Wednesday, October 12th 2011

Review Consensus: AMD FX Processor 8150 Underwhelming

It's been in the works for over three years now. That's right, the first we heard of "Bulldozer" as a processor architecture under development was shortly after the launch of "Barcelona" K10 architecture. Granted, it wasn't possible to load close to 2 billion transistors on the silicon fab technology AMD had at the time, but AMD had a clear window over the last year to at least paper-launch the AMD FX. Delays and bad marketing may have cost AMD dearly in shaping up the product for the market.

After drawing a consensus from about 25 reviews (links in Today's Reviews on the front page), it emerges that:
  • AMD FX-8150 is missing its performance expectations by a fair margin. Not to mention performance gains in its own presentation, these expectations were built up by how AMD was shaping the product to be a full-fledged enthusiast product with significant performance gains over the previous generation
  • AMD ill-marketed the FX-8150. Hype is a double-edged sword, and should not be used if you're not confident your offering will live up to at least most of the hype. AMD marketed at least the top-tier FX-8000 series eight-core processors as the second coming of Athlon64 FX.
  • FX-8150 launch isn't backed up by launch of other AMD FX processors. This could go on to become a blunder. The presence of other FX series processors such as the FX-8120, six-core and four-core FX processors could have at least made the price performance charts look better, given that all FX processors are unlocked, buyers could see the value in buying them to overclock. TweakTown took a closer look into this.
  • There are no significant clock-for-clock improvements over even AMD's own previous generation. The FX-8150 drags its feet behind the Phenom II X6 1100T in single-threaded math benchmarks such as Super/HyperPi, the picture isn't any better with Cinebench single-threaded, either.
  • Multi-threaded data streaming applications such as data compression (WINRAR, 7-ZIP) reveal the FX-8150 to catch up with competition from even the Core i7-2600K. This trend keeps up with popular video encoding benchmarks such as Handbrake and x264 HD.
  • Load power draw is bad, by today's standards. It's not like AMD is lagging behind in silicon fabrication technologies, or the engineering potential that turned around AMD Radeon power consumption figures over generations.
  • Price could be a major saving grace. In the end, AMD FX 8150 has an acceptable price-performance figure. At just $25 over the Core i5-2500K, the FX-8150 offers a good performance lead.
  • Impressive overclocking potential. We weren't exactly in awe when AMD announced its Guinness Record-breaking overclocking feat, but reviewers across the board have noticed fairly good overclocking potential and performance scaling.
In all, AMD FX-8150 has almost become another example to cite at a marketing class, of how to effectively handle hype. It is sure to underwhelm some. If it's any compensation, Duke Nukem Forever is still the most underwhelming development this year for the gamer-overclocker community.
Add your own comment

450 Comments on Review Consensus: AMD FX Processor 8150 Underwhelming

#201
Super XP
I do admire AMD for trying something new in terms of innovation, but shit who was sleeping on the job? Can this be the reason why they canned Dirk Meyer? I think somebody else asked this question.

So I have the ASUS Crosshair V Formula, bought it for real cheap, on sale. After seeing all the reviews, I plan on waiting until FX prices hit super low for it to be worth an upgrade from my system right now.

Is there any reviews where they JACK UP the NB clock speed super high? Can Bulldozer benefit from this, seeing how the CPU increase does nothing :shadedshu
Posted on Reply
#202
v12dock
Block Caption of Rainey Street
New CEO kicking someone in the nuts?
Posted on Reply
#203
tilldeath
Am I missing something here? Don't you think a million dollar company and the only competing company for intel would have ran some tests and seen the performance? I think so too! So either AMD is F***ing retarted or they had a plan. I'm going with the second since as someone already stated earlier the benchmarks are not from retail samples. I also will reiterate my point. These benchmarks are useless without the final BIOS and program updates for the final release of the cpu. Even Windows has an update comming out for it. So before I dig my self too deep of a hole I ask again. Am I missing something here?:confused:
Posted on Reply
#204
CDdude55
Crazy 4 TPU!!!
Super XPI do admire AMD for trying something new in terms of innovation, but shit who was sleeping on the job? Can this be the reason why they canned Dirk Meyer? I think somebody else asked this question.

So I have the ASUS Crosshair V Formula, bought it for real cheap, on sale. After seeing all the reviews, I plan on waiting until FX prices hit super low for it to be worth an upgrade from my system right now.

Is there any reviews where they JACK UP the NB clock speed super high? Can Bulldozer benefit from this, seeing how the CPU increase does nothing :shadedshu
Bought a Gigabyte 990FX-UD3 board in anticipation of Bulldozer, im staying with the platfrom but im going to wait for either the second generation or Bulldozer or i'll wait and see if they release some more first gen Bulldozer chips that actually perform decently(I'm hearing the FX 8170).

