Overclockers

Today AMD is releasing their new FX processors. They are an evolutionary step from AMD’s oft-maligned Bulldozer processors released just over a year ago. How large of a step forward is Piledriver? We’re here to show you!

Vishera Explored – What’s New in Piledriver?

Like Bulldozer before it, the Piledriver CPU (code named Vishera) is composed of two, three and four module CPUs. A module consists of two integer cores and one floating point core, so when AMD references a “core”, that mean an integer core. Traditionally, before Bulldozer (and currently on Intel CPUs), a core was one integer core and one floating point core. Things are different on the AMD side of the fence now.

Piledriver Core Details

AMD basically took a little bit here and a little bit there, with optimizations over pretty much the entire CPU. It’s not a die shrink, nor is it a new architecture. As I mentioned, it’s an evolutionary step.

Piledriver Improvements

Another enhancement not mentioned yet is the clockspeed increase. Piledriver weighs in at 4.0 GHz base clock on all cores and 4.2 GHz boost in lightly threaded loads. The boost clock is the same as Bulldozer, but that base clock is a 400 MHz gain, 11% over Bulldozer. In heavily multi-threaded loads, that clockspeed increase is where a large chunk of Piledriver’s estimated performance gain of (up to) 15% over Bulldozer comes from.

Piledriver Evolution

The good part for people that already have 9-series chipset boards is that they will be keeping the same chipsets (and AM3+ socket)  for Piledriver. All you’ll need is a BIOS update. Indeed, we’re reviewing Piledriver on the same 990FX-based Crosshair V Formula Bulldozer was reviewed on.

9-Series Chipset

We’ll explore performance obviously (that’s why you’re here after all!), but AMD of course supplied some numbers of their own for us to check out.

Corel Aftershot Pro Performance

x265 with OpenCL

Cinebench R11.5 Performance

AMD has long focused on multi-threaded computing, mostly because single threaded performance is where Intel dominates currently. If you can find an application that does take advantage of multi-threading though, AMD does well for itself.

Single- vs. Multi-Threaded Encoding

The FX-8350 even shows pretty strong FPS gains over the FX-8150 when paired with an HD 7970 GPU.

Gaming Performance Over FX-8150

Here we start to see what part of the market AMD is aiming for. I don’t think anyone expected it to compete with the top Ivy Bridge CPU (i7 3770), but it seems to match up quite well with the i5 3570K. You also get your first glimpse of the pricing and it is actually quite nice, coming in at only $195 for the FX-8350. So far so good AMD.

FX-8350 vs. i5 3570K Gaming

In this slide they’re comparing CPU and GPU cost added together; in AMD’s testing, they come out ahead but for less money.

AMD vs. Intel + NVIDIA Platform

Interestingly, AMD mentions performance benefits of overclocking to 5 GHz on water cooling. Now, that will be heavily dependent on your particular CPU. We couldn’t quite make 5 GHz, but if you can, these are some of the gains you can expect across the FX line.

5GHz Comparison

The FX-8350 isn’t the only CPU with pricier Intel competition. Down the line, AMD is pricing the new FX series CPUs very aggressively against their competition.

Piledriver Price Positioning

We’re past the company line now; it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty.

Meet the FX-8350

There aren’t many ways to photograph a CPU but we’ll try to make the FX-8350 presentable for you.

Processor in a Box

AMD FX-8350

AMD FX-8350

AMD FX-8350 Pins

AMD FX-8350 Pins

There is definitely more to look at when you put it in a good looking motherboard.

AMD FX-8350 + ASUS Crosshair V Formula

AMD FX-8350 + ASUS Crosshair V Formula

Of course, no CPU review would be complete without a die shot or two.

Piledriver Die Shot

Piledriver Die Shot

Yep, it’s a CPU all right, complete with a pretty die inside.

Power Consumption

The first thing we’ll look at is power consumption. Frankly, it’s not a pretty sight for those that are looking for super efficient computing.

So, um, yea. Power consumption was not a strong point of Bulldozer. Add some MHz to that equation (which of course requires some voltage) and things don’t get any better. If you are into distributed computing (Folding@Home, SETI, Rosetta, etc.), you’ll probably want to go Intel at this point. FX processors are just too inefficient to be of worth to you.

Overclocking for Stability

AMD mentioned 5 GHz in their reviewer’s guide and press deck (the latter surprised me). Time was limited for this review, so the only overclocking I really did was add voltage and increase the multiplier. The chip made 4.9 GHz quite easily, but once I got to 5 GHz, it just wouldn’t stabilize. Once the voltage went past 1.5V, I stopped there.

4.9 GHz 24/7 Stable

The good news is that Piledriver obtained a 4.9 GHz stable overclock! That’s 100 MHz north of Bulldozer. It easily booted at 5 GHz and ran benchmarks, but it was not 24/7 stable.

In other good news, look at those temperatures. It took a fair bit of voltage to get to 4.9 GHz stable (1.476 V loaded) and temperatures were less than Bulldozer on the same water loop (Swiftech MCR-320 radiator, Swiftech MCP-35x pump, EK Supreme HF CU block). With increased voltage and frequency, Piledriver clocked in ~5°C lower than Bulldozer. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Test System, Opponents & Methodology

We’ve got a solid range of CPUs tested for your viewing pleasure today, from the venerable Thuban hex-core 1100T all the way up to Intel’s 12-threaded monster i7 3960X and plenty in between. Most important to this review is the inclusion of the Ivy Bridge i5 3570K, which is precisely the chip at which AMD is aiming with the FX-8350.

Speaking of market targets, I’ve also included current prices for those chips still on the market (prices as of 10/22/12 obtained at Newegg).

FX-8350 System

Great competition top to bottom today. Now we must pause a second to give a shoutout to our esteemed editor EarthDog, who did us all a solid favor by testing his i5 3570K so we would have results from that CPU in this review. He actually also tested the 2500K results from last year for the Bulldozer review. Thanks Joe!

Performance

Performance graphs are a little different this go-round, so please take note of what I’m about to say!

AIDA 64 graphs are graphed with percentage only. I can’t name one person that runs AIDA all the time and can easily decipher what the results depict, so we’ve gone with percentages only. The percentages expressed are how that particular CPU does compared to the stock FX-8350 – a higher percentage means the CPU scores better (except for memory latency, where lower is better) and a lower percentage means the CPU scores worse. All results are relative to the stock FX-8350.

The rest of the graphs are based on actual score, time and/or FPS. Percentages are useful for graphing multiple metrics in one graph but our CPU list has grown such that it isn’t practical to graph more than one result per graph. Thus, we’re going with actual scores, so you can see how the CPUs compare directly rather than confusing things with percentages and actual scores in parenthesis.

Then, at the end of the performance section, when we evaluate the FX-8350 vs. the FX-8150, we’ll go back to percentages to show how much Piledriver improved over Bulldozer.

AIDA 64 Benchmarks

First up, the synthetic benchmarks, specifically the AIDA 64 CPU tests. Here, the FX-8350 comes out ahead of the FX-8150 by an average of 13.7%. As an average, that’s not bad at all; it even got up to 20.5% in the Zlib test.

With regard to the competition, it is a solid win over the 3570K, even besting the 3770K in two of the five CPU tests. Interestingly, the 2600K is now behind AMD’s offering – and still priced considerably more.

