AMD FX-8150 Pro Reviews

The new Core i7-3770K is a no-brainer if you were considering buying the Core i7-2600K; it costs the same and is faster. It is, however, very important to understand that this processor is targeted to users who will really benefit from additional processing power. We are talking about professionals using the computer for audio and video editing, and 3D rendering. If you want to build a high-end gaming machine, you can save a considerable amount of money by buying a Core i5 processor. As you can see from our results, if you have a high-end CPU, you won’t see any difference in performance by picking a faster and more expensive model. That happens because the video card is the component that dictates gaming performance in this kind of system, considering that you have a mid-range or high-end video card, of course. Therefore, it is a better deal if you pick a more affordable CPU and spend your money on buying a more powerful video card. In addition, if you are an average user who is looking for extra processing power, we believe that the Core i5 will provide you with a better price/performance ratio.

Building a high end processor takes a lot more R&D investment, more man-hours, and reality finally caught up with AMD, they can't compete with a giant like Intel on that level. If they can play it smart and in the future deliver strong mid range processors, not much will change, really. It's been like that for years and there are many users out there quite happy with their previous generation of "mid-range" Phenom II processor, so there's no reason to go after AMD with guns blazing for not launching a new über high end desktop processor. Maybe we should support them in what they know and do best - affordable and fast budget and mid-range processors, because we the users would pay the biggest price if we'd be left with one processor manufacturer. As for the reviewed FX-8150, simply put, it's a long shot from the reputation of what the first generation of Athlon64 FX processor had. It would have been a great CPU if it weren't for Intel's Sandy Bridge, and Ivy Bridge is just around the corner. The price tag on FX-8150 is not that bad actually and it could be the only thing that keeps FX-8150 afloat. If you're into gaming: Inte'ls Core i5 2500K is the way to go, while those spending many hours doing some serious work should look to FX-8150 as an valid option. Core i7 2600K can get you best of both worlds for a few bucks more so FX-8150 needs to stay well below that price segment and fight it off with i5 2500K.

Please keep in mind our game sampling here is very small due to time limitations. Our general take-away from our time with the AMD FX-8150 and gaming is that the game matters when it comes to performance deltas. We played a lot of Battlefield 3 Beta Multiplayer this week, and not once did we feel that any CPU provided an advantage or disadvantage to our gameplay experience. Whether the CPU was running at stock settings, overclocked, or if it was AMD FX-8150 or Intel Core i7 2500K or 2600K, they all let us play BF3 with the same performance and image quality. We need to note some things about BF3 however, we do know that the Beta does not include all the features that the full version game will. BF3 is supposed to utilize DX11 driver multithreading, but it may not be implemented in the Beta version. At the time of testing the max server size was also only 32 player, we have not tested this on a 64 player server. It is entirely possible the full version game will behave differently, but we just don't know yet. When it comes to F1 2011 we also experience absolutely no differences in gameplay experience. CPU frequency did not affect performance, nor did the number of cores. F1 2011 experiences running on the AMD FX-8150, Intel Core i7 2500K, or 2600K were indistinguishable. The only game to show us a drastic difference was Civilization V, and currently we do not know exactly why. Please keep in mind that we finished gameplay testing less than 8 hours before this article was published and we are still looking for solid answers. Civilization V produced the best results when overclocking the CPUs, and overclocking significantly helped the AMD FX-8150 in this game. However, even with overclocking the 8150 was not able to come near to 2600K or 2500K stock performance in Civilization V. If you are a heavy Civilization V player you will simply have a better gameplay experience with Intel Core CPUs, versus the new AMD FX-8150, at this time. Stay tuned as we look further into gaming performance on the AMD FX-8150.