Until then im just gonna grab a GTX 570 and keep my X6 1055T.
Posted on Reply
#205
Super XP
Here is a great QUOTE off AnandTech...
. 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.

O.K. I heard AMD is having a problem with the Scheduler and/or the Crossbar via Bulldozer, it needs more time to tweak the design. How much time I don't know. Can we get confirmation about this new info?
Posted on Reply
#206
pantherx12
CDdude55Bought a Gigabyte 990FX-UD3 board in anticipation of Bulldozer,
Snap!

Such a waste of money :laugh: £120 for a board that for now does nothing more than my £35 Asrock board.

(Having said that, I have been able to enable turbo boost with my core already at 3.64 so I can 3.9 for single threaded apps and the like)

Turbo core crashed the other board ( only 4+1 phase so couldn't hack it)
Posted on Reply
#207
ShiBDiB
I'm still happy with my 775 board and q9550... does everything I need it to do
Posted on Reply
#209
CDdude55
Crazy 4 TPU!!!
pantherx12Snap!

Such a waste of money :laugh: £120 for a board that for now does nothing more than my £35 Asrock board.
Not true

It was cheap (only $150), Bulldozer ready/AM3+, 990FX chipset, Supports both SLI and Crossfire X which your board doesn't do, your board only has a single PCI-e slot that provides full bandwidth, and the other is only x4. Ive got SATA III you've got SATA II only, ive got multiple USB 3.0 ports and USB 2.0 ports, you have only have 4 full USB 2.0 ports and the list goes on.

And the best part is that it doesn't look like your board lol:



Not to be rude, just saying their different in many aspects.
Posted on Reply
#210
LordJummy
tilldeathAm I missing something here? Don't you think a million dollar company and the only competing company for intel would have ran some tests and seen the performance? I think so too! So either AMD is F***ing retarted or they had a plan. I'm going with the second since as someone already stated earlier the benchmarks are not from retail samples. I also will reiterate my point. These benchmarks are useless without the final BIOS and program updates for the final release of the cpu. Even Windows has an update comming out for it. So before I dig my self too deep of a hole I ask again. Am I missing something here?:confused:
Do you really think AMD would provide samples to those sites for benchmarks if they were any worse than the retail models. Why would they do that? Why would they want the initial reviews to look so bad? They HAD to have known the performance levels. I am pretty sure it indicates exactly the same performance the retail over the counter chips will have.

I wouldn't cling on to the notion that the ES are total shit and the retail chips will magically be way more powerful. AMD would have held off on sending chips if that were the case I would think. Especially with all the hype surrounding this.
ShiBDiBI'm still happy with my 775 board and q9550... does everything I need it to do
Irrelevant to topic?
Posted on Reply
#212
pantherx12
CDdude55Not true

It was cheap (only $150), Bulldozer ready/AM3+, 990FX chipset, Supports both SLI and Crossfire X which your board doesn't do, your board only has a single PCI-e slot that provides full bandwidth, and the other is only x4. Ive got SATA III you've got SATA II only, ive got multiple USB 3.0 ports and USB 2.0 ports, you have only have 4 full USB 2.0 ports and the list goes on.

And the best part is that it doesn't look like your board lol:

www.asrock.com/mb/photo/M3A770DE.jpg

Not to be rude, just saying their different in many aspects.
That's why I said for now dude :P

I have NOTHING that takes advantage of the new features :roll:

My computer is a little bit prettier but aside from that it's the same speed as before etc.
Posted on Reply
#214
CDdude55
Crazy 4 TPU!!!
pantherx12That's why I said for now dude :P

I have NOTHING that takes advantage of the new features :roll:

My computer is a little bit prettier but aside from that it's the same speed as before etc.
Ahh, that's true. Skipped over the ''for now'' part lol. :o
Posted on Reply
#215
Super XP
LAN_deRf_HADa fuck is this www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.739582
You guys haven't heard? Intel released a socket bracket attachment so you can plug in a Bulldozer into an Intel mobo and call it a day.
Newegg.com cannot guarantee the compatibility of Combo items.
No really, Hardocp did a Clock for Clock gaming benchmark(s) and it seems Bulldozer looked like it was on par with Intel CPU's but only in high res gaming. Didn't show the Phenom II's performance though.
LINK:
hardocp.com/article/2011/10/11/amd_bulldozer_fx8150_gameplay_performance_review/1
Posted on Reply
#216
Super XP
Benchmarkreviews
benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=831&Itemid=63&limit=1&limitstart=16
As I showed in the single-core section, the performance of a Bulldozer core is not significantly better than the performance of the older AMD Thuban core, and both are far behind a Sandy Bridge core, so AMD's banking on keeping all eight cores filled to get the best performance. And indeed the FX-8150 can return excellent performance in these cases, although the performance improvement is less than what you might expect given the extra cores. And if software vendors upgrade their products to use the new instructions AMD has integrated into Bulldozer, its performance will improve more.