AIDA 64 CPU Benchmarks

FPU tests are where AMD is struggling at this point, even with heavily threaded loads. Because there is only one FPU core per module, there are only four FPU cores in this “eight core” CPU. That hindrance is shown here. While it does beat the FX-8150 by a healthy 9.5%, it does lose out to its Ivy Bridge competition. However, it is certainly a step in the right direction – even with its lack of FPU capacity, it still beats out the 2600K.

AIDA 64 FPU Benchmarks

Ahh, memory. This is where you still see AMD struggling a bit. The memory on the FX-8150 was running at DDR3-2400 / 10-12-12-31. The memory run today is worse than the FX-8150, which had an unfortunately deceased memory kit to run, spec’ed at DDR3-2000 / 7-9-7-24, but even with that, the FX-8350 comes out ahead in bandwidth testing, so there were solid improvements to the memory subsystem for sure.

However, Sandy Bridge still has more bandwidth to offer than Piledriver and Ivy only increases that gap. Latency is looking solid though, with only the 3770K (and the better memory on the FX-8150) beating the FX-8350.

AIDA 64 Memory Benchmarks

Overall, this is a solid win for Piledriver. Priced where it is, we’re starting to see a decent value here.

(If anyone wants to see the actual AIDA 64 results, simply have a look at this chart.)

3D Benchmarks & Games

For our 3D benchmarks, we still use an HD 6970, mostly because we’ve got data from our past reviews. Regrettably, I don’t have an i5 3570K to test and EarthDog doesn’t have an HD 6970, so we can’t see how that fares. However, as you’ll see, the FX-8350 does pretty well for itself.

One very important note in these tests – I lost my old driver used for the previous tests and used Catalyst 12.8. There are increases here due to the CPU and there are increases due to the driver. I will remedy this disparity in a future article though and test the FX-8350 versus the 3770K on a strong HD 7970. For now, this is the best we could do. Please accept my apologies for the accidental driver deletion!

First up, we’ll do synthetic tests. Starting with 3DMark06, this test is very CPU bound; even the graphics scores are heavily tied to the CPU. What I like here is the very strong increase over the FX-8150. What I like even more is that it’s approaching the 2600K’s performance level, especially when overclocked. Take four threads away from the 3770K and you’re probably looking at near-parity with the 3570K.

3DMark06

Vantage again shows healthy increases for the FX-8350 over the FX-8150 and a much closer score to the 2600K.

3DMark Vantage

3DMark 11 shows healthy gains. When you get to DX 11, that driver difference starts to show itself, so remember that caveat. In any case, the Physics test doesn’t change with GPU driver and the FX-8350 is doing great with huge increases over the FX-8150. Overclocked it’s also approaching the 2600K.

3DMark 11

Heaven shows great gains, with the FX-8350 actually coming out ahead all around.

HWBot Heaven Benchmark

Our game suite for CPU reviews is long in the tooth. One of our games (the HAWX 2 demo) can’t even run any more. Again, I’ll be doing a follow-up testing an HD 7970 with our new game suite.

In the three games we did test, the FX-8350 is doing well for itself, with gains over the FX-8150 and relative parity with the Sandy and Ivy Bridge chips.

Stalker: Call of Pripyat

Aliens vs. Predator & Dirt 2

Once more – this CPU will be retested on a newer GPU with identical drivers. Until then, I think it’s safe to say the FX-8350 does a solid job over its predecessor, based especially on the CPU tests in 3DMark benchmarks.

2D Benchmarking

We’ll get the worst thing out of the way first. AMD does not do well with SuperPi. They haven’t been competitive in this bench for a long time against Intel. AMD would note correctly that this is an antiquated benchmark and does not measure real-world performance, with which we would agree wholeheartedly.

SuperPi is, however, a favorite of competitive benchmarkers. Thus we still include it as a solid subsection of our readership enjoys such things. Very strangely, the FX-8350 performs worse in SuperPi than the FX-8150 did. I believe the RAM is the biggest problem here, as SuperPi is heavily dependent on RAM, especially when you’re talking the length of time it takes AMD CPUs to complete this benchmark.

You see, IMOG killed my super awesome, super rare G.Skill Flare kit (that’s right, I’m calling you out boss man!), which would have most likely shown improvements akin to what you’ll see below with the WPrime results. This is a good thing for the reader, because you can see how this CPU will perform with a kit currently available on the market. It’s a bad thing for comparison graphs, because you can’t get a direct 1:1 comparison with dead, no longer available RAM.

SuperPi 1M

The disparity due to RAM only gets worse when you move up to SuperPi 32M. Note the scale at the bottom of the graph is in seconds; the actual times are next to the bars.

SuperPi 32M

Now we’re back to showing some gains. WPrime doesn’t care one bit about RAM (within reason) and Piledriver shows healthy gains over Bulldozer in both benchmarks. You can also see it competes very closely with its 3570K competition at stock, then comes out quite a bit ahead when overclocked.

WPrime 32M

WPrime 1024M

RAM problem notwithstanding, we continue to see solid gains for the FX-8350. Things are looking up for AMD.

Rendering, Video & Compression

Ahh, now we get to the real world benchmark comparisons. All of our real world tests are multi-threaded because, let’s face it, the vast majority of CPU-intensive real world computing has moved to multiple threads. If the program you use doesn’t, it’s time to upgrade.

So, we’ll start by rendering some images with Cinebench R10. In R10 Piledriver has a respectable performance, showing strong gains over the FX-8150, beating the 2600K and coming close to -but not beating- the 3570K. When you overclock it, things shift squarely in the FX-8350′s favor.

Cinebench R10

Cinecench R11.5 is a more modern flavor of the rendering benchmark and the FX-8350 is here with a win over its older brother and its Intel competition. Overclocking just brightens the picture, coming ahead of the 3770K.

Cinebench R11.5

PoV Ray and Piledriver get along very well, with the stock FX-8350 actually beating the 3770K and then coming quite close to the 3960X when overclocked.

Pov Ray 3.7 RC3

The x264 Benchmark has two passes, one is a reading pass (Pass 1), where the CPU basically looks over the file. That one doesn’t look so good for the FX-8350. However, when doing the actual work of encoding, which happens in Pass 2, Piledriver flips the script, with numbers more in line with the PoV Ray results above – beating the 3770K at stock and coming near the 3960X when overclocked. The 3570K is left in the dust.

x264 Benchmark – Pass 1

x264 Benchmark – Pass 2

7 Zip loves some threads too. At stock, the FX-8350 trounces the 3570K and comes very close to the 3770K. Overclocking brightens the picture considerably.

7 Zip

When looking at real world, multi-threaded applications like rendering, compression and encoding, the FX-8350 does very well for itself. It is a good showing over the FX-8150 and looks good when comparing to Intel’s offerings, especially the 3570K.

FX-8150 vs. FX-8350 – Out of the Box Comparison

Now we’ll see how the stock FX-8150 compares to the stock FX-8350. AMD says up to 15% performance increase.

You already know the issue with SuperPi and my dearly departed RAM, so you can basically disregard the disparity there. WPrime is more accurate and shows roughly a 5% decrease in times.