The good news is AMD has a very aggressive roadmap ahead of itself; here's hoping it will be able to execute against it. We all need AMD to succeed. We've seen what happens without a strong AMD as a competitor. We get processors that are artificially limited and severe restrictions on overclocking, particularly at the value end of the segment. We're denied choice simply because there's no other alternative. I don't believe Bulldozer is a strong enough alternative to force Intel back into an ultra competitive mode, but we absolutely need it to be that. I have faith that AMD can pull it off, but there's still a lot of progress that needs to be made. AMD can't simply rely on its GPU architecture superiority to sell APUs; it needs to ramp on the x86 side as well—more specifically, AMD needs better single threaded performance. Bulldozer didn't deliver that, and I'm worried that Piledriver alone won't be enough. But if AMD can stick to a yearly cadence and execute well with each iteration, there's hope. It's no longer a question of whether AMD will return to the days of the Athlon 64, it simply must. Otherwise you can kiss choice goodbye.

AMD's gone down a path with Bulldozer from which there is no turning back, so while there's nothing intrinsically horrible with the FX line of chips, given the price, we feel as if the balancing act of die size, modules, cores, speeds, IPC and power-draw - the facets that define a modern processor - aren't nearly as impressive as we'd hoped for. This line of thinking is underscored by genuinely sub-par performance in older apps. We think Bulldozer will improve as updated benchmarks and compilers begin extracting more performance from the architecture. Honestly, though, that's a dangerous argument on which to base a current purchasing decision. We'd recommend readers carefully weigh up all the options before laying down cold, hard cash.

Considering that the FX-8120 is essentially the same processor as the FX-8150, we will look to it for the FX vs. Core i5 comparison. The FX-8120 costs $205 and it's unlocked -- all FX processors are -- so it can be easily modified to match or exceed the operating specifications of the FX-8150. Therefore we feel the cheaper FX-8120 gives the Core i5-2500K a serious run for its money and it’s a worthy alternative. Meanwhile the FX-6100 is also great value at $165, as it undercuts both the Phenom II X6s but it wasn't always faster. We won't deny it, we really were hoping for a lot more from Bulldozer and AMD's eight-core processors. It's disappointing to find these newly launched processors do little to improve AMD’s situation. The FX processors come short of competing hand to hand with the now 9-months old Sandy Bridge processors, and in certain instances surpass their own Phenom II range. Still, this is just the start for Bulldozer, and there's much more to be seen from the FX range, or so AMD says.

FX processors based on Bulldozer microarchitecture managed to show their strengths only in a small variety of common user tasks. There are very few popular applications, which would generate simple multi-threaded integer load and this is the only case when Bulldozer really performs at its best. As a result, in certain applications the new Bulldozer is not just slower than competitors from Intel, but is even slower than the previous-generation Phenom II X6. And it means that AMD didn’t succeed in launching a revolutionary desktop CPU. In fact, FX is just another Phenom, which looks pretty good especially compared with the predecessors. Overall, FX processors are faster than Phenom II, they overclock much better and consume slightly less power, so they will be a good replacement for the CPUs on old K10 microarchitecture. However I would like to remind you that AMD is competing not only against itself, but also against Intel. Therefore, we have to draw this unwelcome conclusion that FX processors will only be a good choice for those desktop systems that will primarily be used for video processing and transcoding. In all other cases Bulldozer processors, unfortunately, cannot compete against Sandy Bridge. The same is true for power consumption as well as overclocking. I would also like to add that AMD FX processors quite expectedly turned out a poor choice for gamers, because contemporary 3D games barely use true multi-threaded algorithms. However, I am sure that dedicated AMD fans will be able to put up with that, since the fps rate in games is in most cases limited by the graphics card, rather than processor. In other words, the marketing success of the new FX processors will solely depend on two factors: how numerous AMD fan-club is and how smart the company will use their pricing strategies. But either way the desktop Bulldozer-based processors will hardly ever become truly popular.

