen is a 40% increase, which I don't see as enough, especially by the time Kabylake is out). But AMD can win on the battlefield in various ways. If they have 8 physical independent cores on their CPU, that'd be great since Intel's flagship CPUs still have 4 (except the extreme *cough*). Even if IPC is lower than Intel's, AMD still has a lot of opportunity with a 40% increase in it, especially if their processors can all overclock well, and if they use little power and have little heat to dissipate.

And they're coming with nice stock coolers, so that's a plus.
 
Yep, that's the proposed number I read, which puts Zen at Haswell levels. So for high-end, you'd still be stuck with Intel, from skylake and it's successor to 2011-3. If that CEO truly wanted high-end pc's, she'd have to get the ball rolling on something that'll be 60-70%+ better than the excavator cores, not the measly 40% that'll bring amd up to par with tech from 2 years ago
 
We're never going to get fully equal IPC, but it'll certainly bring the game a lot closer (Kabylake should be about 20% better in IPC than Zen). Power efficiency is going to be important if AMD wants to win, especially in the server market. I totally see Zen being the better option for workstations and multi-threaded machines, or streaming and recording. If there's one thing Intel will still Donald Trump AMD in, is gaming, and any heavy single-core threads. Which did seem to treat them quite well, so we'll see.
 
AMD has always impressed me with its innovations, the first 6core, first 8core cpus, HBM memory etc, but that's about it. It's the pencil pushers over there that really tick me off. Bulldozer was a prime example. Take a really good idea and shove it out into the market before it's ready. If the techs had the time to get their ducks in a row, the Bulldozers would have been released at Piledriver ability, and consequently Piledriver would have been better still, better at least than the Phenom ii it was supposed to replace. Instead, Bulldozer was pushed out early and Piledriver soon after, as a fix. At least this current CEO seems willing to hold onto Zen until it's ready to be the serious competition to mainstream Intel that it's supposed to be. It's a gamble for sure, but if it works, it'll pay off in spades for AMD, if it doesn't, well maybe in the near future it'll be Intel vrs Samsung instead.
 


Yes, piledriver was an improvement, but clock for clock, Phenom II was still a tad faster. FX's saving grace was core count, and higher clocks.
 
I have tremendous respect for AMD. With less than a fraction of Intel's funding and resources, AMD has manage with compete with Intel's mainstream CPUs for this long. Yet, as Karadjgne points out, AMD has many innovations that surprise us. APUs, for example, have gone a long way and they have much potentials but aren't recognized many. I hope AMD can pull through.
 
If they can get at least haswell performance and be at 60 or 65% of Intel pricing and leave all their chips unlocked so you can overclock easily, they could make a good argument. Haswell is what 5-10% behind skylake?

If they have unlocked cpus that be overclocked to perform almost as good as skylake then they have a good argument to say they are a viable gaming solution. I know the way I used to convince people to try amd was to say look you are spending this much, save on the cpu and get a better graphics card.
 
Majority of consumers are buying CPU's faster than what they need/use them for, even gaming. AMD come back or not, it won't really matter, people won't buy the faster CPU's at a much higher price from Intel if AMD stops producing CPU's, as if the whole economy changed. If they increase price as many people think they are going to if that happens, then they would make less money. Does it really matter if AMD survives or not? I'm sure that Intel and AMD discuss things behind the scenes all the time...
 


I'm sure that Intel has sufficient cash to bribe all the Senators, Congressman and regulatory officials needed to ensure they don't get broken up if AMD does go under.
 


That really depends on several factors. First Intel isn't making huge improvements from generation to generation in raw performance. Second if Zen is really at Haswell performance levels, but can actually overclock well (something that Haswell couldn't really do) then the gap in performance between Zen and Kaby Lake may not be that large (with Zen CPUs pulling higher clocks). The other thing that Zen may feature is the famous moar cores approach (just like FX). If say an 8 core 16 thread Haswell processor is benchmarked against a 4 core 8 thread Skylake..... So if Zen features 8 cores and 16 threads (which is totally possible for a flagship processor) it will almost certainly beat a 4 core 8 thread Kaby Lake. If AMD then prices the flagship somwhere between the 4 core 8 thread and 8 core 16 thread Kaby Lake they have a very stout price to performance processor and are right back in the game. The truly exciting part is with Intel not making huge strides forward generation to generation, if first generation Zen is really at Haswell performance levels AMD would have a shot of totally catching up to Intel (IPC) in Zen's second generation.

