AMD FX Retail Lineup, Coolers and Motherboard Support
AMD FX Processors
The new AMD FX processors launching today include a host of options for a variety of price ranges, all of which fall UNDER $245. While that is great news for users that want to see some high core counts for an entry cost, it should indicate to us where the performance will fall as well.
The FX-8000 series are all processors with 4 modules and 8 cores enabled starting with the high-end model we are reviewing today, the FX-8150 with a base clock of 3.6 GHz and a top Turbo Core speed of 4.2 GHz. The FX-6000 series (currently including only the FX-6100) are 3 module / 6 core entries and then obviously the FX-4000 series is a quad-core offering.
The lowest TDP on the available parts is 95 watts which is really pretty high for the FX-4000 parts that are technically using just over half of the die space.
Only the parts in the table above are going to be available today on the initial FX processor roll out with the addition of the FX-4100 that will be priced at $115. Also, the FX-6100 will in fact start at $165, not the $175 indicated above.
So, with prices of $245 and $205 for 8-core CPUs and $165 for a 6-core, that pits the new FX lineup against Intel’s Core i7-2600K ($314), i5-2500K ($219) and the i5-2400 ($189).
The AMD FX processors are 942-pin CPUs that require the new AM3+ motherboard socket found on the 990FX motherboards. You will still need to check with your board vendor for official support for the Bulldozer-based parts though and update the BIOS before hand if you can! The die size of a full 4 module / 8-core AMD FX processor is 315 mm2 and the transistor count is up to an incredible 2 billion! Much of that is thanks to the large L2 cache, a total of 8MB, 2MB dedicated to each of the four modules, and the 8MB of shared L3 cache as well.
Update 12/2/11: An interesting bit of information came to us from AMD stating that in fact the transistor count of a full Bulldozer processor was not the 2 billion listed above (and in AMD’s material sheets used by the press) but instead was ~1.2 billion. The difference between these two calculations is HUGE (66%) and AMD’s response of why (simple miscalculation) leaves us scratching our head as to how they could be SO WRONG. Regardless I guess, this seems to be the new answer and with a transistor count of 1.2B the Bulldozer efficiency seems a bit more in-line with expectations.
For those of you interested in overclocking, you should know that the AMD FX parts are all completely unlocked and allow for full multiplier control in the BIOS. More on that in our overclocking section!
What’s with the cooler?
There has been a lot of discussion about what cooler will or will not ship with the AMD FX processors. I can tell you for certain now that all retail box versions of the processor will ship with a cooler of some kind. Most will come with your standard PIB AMD-style cooler that will adequately work for most standard use cases (but not for overclocking). For users that want a little more for their setup, AMD is going to offer a water cooled package as well:
Built by Asetek, the self-containted water cooler is very similar to others we have seen on the market in the past year or so from Corsair, CoolIt, etc. We didn’t get the new cooler in time to actually test using it (our overclocking was done with the Corsair H100) but I imagine the results will be similar to what you have seen otherwise.
It is an interesting discussion point here: did AMD decide to include this to be unique or do they really NEED this type of cooling to allow for overclocking past the 4.2 GHz Turbo Core clock speed? I’ll discuss later in the review on my overclocking results.
Motherboard Support – You May Already Own One
Another selling point for Bulldozer and the AMD FX brand of processors in the lead up to release was that current selling AMD 990FX based motherboards were likely to be compatible with the new CPUs released today. We have seen 990FX motherboards on the market since the May/June time frame and as far as we can tell, many of them support Bulldozer out of the gate.
Our testing for this review was done on an ASUS Crosshair V Formula motherboard based on this very same chipset and platform design. Josh should have a full review of that board up very soon!
I’m more interested in the
I’m more interested in the performance with a virtual environment. How does it perform with VM, VirtualBox, Hyper-Visor, etc? From a cost point view will it handle my needs or should I spend the extra $$$$ for intel? Thanks
1st, thanks for testing and
1st, thanks for testing and showing a Core2Quad in your review… many people still have the Core2Duo/Quads as they pretty much put Intel on the map again a few years ago and are still to this day very good CPU’s.
I have a Q9550 @ 4Ghz on hair and its perfect.
2nd, but disappointed with the gaming benchmarks and reviewing.
Because you used very few games and you also used only 1x video card.
What the results show is a GPU limitation and are not really testing the CPU.
This kind of testing only shows 1 thing which is pretty damn obvious, that at high resolutions and settings in games even a single GTX580 is limited, the CPU is idling.
These tests do not show the strengths and weaknesses of a CPU as the CPU is not working hard at all (gpu limit).
You either need to lower resolution to show how well the various games use the cores and respond to different CPU’s or use SLI/Crossfire cards/setups which DO often put A LOT more stress on the CPU and separate the sheep from the lions 🙂
Please do SLI or Crossfire testing and lets see how this CPU holds up!