Linux users will be able to take full advantage of the Bulldozer architecture sooner than Microsoft Windows customers, which will primarily see the real potential when Windows 8 is released. In the Linux world, there's still some Bulldozer kernel work that's not yet merged and presumably more compiler/kernel optimizations coming, but we will hopefully see all of that merged and ready in time for next spring when Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Fedora 17, and other Linux distributions are pushing out their new versions. If you are so inclined, you can always pull the patches yourself, tune your compiler options, and make other tweaks today to take greater advantage of these new AMD processors. The upcoming FX-8150 Linux articles have more revealing information. Another advantage to the Bulldozer CPUs is that they are unlocked and can be overclocked very easily. Hitting around 4.6GHz on the FX-8150 is a breeze, as one of the upcoming articles illustrates, and banging 5GHz is not out of the question at all. Besides the poor performance with single-thread tasks, another disadvantage of the FX-8150 is the price. The launch price of the FX-8150 retail (without water cooling) is $279 USD. This is roughly $60 USD more than the Intel Core i5 2500K "Sandy Bridge", which frequently was faster under Ubuntu Linux.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The sound of Intel's ongoing CPU development cycle has been constantly in the backdrop for its biggest competitor, AMD, ever since the world's largest chipmaker set an aggressive cadence for itself more than five years ago. Since then, Intel has turned over new manufacturing technologies followed by extensively revised CPU architectures in relentless succession. The introduction of Sandy Bridge processors at the beginning of this year put Intel firmly in the lead in terms of overall performance, power efficiency, and the value proposition offered to consumers.

Ultimately, although AMD wasn’t able to overtake Intel with the FX series, this launch is important for the company. It has been over a decade since AMD has completely redesigned its desktop processors. And the company needed a more forward-looking microarchitecture to lay the foundation for the future. Bulldozer may not have been able to put AMD back into the leadership position it was in when the original Athlon and Athlon 64 processors hit the scene, but it may be the launching pad AMD needs to better tweak and optimize its desktop processors moving forward in preparation for the Piledriver, Steamroller, and Excavator microarchitectures AMD has slated for release over the next few years, all of which are reported to offer IPC and frequency ehancements that will increase performance.

Bulldozer is an impressive piece of silicon, but it's not a winner. On balance, it's a better bet than its predecessor, Phenom II, but you'd need to have a very good reason to build an AMD AM3+ system when Intel LGA1155 does such a superb job.

The FX CPU is by no means terrible. It does have a few shortcomings in its architecture that we hope AMD will improve upon. Nonetheless, it can perform solidly in multi-threaded programs and takes the cake in calculations that involve data encryption and integer calculations. It would be a good CPU for people who want the power of a full eight-core chip and do a lot of multi-threaded applications. Due to poorer single-threaded performance, it doesn't perform well in games. Overall, this CPU is better suited towards heavy-threaded productivity, and might be a better choice for those situations. We now await AMD's next iteration of Bulldozer to see how that performs.

The allure of having the "world's first destop 8-core processor" is more than slightly muted by the performance results we saw in our review today. Obviously the Bulldozer design team had to make some decisions years ago that couldn't be easily rolled back but it appears obvious to me at this point that the "2 cores per module" design didn't bring with it the benefits AMD expected. And with the inability for the processors to scale to higher frequencies, the FX series from AMD is left holding promises that it couldn't keep for consumers. The AMD FX processor release really comes down to the one thought: are you willing to give up performance on lightly-threaded everyday applications in hopes of better performance per dollar on highly threaded programs like Handbrake? Even if the answer to that question is yes, Intel's Core i7/i5 line of processors based on Sandy Bridge have competitive solutions that don't require you to give up performance in either direction. Will a system based on the new FX-8150 be competent and competitive while also making for a great gaming machine? It definitely will but is that enough to pull consumers away from the Intel platforms that offer better performance in many areas for similar prices? It is hard to see how it could be.

AMD threatens to make a dent in Intel’s performance leadership with its FX-8150 CPU, the first to use the company’s completely redesigned Bulldozer core architecture, but stumbles in a few key areas.