As for the current FX lineup I always get a good chuckle out of the cherry picked benchmarks they have for new games. Fallout 4 for example where an 8 core FX is beat by an i3, ect, ect... Funny thing with that is Fallout 4 runs butter smooth on my FX 8370 and R9 290 Vapor X with all settings at Ultra @ 1080p. As long as you can max out all the settings on the newest games then why is it for gaming you "need" Intel? I have never had a big drop in FPS, or any problem running Fallout 4, Witcher 3, or any of the latest games on all Ultra settings at 1080p. Then again when I play I'm enjoying the game and not making sure I'm over 70 FPS watching Fraps. Bottom line my FX 8370 plays all the latest titles on Ultra settings (and that's with DX 11, it will only get better with DX 12) butter smooth and when benchmarked with Firestrike I score better than 80% of the tested systems (the limiting factor there being I'm only using a single R9 290 Vapor X). Would I score higher with an Intel system? Sure, but I would have to go to i7 and what is the point when the system that I have plays all the games at ultra and runs all the software that 90% of people would need just as effectively as an Intel? Power and heat production, Intel holds a big lead over the aged FX, but raw performance isn't as far ahead as a lot of benchmarks would like us to believe (unless your getting into very expensive i7s then, well it just gets ugly).
 


I agree with you on that. Both Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 run fine on my Fx-6300 @ 4.3 and r9 290 ref. on Ultra + AA at 1920x1200p. I can't complain when getting 45-55 fps on Witcher 3 and 50-60 fps on Fallout 4 on ultra settings on a $500 machine. A $1000 machine is likely to have only 20% increase in performance (i.e. someone I know with an i5/gtx 980). I am sure Intel would be fine as well but the superior in IPC and raw power doesn't translate proportionally into daily tasks performance and FPS. I am aware that gaming isn't the only purpose for a PC but the majority of consumers are using their personally computers for gaming, entertainment, office, and browsing.

 
It has to be said one thing AMD could do better with is marketing. I've built AMD systems for people in the past. They hear so much intel this intel that, they see the intel commercials, almost like they don't realize there is another company out there that makes chips. Even if they do, they don't think they are as good. The big test is this. Set Joe Consumer down in front of an AMD system, then in front of an Intel system. Give them the same case, etc. If they don't know brands and prices, in a lot of things, they may pick the AMD because it does what they want and it costs less. I'm sure some pick Intel as well. But I always see commercials for "Intel Inside" for example. With AMD, I've maybe only ever seen one of their commercials, and that may have been like 10 years ago. They need to consider especially with their new CPU's coming out, to start marketing so people even know about their new products. If you go outside tech forums, how many people even know what "zen" is?
 


AMD simply doesn't have the budget for marketing, especially if you try to market against Intel. For years its been rammed down the collective minds of consumers that if it doesn't say Intel Inside on it then there is something wrong with it. There are no television spots I've ever seen advertising AMD. Aside from that Intel gets a TON of free marketing every day. All you have to do is go to any hardware site, Toms Hardware included, and you will see a ton of threads bashing AMD right and left. In the OP on this thread it gave a warning about fanboyz and basically said its hard to fault Intel fanboyz for anything, but there is a huge glaring thing you can fault them for. They have created a mindset that AMD can't do the everyday tasks that a person has to do, only Intel is able to do it. Intel and their fanboyz have created a "culture" where they are the only brand that matters. Most hardware sites online, review sites, and just going to your local "Best Buy" will result in the idea that you "need" Intel if you want you computer to run right. Heck I was looking up reviews in the NH-D15 (thinking about selling my H100i GTX and going to the NH-D15- with Delta 3400rpm fans) and every internet site you can look at a review on all had their "test system" setup as an i7 of some sort. EVERYONE knows AMD runs hotter than Intel, I want to see how the NH-D15 handles the small nuclear reactor that is the FX-9590 with an overclock. Being able to handle an overclocked i7 isn't nearly as impressive as handling an overclocked 9590 as they run much hotter, but not one review site used AMD as a test system even though they run much hotter than Intel and would be a much better test of the cooling capabilities. That brings me to another hotbed topic with AMD power usage and TDP. Yes, Intel is way ahead of the game when it comes to overall power usage, and AMD processors run hotter (which is why it makes no sense for heat sink manufactures to always use Intel as their test systems). However what the common masses of people out there don't understand is we are talking about, at most ~ $9 extra bucks a year if you have an AMD rig. So if you stop for a Big Mac meal once in a years time you just spent more than what your saving with Intel. Unless your on a laptop the power savings don't really matter.