FX-8150 vs. FX-8350 – Timed Benchmark Comparison

These two benchmarks test only the floating point cores and AMD obviously wasn’t able to increase floating point performance quite as much a 15%. AIDA showed an average FPU performance increase of 9.5% and WPrime gives a performance increase of 4.9%. Any increase is good, but don’t expect a large floating point difference between Bulldozer and Piledriver.

Moving on to the remainder of our benchmarking suite (warning, this is a large graph, just over 1100px wide), we see as-expected performance gains, up to 18% in our testing. The average of all performance gains ends up being 11.9% across the board.

FX-8150 vs. FX-8350 – Scored/Measured Benchmark Comparison

Overall, we see a solid performance increase over the previous generation.

Pushing the Envelope

Of course, freezing Bulldozer was one of the best things about it. Top frequency records were set all over the place and just like previous AMD chips that came before, you could run a full pot and never worry about any sort of cold bug or cold boot bug. I’m very happy to report that Piledriver continues that tradition, with hours of full pot benching to be had.

FX-8350 Pull Down

FX-8350 Pull Down

FX-8350 Nice and Cold!

Angels Smiling Down Upon the Cold

So how did the FX-8150 do after several hours under the cold? Not  bad, not bad at all. WPrime 1024M was able to complete at over 6.4 GHz and WPrime 32M at over 6.5 GHz. Both of these are close to what I got on an FX-8150, but not quite as far, trailing by ~200 MHz each, but at ~.1V less.

WPrime 1024M – 161.157sec @ 6422 MHz

WPrime 32M – 5.078sec @ 6521 MHz

Of course, single core benchmarks were able to run faster than that, with PiFast coming in just north of 6.8 GHz and SuperPi 1M just breaking the 7.0 GHz mark. Both of these are well short of my FX-8150 clocks, but both of them were also at almost 0.2V less. This is a good start for Piledriver; a very good start.

PiFast – 21.27sec @ 6827 MHz

SuperPi 1M – 13.078sec @ 7080 MHz

Last, but not least, we come to the CPUz validation – where Bulldozer shined. This Piledriver chip managed 7.3 GHz fully CPUz validated, which is an impressive number considering the BIOS limitations. You see, Bulldozer could clock so high because there was a BIOS that allowed you to disable cores within modules. You could then enable one core in your strongest module and one in another module. Then you would leave the weaker core clocked at a “stable” frequency and then shoot the moon with the other one. Unfortunately with the Piledriver BIOS for the MVF, you have to use full modules, which doesn’t lean itself to as high clocks. Hopefully there will be a BIOS released with that feature!

Regardless, 7.3 GHz validated with a full module is impressive in and of itself.

FX-8350 Valid at 7303.4 MHz

It’s also important to note that I needed this chip to survive so we could bring you more testing as promised, so I didn’t push voltages as high as I did with the Bulldozer chip (over 2.0V, killing it in the quest for a higher CPUz validation…you can see all that chip’s results at HWBot). I’m sure with more voltage, this chip could do even better. In any case, kudos to AMD for keeping Piledriver just as fun to overclock as its older brother!

FX-8350 Aftermath

FX-8350 Aftermath

Final Thoughts & Conclusion

I didn’t give Bulldozer as bad a review as a lot of people did. Unlike many, I tried to look at Bulldozer as just any other CPU, not the return of the FX of days past, when AMD ruled the roost and Intel was playing catch up. I gave Bulldozer an Overclockers Approved, in large part because it was fun to overclock -especially under extreme conditions- and because it was priced right. However, when it came out, retailers/etailers boosted the price over what AMD said it would be. I felt duped, not just because of the pricing but because AMD didn’t step in and make the retailers price the CPU where it should be.

As long as it is priced in line with what AMD says the price will be this time, that all changes with Piledriver. As AMD points out, this is a processor evolution from Bulldozer. It isn’t a die shrink or a micro-architecture redesign, it’s basically optimization and higher clockspeeds over the CPUs released a year ago. They reinvented the wheel with Bulldozer. They chiseled the edges and made it roll smoothly with Piledriver.

So, what does AMD promise here? Up to 15% performance increase over Bulldozer. That they do deliver. They also deliver lower temperatures and higher overclocks in our testing.

What it does not do is perform with high efficiency. This is a very power hungry CPU, there is no way around that. Without major changes to the architecture or a die shrink, Piledriver couldn’t do anything about that. If the name of your game is efficiency, Intel has that in the bag. We tend to not really care too much about efficiency here, but it does bear mentioning since there is such a large gap in power pull.

When it comes to performance, their target in the current CPU market is the i5 3570K. As you saw above, in single-threaded applications Intel still reigns, but when you get into multi-threaded applications the FX-8350 really does quite well. It also does it for less money, coming in at $195, which is a very economical price for performance. Heck, with heavily threaded metrics, it often hangs with or beats the much more expensive i7 3770K.

Add to the very aggressive pricing strategy the fact that the FX-8350 is still a blast to overclock – both with ambient cooling and sub-zero – you have a formula for a CPU that deserves to hold its head high among its competition. Piledriver is what Bulldozer should have been. It performs well against its targeted competition and is perfectly priced to compete. As long as they keep that price (or very close, say $199.99 to $209.99), AMD has a good competitor on its hands with the FX-8350.

- Jeremy Vaughan (hokiealumnus)

Tags: amd, bulldozer, cpu, FX, fx-8350, processor, review, vishera

138 Comments:

EarthDog

10-23-12 04:25 AM

Very nice review.. Seems like a solid chip for the price!

I.M.O.G.

10-23-12 04:25 AM

READING FURIOUSLY...

ssjwizard

10-23-12 04:35 AM

BLAM nice review. I love it when a 2nd generation product almost universally improves all aspects of itself. Still power hungry yes, but not as much, still a bit shy on flops sure but its still faster than BD, LOVED IT.

FX 8320 ordered from newegg @ 10:28MST...

I.M.O.G.

10-23-12 04:42 AM

Done reading, nice review.

The GSkill Flare kit deserved to die. It was weak.

hokiealumnus

10-23-12 04:59 AM

Thanks.

Blasphemy!

TollhouseFrank

10-23-12 05:42 AM

sweet cpu. looks like i have an upgrade path from my Phenom 955 Black.

txus.palacios

10-23-12 07:08 AM

Thanks for the review!

That poor Flare kit was a martyr.

djscrew

10-23-12 07:29 AM

great review, looks like a great chip too

my question is ... will AMD continue to be able to pull these kinds of performance gains out of their slowing process tech?

It seems that they may be doing too many tocking and not enough ticking... I worry that AMD may get behind the curve to a dangerous point...

After all, it really does come down to heat for desktop performance, I mean if you can reduce the heat you can increase the clocks. I think it may be only a matter of time before Intel strikes to clean AMD's clock. Anti-competition won't come down on them as strong as before since ARM is their new biggest threat.

manu2b

10-23-12 07:37 AM

Nice review!

If the 8320 clocks as well as the 8350, that would be a real good option! Mobo+cpu+ram for 300 bucks!

tungureanu

10-23-12 08:42 AM

but in every day gaming and office tasks , cn you see the +15% difference?