We can summarize the AMD FX-8150 in one word: “disappointment.” We expected much more from this eight-core CPU based on the highly anticipated “Bulldozer” architecture. The FX-8150 was faster than the Core i5-2500K in only a few situations, and the performance difference was not so high as to justify the higher price you will have to pay to bring this new AMD processor home. So, unless you are a die-hard AMD fanboy, we think it is hard to recommend this CPU.

We can't help but feel disappointed with the lack of performance progress the FX-8150 represents. It's not a bad chip, but we wanted more.

AMD fans have been awaiting the Bulldozer for months, and while it represents a significant performance improvement over Thuban, I'm disappointed with its overall performance, especially the memory bandwidth and single-core performance. Prior to Sandy Bridge, the FX-8150 would have been a very competitive processor; now, the best you can say is that performance-wise it's as good, overall, as a Core i5 2500K. Except that the Intel processor costs about $35 less: and that's a sore point, because historically AMD processors tend to beat Intel in a "bang for the buck" competition due to their lower prices.

At the end of the day the AMD FX-8150 looks to be an interesting processor. It isn't a home run that puts AMD back on top, but the bones of processor look to be pretty solid. AMD is headed in the right direction, but they haven't managed to 'Bulldoze' Intel by any means.

Whether or not we’re correct about Bulldozer really being a server and workstation CPU, it’s terribly unsuited to the kinds of software we’re currently using on consumer PCs. Worse still, it merely had mediocre performance in well-threaded desktop applications that should have played to the more parallel design of the CPU. We had no idea whether Bulldozer would be good, bad or indifferent, so we urged caution. Turns out we were right: the FX-8150 is a stinker.

Priced at $245 for launch, the FX-8150 appears to cost a bit much for the price/performance tag that it delivers initially. Comparing clock-to-clock, the 1090 and 1100T offer a better value when core-count is not a factor. The new feature sets will help drive performance in applications that use them, but keep in mind that the current state is not the future state – future state looks brighter than the current picture. Throughout the launch presentations, gaming performance was touted as a way to add value to the buy-in of a new system. When testing at common gaming resolutions, however, we see the GPU as more of a limitation than the CPU in most cases. The future state will allow games to take advantage of the additional cores and drive performance, but it really is not something I currently see in my testing – a 1.5 to 2 FPS difference is really not going to be felt or seen during gameplay.

AMD made us wait for Bulldozer, but on the evidence of this first outing we can't say it's been worth it. It's not as fast as its direct rivals, yet will cost you more. When it comes to desktop processors, Intel still holds all the cards.

AMD's first "Bulldozer" processor has eight cores, but its performance can't match Intel's pricier Core i7 CPUs. Still, it's a forward-looking, good-value CPU for heavy use with multi-threaded apps.

It's great news to see a new core architecture from AMD after four years, but the Bulldozer-based FX-8150 isn't as quick as we'd hoped. The main problem is that each individual core isn't as fast as each individual core in Intel's Sandy Bridge processors, leading to slower overall performance in our benchmarks. Part of the issue is that most software isn't written to take advantage of so many cores, so it's hard to push this processor to its limits. Running two sets of our benchmarks at once to push the processor showed it could be faster than its Intel rival when all cores have to be used, but this is unlikely to happen in everyday use. Given that you need to buy a new motherboard to use the Bulldozer chips, you may as well buy an Intel Sandy Bridge motherboard and processor.

AMD are quick to boast that Zambezi has two 2 additional cores, a huge chunk of cache, and a lot more megahertz than the competition, but at the moment it doesn't seem like they have been able to squeeze much extra performance from all those bits and bobbles. As it stands, in most instances, AMD are lagging behind Intel when it comes to performance per dollar, performance per watt and performance per square millimeter of die space.

In the very best-case scenario, when you can throw a ton of work at the FX and fully utilize its eight integer cores, it generally falls in between Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K—which is where it should appear all of the time given a price tag between those two most relevant competitors. Sometimes FX manages to outperform the higher-end -2600K, but other times it’s embarrassingly bested by its predecessor in threaded workloads.