When review sites of any hardware you lookup all run Intel, when every hardware site online is bashing AMD, when every high school kid shucking computers at Best Buy and Staples will tell you AMD isn't worth even looking at..... How exactly is AMD supposed to compete against even all the absolutely free marketing Intel gets? I know when people come to me for a custom rig they are always shocked to find out AMD is a viable option. One thing I love to show them are my gaming tests rigs where I have an i5 4690K, an FX 6350 @ 4Ghz, and a FX 8370 @ 4.5Ghz all running R9 290 Tri-X GPUs and 8GB Crucial RAM. Right now they are all loaded with Witcher 3 and Fallout 4, and when run next to each other on the same 1080p monitors, all on ultra settings, you can't tell which system is the Intel (I like to run a double blind test and not tell them till after they have played the game on each system). Most of the time when i ask them which one is Intel they pick the wrong test system, and they always tell me it was just a guess because they all perform the same. Intel's biggest marking aide is the wide misinformation about how much "better" they are for home computing. Servers, yea with current processors Intel is way better for servers, but home computing they are not as dominate as all the marketing would make you think (unless you go for a top of the line i7 build then you can really see the difference as AMD has nothing that can compete at that range currently). I build both Intel and AMD rigs all the time, and they are both fine processors that I gladly put my reputation behind.
 
I've built quite a few machines for others as well, and almost always use AMD. One guy said it was the fastest computer he'd ever owned. It was back in the day about 5 years ago, he had a little core 2 duo and some old radeon card in a dell. Upgraded him to a 1090t, 4gb of ram, gtx 570. His big game was battlefield bad company 2. He loved it. I'm guessing that old system, you could toss another 8gb kit in there, pop in an r9 380x or try even a 390, better cooler and overclock that chip. You'd be good another couple of years I think.

But of the systems I've built, the only one that ever had a question was someone who was playing an older unoptimized mmo, can't remember the name of it now. But I did introduce him to Crysis by showing him the demo. I built him a box with an FX 8350 and gtx 770. Of course, that build owned the demo, so I think he may have been going to get a copy lol. But I really don't remember hardly anyone ever complaning. Most people can't believe how much faster it was than their old systems.

What's nice is ever so often people give me old systems that are broken. Got one that was an hp, bad board, but had 8gb ddr3 memory, 1TB hard drive, AMD phenom ii x4 820 I think, dvd burner etc. Lady bought a new computer instead of messing with that one. Just wanted the data from it. Either way, it was nice, I got a new board on a combo deal and a case. Working on setting that up as an office system for my wife. She does vinyl designs etc from home during the evening, and her laptop just doesn't handle it well. So either way this will make a nice upgrade for the little that I have into it.
 
It's not just the fan Boyz. It's ignorance in general. Gpus are a prime example. Everybody knows a gtx970 and r9 390 pretty much go head to head, but generally the 390 has a slight edge, especially at higher resolutions. Which for the everyday Joe Blo means exactly bupkiss. The ability to shove out 100+ fps or 120fps means nothing. The everyday user is using a 60Hz monitor, so as long as minimum frames are around that number, alls good, the maximum is a useless number. But benchmark consistently spout that 1 gpu is better because it has higher OC so gets an extra 3-5fps over its nearest competition. So what!

The reason most sites use Intel for testing is that's what is used by high end users. Most test beds use Sandy-E or Haswell-E cpus at @140w-200w. This is right at the limits of a majority of coolers, only the high end air or liquid coolers have no issues at that level. Whereas with even a stock 9590, its TDP is so far above those levels, its only viable cooler options are the high end coolers. So stock numbers on a 140w Sandy-E are good for 125w FX Cpus, and the 200w OC numbers are good for the high end OC and 9590. They are operating on a best case scenario test, not the worst.

I can't fault AMD's lack of marketing, its Intel vrs AMD for cpu choices, making it real hard to brag about being 'second best but still hanging in there!'
 




 
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