SupaMonkey

10-23-12 10:42 AM

http://www.overclockers.com/wp-conte...03-640x360.jpg

In those tests where we see this chip doing well, is it the chip improvements or the extra cores that are helping the most?

rogbur22

10-23-12 11:05 AM

I may need on of these to play with Nice review btw

Robert17

10-23-12 11:07 AM

Nice review, well done. Wonder what AMD's stock price will look like now?

(I'm thinking that their new leadership will build upon this line of thinking, maybe improve efficiency as they seem to be looking mobily which may translate well with a die shrink and their "wheel rounding")

TeknoBug

10-23-12 11:19 AM

Great write up, looks like the i5 3570K has met its match, and since it's benched against a X6 1100T it looks like nearly a 50% improvement over my X6 1090T.

I think the 8350 and a new mobo and ram will be on my shopping list in a couple months.

PS- the pull down photos look like you got a nuclear reactor happening there.

Hilight

10-23-12 11:25 AM

Excellent review. I'll be getting one of these soon...I'm not sure yet if I'll go with the FX8350 or the 8320...I wish there was more info on how well the 8320's are overclocking compared to the 8350...hoping for as close to 5Ghz on air as I can get.

bernie_lomax

10-23-12 12:29 PM

good review OP! is it safe to say that we will see a similar improvement in the 4xxx and 6xxx series processors?

Hicksimus

10-23-12 12:51 PM

This is what I was hoping bulldozer would be. A step up from the x6 at an excellent price point. Very impressed though its a bit late.

Archer0915

10-23-12 12:51 PM

Great conclusion on that on. Well Done.

RGone

10-23-12 12:54 PM

Jeremy, congrats on the review. Sorry about the RIP ram. Thanks for putting the stock 8350 real close to the 4.9Ghz 8350 so it is easy to see the comparison.

RGone...ster.

hokiealumnus

10-23-12 12:54 PM

Thanks for the kind words folks!

Well, the games are outlined and I'm going to start benchmarking with a 7970 to see how it fares, but no, you won't see a 15% FPS difference if that's what you're asking.

As for everything else, it felt just like an Intel computer in daily use. Processors are more powerful than necessary for daily tasks like web browsing and writing .docs. The graphs in our reviews are the most intensive thing I do with Excel, so I can't tell a difference there.

Both. The chip improvements amounts to about 5-10% improvement (estimated). Add the increased clockspeed and you reach the up to 15% mark. The extra cores in applications that use integer processing definitely come in handy as well.

I think that's a safe assumption, assuming the clockspeed increase is the same over their predecessors. We never tested those, so I can't really speak to it directly though.

EDIT - I also note that Newegg is selling the FX-8350 for $219.99. While that's ten dollars more than I had hoped, I'd still call that a good buy. The same could definitely not be said for Bulldozer after its launch day price hike. They did well this time around.

tungureanu

10-23-12 01:04 PM

i kind of hoped for more. i think i will skip piledriver and wait 1 more year to upgrade the cpu

Frakk

10-23-12 03:07 PM

Nice review thanks, not a bad chip at all.

rescuetoaster

10-23-12 03:10 PM

Very cool man, thanks for the review. I've been holding off on building a rig for a coworker, and I'm glad I did. I like all of the media rendering benchmarks, I think this will work well for her.

I'd like to get one myself, but I can't justify spending money on a new CPU when my current one isn't being challenged by anything yet.

TeknoBug

10-23-12 03:36 PM

On second though, when is the FX 6300 due out, that will be significantly cheaper and 6 cores is still plenty for today's tasks.

bernie_lomax

10-23-12 03:41 PM

im almost certain it was released today with the fx8350, 8320, and 4300

edit: yeah here it is on newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ssors-Desktops

freakdiablo

10-23-12 03:46 PM

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that these days, AMD doesn't fabricate it's CPUs like Intel does, so it's kind of at the mercy of it's partners for things like die shrinks.

However, 15% gains is still a good step forward, especially since it's starting to trade blows with Intels newer stuff in some tests.

wagex

10-23-12 03:55 PM

dang son, i could very well be switching over to the red side in the future if they keep up these price points! they seem to be back to the best bang for the buck!

YAMA187

10-23-12 05:24 PM

great review!!! im thinking about getting one,!!

Aldakoopa

10-23-12 05:36 PM

It will be a few months or so before I actually get one. Gonna stick with the good ol' 4100 for a while longer. It's still serving me well. Great review, looks awesome! And the prices aren't bad at all for that kind of performance.

Scout

10-23-12 05:36 PM

I think they did just reclaim the best bang for the buck good on AMD. Now lets see them keep this pace and they got hope.

trekky

10-23-12 06:11 PM

now that i see this i may want to get this and sell my 1100t
i see my 1100t goes for ~$160
so for $40 i think this would be a great upgrade!

TeknoBug

10-23-12 06:17 PM

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/t...-fx4300-tested

Looks like the 6300 is a decent buy, all I care about is gaming (and surfing) and should be more than enough.

The 8320/8350 is showing some ups and downs compared to other CPUs.

I.M.O.G.

10-23-12 06:46 PM

Who is reading everywhere else - did anyone else do subzero and hit higher clocks?

I see one on HWBot already (8 cores enabled also):
http://hwbot.org/submission/2322981_...350_8176.5_mhz

swampdonkey

10-23-12 06:46 PM

Finally I can get rid of this phenom!!!

MattNo5ss

10-23-12 06:50 PM

Great job hokie, as usual

Power consumption is still kinda high and single threaded/FPU performance is still lower than I'd like to see, but it competes with the 3570K in more typical uses and it's priced right.

...and that's with all modules/core turned on. Not bad at all

I.M.O.G.

10-23-12 06:53 PM

I think I'm going to buy one... With Bulldozer, only the early chips were worthy of super high clocks, so now is the time to take one for a spin.

wagex

10-23-12 06:57 PM

buy me one too sir

I.M.O.G.

10-23-12 07:01 PM

Sorry, Microcenter is running the same price as Newegg on these.

hokiealumnus

10-23-12 07:08 PM

A couple of items to note: I stopped at 1.9V and didn't go north of that because I needed to keep the chip for further testing. Also, it wouldn't do 5GHz below 1.5V. Other chips did reach 5, others did worse than ours, so there seems to be a fair bit of variation.

Droogie

10-23-12 07:41 PM

Hmm, I still have a sealed 3570k here. Upgrading from an i7 930. I haven't purchased a motherboard for it yet, and I'm not opposed to playing with AMD for a bit. Think it's worth returning the 3570k?

Primary use is gaming.

ssjwizard

10-23-12 07:47 PM

I would say probably not since you already have the 3570k in hand, unless you want to do it just for curiosity, as the performance should be similar in most areas.

hokiealumnus

10-23-12 07:53 PM

Hmm. For a primarily gaming system, you may want to stick with what you've got. Take a look at Hardware Canucks' results. I'll be benchmarking a 7970 with identical drivers vs. a 3770K to see how things go soon, but I can't promise how soon, life being busy and all. After being under the gun for two subsequent NDA reviews, I might need a couple days off....though the 7970 is installed already.

Ivy

10-23-12 07:57 PM

I cant honestly see how that CPU could be a match to a 3570K on gaming. Many games still got issues supporting more than 4 cores/threads. And on general purpose computing, a 3930K is just crunching them all (although its probably twice that expensive).