Have you used the supplied
Have you used the supplied ASUS motherboard that was supplied as part of a kit from AMD? If so there might be some issues related to the MB. Post below.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/315775-10-asus-crosshair-giving-biased-results-bulldozer
There is some information that the Asus crosshair is not performing as well. Two sites used other motherboards, AsRock as well as Gigabyte Motherboards, and showed much different picture of performance.
I would really like to see a verification from my trusted site.
I guess I’ll ask around, but
I guess I’ll ask around, but I am about 99.99% sure that the motherboard isn’t making a big difference here. If the large majority of sites saw the same results and none of us thought anything fishy was going on, chance are it wasn’t.
But like I said, I can test another board from MSI or Gigabyte after the weekend when I return home.
I belive that AMD might be
I belive that AMD might be holding out a little here.
Think about it long term, AMD (unless I am misinformed) Have stopped production on everything that doesnt use the new bulldozer design. I think they did it a while ago.
Now they have these Bulldozers comming in equal to the Phenom 2 x6’s. Piledriver is due out Q1 next year, I’m thinking that either-
Bulldozer is ment to replace all current AMD chips, This brings all AMD users upto the same platform (AM3+) And all there factories can focus on streamlining the manufacturing of these new FX models. And then Piledriver will come in, replacing the FX8150 as the flagship and be so far up intels smoke pipe, that they sit there and think WTF just happend here.
OR
AMD scrapped all previouse AM3/AM2+/AM2 munufacturing stated making these, then relized sommin was up and they were not performing, so to buy themselfs some time, they release these (witch arnt bad, there not great but not bad either)And are now working there asses off perfecting it with piledriver, letting intel snigger for the moment, As AMD Have another Athlon 64 up there sleave they just need to fix the kinks.
Or option 3
AMD cpu devision is now run by trained chimps and AMD cpu devision is about to sink.
Option 4
AMD realise the real
Option 4
AMD realise the real sustainable money is in servers. Everything about the Bulldozer points to AMD migrating slowly from client to server. You really think AMD’s plan to bring out a great CPU for gamers was to go for an 8 core model when games just aren’t that well threaded and that’s likely to be the case for years to come?
The marketing spin from AMD is transparent to anyone that knows tech. They’re trying to sell you A CPU that’s transitioning over to being a full on server design. Massively threaded, just what the server world wants.
I think they have a good few years yet of trying to squeeze every last bit of profit out of the value market, the gamers and the enthusiasts but their plan appears to be simple. Slowly increase the clock speed of Bulldozer over the next x years and make a real play for the high end server market.
Think about it this way, AMD is a small company compared to Intel. It doesn’t have the resources to develop CPU’s that will win big in all the different markets CPU’s play in. So why not try and sell server CPU’s to the clueless, use the bad parts to sell to the value market and with all real resources focused on making the best server CPU’s. They can beat Intel on price and Intel can do nothing but lower prices to compete, something they’ve never wanted to do in the server space.
It’s interesting watching this play out. All this nonsense about compilers and Windows 8 unleashing the true power of Bulldozer. The real story for me here is how AMD has managed to convince at least two markets that its making CPU’s for them with just a little spin when in reality its passing off its R&D to gamers and enthusiasts (AMD knew it would take several years to build up to really fast server class CPU’s that are massively parallel, why not sell that research along the way as Bulldozer FX-8150, the 8 core super CPU for a new generation!) Finally using its failures at the factory to supply the value market with a few cores, they don’t need more and its pretty much free money to keep the server machine fueled.
It’s pure genius really if you stop and look at the big picture. Pretty crappy for the AMD fans that have supported then all these years but maybe the moral there is, don’t think of huge corporations as your best friend, heh.
http://www.hardwareheaven.com
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1285/pg1/amd-fx-8150-black-edition-8-core-processor-vs-core-i7-2600k-review-introduction.html
these guy gained some!
asus board are am3 and fx are am3+
also cpugpu against cpu(i72600k vs fx-8150)
come on if there are not cpu then all website shouldnt do benchmark gees not compared a cpugpu vs a cpu.it doesnt make sense.
i cant enumerate all the stuff but sufice it say that most of the banchmark on the web are bogus,hardwareheaven didnt use the amd kit but they still compared it to the i7 2600k lol so in the end even if they got better number it is still useless data .
i sure hope website compare happle with apple gees like the i7 960 to 990 serie they are cpu no cpugpu!
I suspect its a mere problem
I suspect its a mere problem of the software having to catch up with the hardware. It took quite some time before the AMD64 even had 64-bit software to run, and initial tests had 32-bit equivalents spanking the 64-bit systems.
Bad hardware, no just bad programming.
AMD went out on a limb with a completely new architecture. intel is just squeezing what’s left out of core2.
