AMD FX-8120 Pro Reviews

Sadly, its more of the same bad news for AMD or anyone with a Socket AM3+ motherboard looking for a decent CPU for around the £150 mark. The FX-8120 just isn't a good choice when it comes to the kind of applications we run on our PCs. It's regularly outpaced by far cheaper Intel dual-core CPUs, while the similarly-priced Intel Core i5-2400 is significantly faster in many of our tests. It's not all bad news for AMD - before we get accused of being biased towards Intel, we have no qualms recommending the A8-3870K for those looking to build a budget gaming PC, while we also recommend many of its graphics cards. As it stands, the FX-8120 will have to be a lot cheaper for it to be worth considering over an equivalently-priced Intel setup, while owners of the Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition can rest assured that there aren't any worthwhile upgrades yet.

It's a niche product and Intel's processors are generally faster, but this good-value Bulldozer chip is still the king of multitasking

It turns out that the only one who may benefit from the upcoming migration from Phenom II to the new FX family is AMD. Bulldozer microarchitecture allows the company to stop using old manufacturing process for their semiconductor dies and move on to the new cores with lower production cost. However, the end users won’t win in this situation. FX CPUs that are coming to replace the good old Phenom II processors are not faster or cheaper than their predecessors. Therefore, until processors on new Piledriver microarchitecture come out, the new FX are of no real interest to AMD fans and Phenom II owners. FX CPUs are also hardly appealing for the new systems: Intel’s Core i5 and Core i3 processors can offer better combination of price and performance in a wide range of tasks with only a few exceptions such as video transcoding in x264 codec and selected 3D rendering applications. So, we can’t recommend getting involved with the new FX CPUs from AMD at least until they revise their pricing. And even though there are claims that desktop Bulldozer processors are selling pretty well, we can’t imagine who could really be investing their hard-earned cash into these products.

I think this processor is a total waste of money and that if you are still using at least a quad core Phenom II, you are better off keeping what you’ve got than going with a new Bulldozer. Don’t get me wrong. I still think AMD has a place in this market. That place just happens to be a few rungs lower now with the release of their Bulldozer processors.