The competition is stock clocked, so how would it look when that stuff is running OC too?

Another weak spot is simply the insane juice that CPU is consuming (as much as two 3570K at once). It may not be a big deal for overclockers who got insane coolers and systems that big that any casual is gazing in fear. But what can it bring to the usual mainstream consumer? To be blunt, the only advantage i see is its price and prehaps the price/performance ratio. But any other spot is not comparable.

Apart from that, at least one step forward but surely not something which is making me buy AMD CPUs. Unless i have some need for a combined approach, such as a APU where AMD seems to be strong in several spots. If Intel would be less of a meanie and not always insanely overcharging, they would probably have even more customers. AMD at least can beat them in price, guess that was always the main concern from most AMD users.

Droogie

10-23-12 07:59 PM

Eh, it appears the single threaded performance is still pretty low. Gonna stick to my 3570k. I just haven't committed to this since I don't have a board and I haven't opened it yet. Gonna pull the trigger on a board.

Ivy

10-23-12 08:11 PM

Well i mean it need close to 5 Ghz and 8 core to be able to keep up with the newest IB CPUs, i dunno.

The game tests are not that much of a gain either because its GPU limited.

EarthDog

10-23-12 08:15 PM

Wasnt Hokie at 4.9Ghz stable, but 5Ghz benchable in this review?

txus.palacios

10-23-12 08:18 PM

Here comes the cold water: The usual mainstream consumer couldn't care less about what's inside of the box.

That's what experience has told me. I showed a friend my server and my gaming system. And he said his AMD A6-based system was faster than both. Ok. It could be faster than the i3 server, but the reason I'm running an i3 is the ridiculous power consumption it has. And his A6 isn't rated at 35W.

Not to mention that they usually have no idea about these things. The only thing this friend had to back his opinions was the marketing speech given to him by his retailer. "The AMD A6 processor has a similar technology to Intel's "Five" processor, but is undoubtedly faster". And that his computer was brand-new, shining, just out of the box, and my gaming system was a "2 year old rusty Intel". Let's ignore the fact that SNB was released last year, and I did not buy my i5 on launch day. Maybe the GPUs are two years old. Even older. Oh, and also, because he had "a thousand gigabytes of hard disk drive" and I "only" had a humble hundred gigs of hard disk drive. I couldn't explain what an SSD was. It seems he came to the conclusion of solid == hard because solid materials are hard. I guess.

At least he didn't told me that his computer was faster because of RAM.

walldow

10-23-12 10:14 PM

very nice read! and grats on he 7.3ghz oc very sweet! looks like ill be saving up for one over next couple weeks!

Atomichearse

10-23-12 10:39 PM

Really wish I had an excuse to buy an AMD proc. They just can't compete with enthusiast level Intel CPUs :/

SF101

10-23-12 11:20 PM

processors like this would take off so much better if games actually started fully utilizing all cores available.

Ivy

10-24-12 12:19 AM

Similiar technology? Whoot that was one of my biggest i ever had.

Besides:
I prefer to have a over aged and well proven "rusty" PC, made with quality parts which is been tested for 5000 hours instead of a unknown low quality firecracker... with nothing but amazing speed My PC systems of the alpha spec (renewed since 2011) are powerful enough to handle any tasks for 3 years, and past those years (backup for another 3 year) the only thing which may be to weak is the GPU from the gamer system, which can easely be exchanged (old GPU will be sold, or used on another system with less GPU demand). So, generally, performance is not a big issue anymore, the stuff i have had biggest problems with is the quality and thats the stuff im trying to improve the most. So i can rely on those machines, without to much sudden breakdowns which is highest value to me, not its raw performance.


Anyway, i got what you meant, majority simply is stupid and they do believe everything which is been told to them. In such a case, the skill of the vendor is the most important thing it seems.

Hilight

10-24-12 12:28 AM

I read several reviews and didn't find anyone else who put one in the cold other than overclockers.com

I.M.O.G.

10-24-12 12:45 AM

Sweet. That's pretty cool.

wagex

10-24-12 12:56 AM

its cuz hokie is da baws (:

Frakk

10-24-12 01:28 AM

That is precisly why no one is going to buy these Chips, no one wants thier GPU strangled to death by the CPU.

I think in reality its only good for mid level gaming.

it would only sell if it was competing with an i3, IE selling for about $90.

Its going to cost me £350 or $560 to get a similar level Motherboard from Intel and the 3570K, that's the only reason i'm scratching my head over this now.

Where it matters the FX-8350 is exactly the same as the FX-8150.

I think AMD should give up on this, and concentrate on APU's and GPU's, its a sad joke that AMD's GPU's are right up there at the very top giving all competition a hard time. Yet those, their own GPU's are strangled to death by their CPU's

EarthDog

10-24-12 01:51 AM

Thats not pretty.. but at the same time, there are not many people that game at that LOW of a resolution. I dont think the difference is that pronounced at higher resolutions(?). From Steam...

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

~27% 1920x1080 - the biggest group in that list... the rest are below that with only ~4% of people above that?

ssjwizard

10-24-12 02:06 AM

Honestly if your gaming at 720P on a desktop I highly doubt you would notice any of those differences, especially considering they are all over 100FPS

petteyg359

10-24-12 02:21 AM

Probably going to upgrade my 1055T. Way higher clock, more L2, sort-of more cores (loss of a couple FPUs mitigated with new arch and faster clock), AES, SSE5/AVX(ish?)... Most of my usage is the lots-of-threads stuff, and MSI seems to be doing a good job of keeping my board's BIOS updated.

Frakk: I must be nobody. Meet me at never in nowhere. Granted, once I have to start paying somebody for electricity (assuming I don't win the lottery, in which case I'd immediately buy lots of solar panels), I'll probably start including power consumption in my CPU choices, which might cut out AMD.

EarthDog

10-24-12 02:21 AM

Good point.. didnt even think about that...

wingman99

10-24-12 02:37 AM

Good review. It's to bad about the Power consumption.

Frakk

10-24-12 02:50 AM

Granted i don't run @ 720P. but at the same time i have to know the thing is worth it.

I will grant it this, power consumption is down a lot, overclocking it is probably going to get me 4.6Ghz on the same cooler (its much better than its price and i have good airflow)

If that is enough to beat my 1090T @ 4.1Ghz, (which is what i run it at constantly.) Then i will spend the £140 the FX-8150 is likely to end up at in a few weeks.

This looks like it might be http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/146?vs=697

In the 3 games there it beats the 1090T by a big margin, and WOW is one of those games AMD do very badly on.

But i would need to see more comparisons of it against my Chip.
I'm surprised no one seems to have pited it against the Thuban, what is that? Some sort of AMD NDA?

hank123

10-24-12 02:57 AM

The only part of the review I have to raise issue about is

If you ever worked in retail with MAP pricing, in the end it hurts the seller and the customer.

Other then that good review and I am happy to see how well this chip is.

wingman99

10-24-12 03:02 AM

In gaming my i5 2500k does allot better.

Anandtech LINK:http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/t...x4300-tested/5

Frakk

10-24-12 03:16 AM

Yes, your stating the obvius

But you have to pay for that, the Motherboards are significantly more expensive, Asus Maximus V Z77 Skt 1155 = £255

Asus CH-V Skt AM3+ = £180

My Mobo was £120, Intel's version is £180, Add + £30 / £40 for the 3570K vs FX-8350 and it adds up.

