FRONTPAGE AMD FX-8350 - Piledriver - CPU Review

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Ivy said:

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.

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 CPU. Unless i have some need for a combined approach, such as a APU where AMD seems to be strong in several spots.

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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.

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

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

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

txus.palacios said:

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".

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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.

I.M.O.G. said:

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_namegt_cpu_frequency_fx_8350_8176.5_mhz

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

Hilight said:

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

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Sweet. That's pretty cool.

I.M.O.G. said:

Sweet. That's pretty cool.

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its cuz hokie is da baws

hokiealumnus said:

Hmm. For a primarily gaming system, you may want to stick with what you've got. Take a look at Hardware Canucks' results.

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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

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?

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

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.

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