The way I look at it is this.
The way I look at it is this. Soon your pc will be gone and you will be running your monitors off of thin clients. So if amd can beef up their cpu’s to run several thin clients even in a gaming way, then they will be way ahead and everyone will be looking back at them thinking, wow amd was right on the money with switching to 8+ core CPUs especially since most games get their speed from gpus anyway these days. Dunno just a thought.
I can just imagine everyone having a main server in their house. I am already in the process of setting that up as we speak. Still in the planning stage, but I think it only makes sense, outside of my gaming rig that is. Just need to figure out a few details. But I am thinking I may use the bulldozer as the CPU in the server unless something else comes out that’s better by then. My house is already hardwired with cat5 in everyroom so it makes sense to me unless anyone else has a better suggestion.
Its just a matter of time
Its just a matter of time when AMD will regain the king of the hill where Intel has already been since C2D. But will the water turns its tide if Intel has already washed every shore of opportunity with their vast amount of resources. Let’s face it, even though this chip seems to be a failure, it had opened up a whole new thing on the computer world. Multi-threading is the thing of the past, “Multi-Core” functionality is soon to rise. Let us be thankful that a company such as AMD has the guts to restructure the processor, that we can see new insight coming out of it. Bulldozer may not compete with the SB i5 and i7 but it will give software developers specially Microsoft the idea to utilize those monstrous 8 core chip for a better performing computer. Remember “two is better than one”, time will come when computers will recognize that 1 is not 2, more sensible.
But some thing we need to
But some thing we need to keep in mind 8 core will be only fully support by windows 8 right now amd and microsoft working hand in hand to place a patch for at least bost the 8 core in windows 7
There’s a patch for all
There’s a patch for all Windows out already its called Linux!
Well I can say one thing
Well I can say one thing after looking at how many programs are compiled, most are optimized with Intel’s instrution set and not amd’s AMD has it’s own set of CPU instruction for the FX chip and as of yet no… programs or benchmarks writen with them compiled. with the ne MSVC 2011 the AMD instrutions will be avalible for DEV’s but will take some time to get on the market.
Need to correct myself
Need to correct myself windows 8 preview does have some of the AMD instrution precompiled.
people bash on AMD to much,
people bash on AMD to much, it really isn’t that bad, its mainly for multi-purpose for doing many things all at once on one computer. AMD is so much better then intel in that section,
understand that intel has a set standard so its easy to work with. You can overclock but its not really meant for that,
Amd is meant for overclocking, i don’t know a single AMD product that’s not overclocked, and what I’ve notice when I’ve done test with an AMD product is that the more i have on my screen the fast it gets. AMD is a product that needs to be worked, while intel has that set standard, and my test with intel is that the more i have and do on my screen the slower it gets, but i do considered intel to have the advantage cause people want that set standard because if intel is working at 80% it’ll stay there while AMD will be at 70% and needs to be worked to get there so if u want AMD to work faster open up a lot of pages and start working it
if your looking for just gaming intel is the way to go, but if your cool and do a bunch of other stuff AMD is for you
and i would recommend gtx graphics cards there best in my opinion but i haven’t worked with AMD graphics cards so i cant give a comment on that its just what i us
Sir,
I want new PC for
Sir,
I want new PC for animation, graphics designing purpose. I am not that technically sound. Someone suggested me FX 8150. Can u help me?
Just to throw in a comment
Just to throw in a comment that is a bit special-case, but certainly matters to me. I’ve been writing a 3D game/simulation engine for a while now, and all of a sudden I notice my linux computer (with FX8150) was much faster than my windoze computer (with slightly older 4-core phenom2 CPU at same clock speed).
When I tracked down the reason, it was because the older phenom2 cannot execute the 256-bit AVX/FMA instructions. I have 32-bit and 64-bit versions of key SIMD assembly-language routines, and the 256-bit AVC/FMA versions are almost twice as fast! Since they are fairly key routines, this one advantage of the FX8150 (AVX/FMA), makes a huge difference to me!
I just bought a new motherboard and another FX8150 for my windoze computer, so it is on a level playing field with my linux system.
PS: From my perspective, 64-bit SIMD with 16 ymm registers and AVX/FMA instructions is a BIG deal. True, many people couldn’t care less, and many application that could benefit – haven’t been rewritten to take advantage of these new instructions.
Oh, and BTW, the speed comparison on these routines between my assembly-language routines and compiled C code with optimization turned up to maximum is hilarious — as in 6 to 12 times faster!
Comparisons are invalid
Comparisons are invalid unless you use 1866 memory with the 8150. The 1090 does not support 1866. Why would you dumb down for a comparison when you could show the 8150 with 1866 vs a 1090 with 1333… why not show the best they both can do?
A major advantage of the 8150 is the ability to run faster memory.