+ i don't know if i can handle only seen 4 cores on my System Monitor gadget

SF101

10-24-12 04:13 AM

This is a good example of why these mass core processors kind of suck for gaming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4PDoy-mi0A

highest per core performance wins in today's race.

although i doubt a 4.8-5.0ghz amd cpu is going to be a huge hold back.

petteyg359

10-24-12 04:33 AM

That's very subjective. There are lots of games where running multiple AI instances simultaneously that might interact with each other independently from the player could greatly enhance gameplay. It could also hugely improve replay value, if the AIs are random enough to create significantly different situations during each game. Sure, it can all be done through sequential scripts, but that's boring. I want to see NPCs running around on their own, changing reputation levels with each other, random towns starting feuds with each other when one NPC gets lost in the other town while travelling and has to steal food, etc. Scripted worlds get boring.

clubber_lang

10-24-12 04:39 AM

WOW!!....Really nice review man!

I hope this doesn't come out wrong......but I'm just now trying to finish up my very first computer build , and I have to admit , I'm a complete and utter noob when it comes to all this stuff. I'm building a 2600K machine right now.....it's what I got a great deal on...along with my MB and a few other things. But man.....I feel kind of guilty.

Why? Because I remember back in the day ( 98-2002 )....I was a hard core AMD fan. And now....they just seem like the "really small guy " ....a small company compared to the giant corporate leader which is Intel.

I have always supported the "underdog" in fights like this.....and this time I feel like I did something bad going with my 2600K. It's an awesome cpu....don't get me wrong. But I kind of wish I would of gone the AMD route on this build......you know?...."To stick it to the man" type thing.

Kinda sounds stupid I guess. I may just say screw it and build another AMD rig anyways! And this 8350 looks like a great place to start!

Thanks again for the in depth review!

wingman99

10-24-12 04:46 AM

In the years of seeing doing gaming bench marks with 2 vs 4 cores i have not seen a difference in games with AI.

Do you know of a game that will show a clear winner from 2-4 cores? I can shut off two cores with my PC.

mjw21a

10-24-12 09:13 AM

Yup, I'll be upgrading once these parts are available in Australia

wagex

10-24-12 12:07 PM

but the 1155 chips will clock more than well enough on a 100$ board you dont have to buy a maximus v z77 to get good clocks i have a gigabyte ud4 and i can run 4.8 all day and 4.9 for benching its not a great chip though or it would probably go better.

and lower end boards can also achieve these clocks, i mean the mive is nice but its useless unless subzero benching.

EarthDog

10-24-12 12:26 PM

Spot on... Z77 boards are CHEAP... One of the most recommended boards around here for the 'bang for your buck' crowd is the Asrock Z77 Extreme 4. It comes in at $130, and frequently its on sale for $110. Currently on that board they are offering a free 2x4GB ddr3 1600 memory for free with it. If you shop well enough, you can have a 3570K, this board and ram for under $300...(Microcenter) or $350 at newegg.

Frakk

10-24-12 03:11 PM

It annoys the crap out of me when people like that tell you a 2 core i3 is all you need for a high end gaming rig, its completely the wrong information.

There are a couple of threads on ocUK where overclocked 2500K's are clearly bottlenecking SLi'd GTX 680's in BF3, and in a big way... i do remember a couple of other people complaining about i3's running at 90% with lesser single GPU's.... so i wouldn't trust an i3 on anything more than a GTX 560.

The Frostbite 2 engine likes threads, the more the better, and if anything more not less engines are going to be like that in the future.

But just having 4 cores is not any reason for me not to buy the i5 as 4 is enough, it just makes my system monitor gadget look empty.

EarthDog

10-24-12 04:43 PM

Whats with Asus supposedly not supporting this CPU on some of their Rev1 990FX boards? Is this true? And you need a R2.0 version board to run these CPUs while others are releasing bios?

http://www.overclock.net/t/1318860/v...#post_18436753

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...&postcount=178

http://www.overclock.net/t/1318860/v...#post_18436965

It seems like bios updates are coming but... my question is how could they not be ready already?

Be careful if you have ANY board and make sure that board/bios lists the new CPUs.

PolRoger

10-24-12 05:11 PM

Yesterday MC was showing the same price as NewEgg... Today the price is $199.99 (+Tax).

PolRoger

10-24-12 05:41 PM

Here is a post (#372) from Raja@ASUS over on XS that says there is support for V1 990FX boards...

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...=1#post5146568

TeknoBug

10-24-12 05:42 PM

Same thing for Guild Wars 2, seems the Umbra engine is chew up multiple cores on most CPUs and causing low fps in heavy events and world vs world battles. But I'd probably write that up as poorly coded optimization that Arenanet needs to work on.

Most of the time the game uses 40-45% CPU and 75-90% GPU with FPS as high as 75-110but when it comes to heavy pvp fights and events/dungeons, it shifts to 1 core maxing 90-99% and the rest sitting around 25-30% and GPU sitting around 20-25% usage and gets no higher than 20 FPS.

Frakk

10-24-12 06:35 PM

A lot of it is just bad / lazy coding, all software including games have many....many functions that need to be allocated to different threads.
Its when can't be bothered to work out what needs to be on what thread and when, instead just dump it all in one or two regardless of what els is using those threads, even within its own software.

I remember Crytek boasting how Crysis will melt your computer, and yes you needed a very powerful computer to run it.
What they did not tell you was for the most part the whole thing was running on one core, two occasionally.

I still have Cysis War Head, that's the same. one single core active 80% of the time with the rest completely idle, every now and then one more core would do something, but that's about it.

Just junk.

@ ED, the Asus line was "you have to buy the R-2 Motherboards" that has now changed, infact i have just installed the 1503 BIOS

RGone

10-24-12 07:06 PM

I PM''d you.

Frakk

10-24-12 08:08 PM

Yup, got it thanks

Kitty2Kat

10-24-12 08:30 PM

So, how bad is the power comsumption?, if you have 1 gpu, this piledriver cpu will a 650w psu, be good? I have my computer up 24/7 as it's a work computer and not just gaming....My case is air cooled...I like the review for the most part, very well written, but you do need to clarify the power consumption issue a bit more...
Can't wait for you to put this cpu thru more testing...

hokiealumnus

10-24-12 08:39 PM

Yes, with one GPU, 650W will be more than enough.

Additionally, power consumption results are all over the board. Some reviews had PD pulling lower wattage, others (like mine) had it pulling higher; so there is a variation between chips - those that took additional voltage to meet the stock frequency requirements and those that took less. I've seen 15%+ power consumption and 15% less. It's very chip-dependent. Mine looks to be one of the highest leakage CPUs out there. I re-tested because it didn't seem right to me. Twice. That's the number the kill-a-watt tells me the system is pulling.

rogbur22

10-24-12 10:14 PM

So true, if only 95% of the game developers did not have to make the games run on the out dated consoles before they port them to the more powerful PC :/

SF101

10-24-12 10:44 PM

He tested the only 2 games i even know of that are supposed to support more than 2 cores fully.. not sure what else to tell you here? 2 cores performed the same as 4 and 6 and the only tests that were slower were the single and single +ht test.

linus is in the market of selling hardware so i doubt the guy would lie about it as its not in his interest to do such a thing.

SF101

10-24-12 10:48 PM

maybe you missed the part where he said higher performance processors make a difference but the core count doesn't seem to be doing anything.

and he tested on bf3 aka fb2 engine.

petteyg359

10-24-12 11:14 PM

Somebody tested all both of them? I'm pretty sure "two" is nowhere close to a representative sample of anything worth sampling.

I don't care how many current games don't use multiple threads. I only care that some developers aren't idiots and are actually making use of multiple cores, and that there are lots of opportunities for multi-core stuff in games that may or may not be implemented yet.

SF101

10-25-12 12:08 AM

What i'm trying to say is those are the only 2 games that i know of that state use multi core benefits "more than 2" and they saw no real world benefit from it in their tests..

And your correct they aren't implemented yet.

That's not my point my point was the reason this processor being reviewed is most likely getting trounced in games is because it doesn't receive benefit from having 8 cores.

Frakk

10-25-12 12:19 AM

I did, i don't think he tested that right because my own tests tell a different story.

4 Cores at 4.2Ghz

#1 78%
#2 82%
#3 89%
#4 60%

x4 @ 4.2Ghz = 61%


6 Cores at 3.2Ghz (1Ghz lower)

#1 85%
#2 75%
#3 53%
#4 44%
#5 84%
#6 46%

x6 @ 3.2Ghz = 56%

http://abundantcores.blogspot.co.uk/...in-gaming.html

I.M.O.G.

10-25-12 12:43 AM

Thanks for the heads up!

wingman99

10-25-12 12:49 AM

That does not prove your point, you need to run the same CPU clock speed and disable cores from 6-4-2 and mesure FPS or GPU load.

It's all about clock speed not load with CPU unless your using a 100% load and load over 100% with the CPU.

Frakk

10-25-12 01:27 AM

Admitidly this is not why i did that testing, but what you talk about is already there.

4 Cores at a higher clock resulted in higher usage than 6 cores at a lower clock.

But for this purpose i will do it more precisely, its not going to be done over night tho... need a little time to do it.

mjw21a

10-25-12 06:11 AM

Not sure why you're worried Frakk. These new chips look like a great buy.... Finally something better than my old Thuban was....

EDIT: WOOT! They're in stock here in Australia.... I'm buying one as soon as my next pay comes in next week!

EarthDog

10-25-12 11:49 AM

sorry frakk, wingman us spot on. To properly test it needs to have the same clocks, just drop cores.

Frakk

10-25-12 04:08 PM

More mainstream games at real resolution are starting to come to light (games other than World of warcraft @ 1280 x 720 )
It looks like its doing quite well against the i7 3770K, so yeah. its looking like a much better chip

Frakk

10-25-12 05:47 PM

Ok, i ran the tests again, this time as wingman99 suggested

BF3 Ultra Preset @ 1920 x 1080P

Phenom II @ 1.2Ghz

2 Cores; GPU usage = 27% / CPU usage = 99.8% / FPS = 31




4 Cores; GPU usage = 76% / CPU usage = 91.1% / FPS = 47



6 Cores; GPU usage = 95% / CPU usage = 72.6% / FPS = 70




BF3 quite clearly responds to how many cores you have.

wingman99

10-25-12 09:31 PM

Thanks for doing the test, looks like more cores the better with BF3.

EarthDog

10-25-12 09:36 PM

Wait... why did you test at 1.2Ghz?

mjw21a

10-25-12 09:46 PM

Hmmmm, does BF3 support 8 cores?

I.M.O.G.

10-25-12 09:53 PM

Frakk ran at 1.2GHz so that the CPU utilization difference would be more clear, and the GPU utilization difference was more pronounced. He was demonstrating that the utilization changed depending on how many cores were enabled.

Frostbite 2 is the BF3 engine, and it supports up to 8 cores. Not many games use FB2 yet, but here's a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frostbi...sing_Frostbite

With all that in mind, I think his results show BF3 in his setup is pretty GPU limited on BF3, as with only 6 cores running at 1.2GHz, the GPU is maxed out while the CPU has extra cycles sitting around.

mjw21a

10-25-12 10:45 PM

I may need to put my purchase off for a buy, just bought a cr@pload of pro audio equipment...... Not sure weather to put a happy smiley after that comment due to the equipment, or an unhappy one since now I can't buy the new CPU....

Hmmm, BF3 shows that at least games are starting to go in the right direction. About time!

djscrew

10-25-12 11:54 PM

this would be a good topic for a real review imho

MattNo5ss

10-26-12 12:40 AM

This is the discussion thread for our review of the CPU that's on our frontpage. You can click on the link in the OP to go straight to the review, or you can find the review on the frontpage.

marjamar

10-26-12 01:13 AM

My new upgrade is setting on a desk across from me. It's a HUGE black obese... I mean obsidian 800D. Inside lies a brand new 360 CPU/GPU water cooling loop affixed to a brand new ASUS DCUII GPU and just a bit over 1 year old FX-8150 CPU. These are plugged into an also brand new ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z motherboard and brand new OCZ 1000 Watt gold PSU. All of these are getting their orders out of a brand new Samsung 830 256 GB SSD -- All with little hesitation or complaints anywhere.

But, this new build was always intended to have brand new commander-in-chief once it came out. So, I too will be ordering the new Piledriver. It will have to wait a bit though, as I'm also building 2 new computers I'll need to finish first. I used to do this as a business about 10 years back, and I'm sorta getting my feet wet again so to speak. I've found my regular business's are running quite well without my undivided attention the past few months, and I'm kinda thinking about doing some builds for a few clients and maybe some new customers, to see if I'd like getting back into this part time.

Even though I am looking forward to the new FX-8350, I will say, the new Ivy Bridge processors are awfully hard to beat. Both of these new builds will have i5 3570K Ivy Bridge processors in them. I'm testing one now and it's actually boots much faster then the the Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z does. This particular one is using a new Asrock Z77 Extreme 3 motherboard and Corsair Force 3 240GB SSD. Running Windows 8, it fully boots from button push to Windows Desktop in less the 10 seconds normally -- That is the quickest cold boot I've seen, ever.

Anyways, I'll be finalizing the new upgrade maybe in a week or 2, including the new piledriver CPU. Eager to try the overclocking on that new chip.

-Rodger

djscrew

10-26-12 02:27 AM

referring to the (sub) discussion on the previous page

os2wiz

10-26-12 06:37 PM

Well Roger it is not that The IVYBRIDGE boots faster it is that Windows has never really been designed to run optimally for a multicore processor. It still has a lousy scheduler . It appears that with windows 8 Microsoft stil has been "too busy" to repair the scheduler. ON An FX 8 core processor Linux boots so much faster than on many Intel I7's. It is poor design and the incestuous relationship of the Wintel monopolists. Frankly I do not believe windows compilkes its os with all the AMD optimizations that it should. Can I prove it? No , do I believe it , yes. AMD is doing a hell ofa job in spite of the obstacles and a shoe string budget. If their various new offerings in the multi-faceted market place pan out. They will have more money to up the R$D budget for their cpus. That would mean a shorter development cycle. It might mean they can reintegrate a foundry later on and give The big boys a run for the money.

hokiealumnus

10-26-12 06:59 PM

The reason Ivy boots faster is a different implementation of UEFI most likely. The AMD side hasn't gotten around to implementing UEFIs (for instance, ASUS' CAP UEFIs for their Z77/X79 boards) that take advantage of the hardware's ability to boot by basically skipping the entire POST process.

ASUS says they're working on it for the AMD side but haven't gotten there yet. The difference in boot time is essentially just POST. One POSTs, the other skips that part.

petteyg359

10-26-12 07:18 PM

To be optimistic, I expect the next Athlon 64 sometime next year.
To be pessimistic, I expect my AMD stock is going to hit $1 before this year ends.

Supposedly, my Dell laptop has UEFI, but there's no options for it in BIOS. Thankfully, some people have taken the time to modify the BIOS to provide more overclocking features, and some of them expose a lot of previously hidden features (including UEFI options). It already boots in less than 20 seconds, but I bet that can be improved

marjamar

10-27-12 12:14 AM

This Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z with the FX-8150 in it takes about a minute to get into Windows 7. It's booting from the Samsung 830 SSD which is pretty fast. Post does take about half of that time though.

After I finish this rebuild, I see about tweaking things a bit.

-Rodger

Frakk

10-27-12 03:29 AM

Same Drive, sorry, i couldn't resist

ssjwizard

10-27-12 03:57 AM

@Frakk how to I find that utility?

Anyways, I am doing my first BD encode on my new 8320 @ 4.4Ghz just to get a baseline time, thus far I have to say it definitely seems to be a good bit quicker. Maybe its just the particular chip I got, but I must say I am surprised at how much this chip wants volts in comparison to the 8120 I had.

Hilight

10-27-12 07:41 AM

I dropped by newegg this evening and found the 8350 is already sold out...looks like they're doing well so far in terms of sales

marjamar

10-27-12 01:10 PM

That's good. I do alot of video (personal and business) so I need fast encode speeds (and a whole lot of storage).

-Rodger

marjamar

10-27-12 01:13 PM

Boy, popped my bubble pretty quick there fella

Gotta find that boot speed utility and see if I can beat your time now

-Rodger

Frakk

10-28-12 12:50 AM

Its here for anyone who wants to chalange me

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...ot-timer.shtml

petteyg359

10-28-12 01:31 AM

I prefer a nice stopwatch. I don't trust random executable files that hook that deep into the boot process of Windows You should be able to pull timestamps from Event Log to figure out how long it took, but I'm not sure if Windows would provide a sane feature like logging startup events...

woboy

10-28-12 02:54 AM

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/artic...PU-Review/1657

Frakk

10-28-12 03:08 AM

Thats a strange review, They are using a locked i5 3470 (3.2Ghz) to compare with an unlocked CPU and they have the 3470 way out ahead of the 2500K (3.3Ghz).

They conclude the i5 3470 is the best CPU despite the fact that its also locked.

ssjwizard

10-28-12 04:21 AM

Untweaked, 3.9Ghz 8320 on 990FXa-UD3 = 11.59 with samsung 830 256Gb not bad.

petteyg359

10-28-12 05:42 AM

Possibly a typo, but one that really ought not to have been missed in proof-reading. That should be 8 GB/s.

Um... is that a "we're going to come right out and admit that we're biased here"?

RGone

10-28-12 11:11 AM

A considerable difference between the phrasing: "we believe they will buy" and saying we believe they should buy.

TeknoBug

10-28-12 01:41 PM

Impressive, I remember Win 7 booting up in ~12 seconds on my 80GB SSD, but I run Win 7 off my 1TB HDD now. Linux boots in 6 seconds on the SSD now.

I also played Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the SSD, maps on the HDD loaded over 60 seconds but on the SSD it loaded in 10 seconds, good benefit gain.

Frakk

10-28-12 02:50 PM

Thats pretty good.

JohnnyBravo

10-28-12 08:39 PM

Nice review!!

hax0red

10-28-12 08:48 PM

Boot time with i5-3570k overclocked 18.6 seconds. Link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jf381zffrpc4736/boottime.jpg

I have an Asus maximus v gene that allows you to set the bios page display time (1s) which helps reduce boot time even further. I can completely reboot in about 25-28 seconds. SSD is a samsung 830 and ram is samsung green overclocked to 2200mhz for this test, normally set to 2400mhz for gaming (but boots are in consistent and sometimes needs to be reset a few times).

mjw21a

10-29-12 12:17 AM

Nope, your boot speed is way ahead of mine.... Though I've had features of Windows not working for some time. I just can't be bothered reinstalling untill its completely borked

petteyg359

10-29-12 02:03 AM

I've measured time on my XPS laptop at 12 seconds (from hitting enter at GRUB to login screen). I won't be home until Christmas, so I can't try this drive on an 8350 until then

hax0red

10-29-12 09:03 AM

I activated my windows which helped me not have to hit "OK" twice after booting. So far my best time is 8.1 seconds:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jf381zffrpc4736/boottime.jpg

warpuck

10-29-12 09:19 PM

Going to get one & bounce it between a MSI 890fx & 990fx mobo just to if buying the Sabertooth makes that much difference. Note, I came close to getting a intel board & cpu but bought a 7870 instead

txus.palacios

10-29-12 09:45 PM

Let's get back on topic guys! We're here to talk about Piledriver, not about boot times!

Being completely honest I want to build one of these. And overclock it. Maybe my 2500k is faster than this processor, but it looks fun.

hax0red

10-29-12 09:50 PM

Thought everyone was comparing Intel to piledriver? Might be lost in translation.

txus.palacios

10-29-12 09:54 PM

Translation can be a PITA most times. I used to translate pages from English to Spanish for fun, and giggled more than once when something was translated literally.

MattNo5ss

10-29-12 09:58 PM

CPU power doesn't seem to have much of an impact on boot time. With an i7 2700K at stock and a 240GB HyperX 3K SSD my boot time was 9.656 seconds in the HyperX 3K review.

wingman99

10-30-12 03:13 AM

What was the boot time with the 2700k overclocked.

txus.palacios

10-30-12 07:24 AM

The bottleneck on boot time is the HDD speed. You can try this setting up a RAMdisk and installing a VM there. Boot time? What boot time?

swampdonkey

10-30-12 07:38 AM

sorry to be nub but what is a RAMdisk??

marjamar

10-30-12 12:31 PM

Sorry... My fault

-Rodger

wingman99

10-30-12 03:09 PM

Dose VM have all the windows initialization programs at start up?

I would think that you would need to install a full copy of windows7.

BigHeadClan

11-01-12 10:08 PM

@marjamar
If my memory hasen't failed me since Univ it's taking a section of your RAM and then treating it like a SSD or HDD, however RAM is currently faster than either and suffers far fewer bottnecks. (feel free to poke fun if I got this wrong)

@Wingman99
He can create an exact copy of his current machine apps, services ect so it should run through the same initilization that his normal system would have + a few more that the VM he's using probably has to deal with.

That said there is probably some gains/losses to be had with running that in a VM due to virtualization.

hokiealumnus

11-29-12 02:38 PM

... Return to article to continue reading.


Better late than never I always say!

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