AMD claims the Windows 7 thread scheduler doesn't make the best use of Bulldozer's architecture, and says that we can expect a 10-15% performance improvement when Windows 8 ships. Also, Bulldozer is just the first in a line of new processors: in the coming years we'll see Piledriver (2012), Steamroller (2013) and Excavator (2014), each of which AMD says will bring improvements in performance-per-watt and instructions-per-clock.
Posted on Reply
#217
techtard
ShiBDiBIf only techtard's will die....

How does it performing badly when compared to older chips on the same software make it the softwares fault.. AMD went all in with a 7-2 off suit and their paying for it with awful performance.
I have openly stated that I am probably going Intel next build.
I am not an AMD fanboy, I am just pointing out some facts.
This product did suffer from a killer overdose of Hype. The fanbois were responsible for that.

And, it's not as bad as everyone thinks when you take a step back and look at the big picture. Sure, it's dissapointing that they didn't perform better. Even LOL-worthy in a morbid way how they actually lost IPC compared to their older product.

This CPU was built for heavilly multithreaded apps. Windows 7 and most consumer software and games are not optimized for heavy multithreading. Right now multi-core support is still in its infancy for consumers. That's not being an apologist or fanboy defending their sacred cow. That's a fact.

We likely won't see any improvements until they ditch XP, 32-bit, Xbox360 compatability and all other legacy garbage.

If you weren't so emotionally attached to one companies product, you would see that many of the users here have been pretty objective.
Posted on Reply
#218
TRWOV
Well, I'll just skip AM3+ and wait for FM2. I survived many years on my C2D E4600 + X1950PRO rig, I think I can wait until next year with my current i3 build.

Hopefully the Bulldozer architecture will be more mature and supported in software by then.
Posted on Reply
#219
Unregistered
Super XPYou guys haven't heard? Intel released a socket bracket attachment so you can plug in a Bulldozer into an Intel mobo and call it a day.


No really, Hardocp did a Clock for Clock gaming benchmark(s) and it seems Bulldozer looked like it was on par with Intel CPU's but only in high res gaming. Didn't show the Phenom II's performance though.
LINK:
hardocp.com/article/2011/10/11/amd_bulldozer_fx8150_gameplay_performance_review/1
I seen that earlier and thought hmmm Wow I can get a I2500k for $179 F&ck AMD at $279
and I now consider myself a reformed ex AMD FANBOI....not saying I wont buy their products cause I will.....but I'll never wait for em again.
Posted on Edit | Reply
#220
Super XP
Interesting....
We can hope that Windows 8 and upgraded applications and utilities that use the new FX instructions will make it more competitive, and I'd expect these things right about the time Ivy Bridge become available.

Pros:
+ First consumer eight-core processor
+ Officially supports 4GHz-plus turbo speeds and DDR3-1866 memory
+ An FX system has 42 PCI-E lanes as opposed to the 24 lanes of a Sandy Bridge system
+ 990FX chipset supports NVIDIA SLI. Finally.
+ AMD finally has a 32nm processor with good overclocking

Cons:
- Requires a new Socket AM3+ motherboard
- Single core performance has remained static
- Full performance requires Windows 8 system and applications that use its new instructions
- Overall similar performance to Core i5 2500K, but at a higher price

Ratings:
•Performance: 8.00
•Construction: 9.00
•Overclock: 9.50
•Functionality: 8.50
• Value: 8.00
Final Score: 8.60 out of 10.
benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=831&Itemid=63&limit=1&limitstart=17
Posted on Reply
#221
ViperXTR
TRWOVWell, I'll just skip AM3+ and wait for FM2. I survived many years on my C2D E4600 + X1950PRO rig, I think I can wait until next year with my current i3 build.

Hopefully the Bulldozer architecture will be more mature and supported in software by then.
Wee, a fellow i3 2100 user :D

*meanwhile, searches for some AMD Athlon64 FX vs Pentium 4 Extreme Edition tests >_>
Posted on Reply
#223
A Cheese Danish
It appears I will go with an AM3 setup instead of Bulldozer. What a shame :(
Posted on Reply
#224
[H]@RD5TUFF
I think at this point AMD is just glad they are phasing them out at the end of 2012.
Posted on Reply
#225
buggalugs
AMD seems satisfied to be second best. BUlldozer CPUs will drop in price in the next couple of months, making them more attractive to some people.
Posted on Reply
Add your own comment
Apr 25th, 2024 18:55 EDT change timezone

New Forum Posts

Popular Reviews

Controversial News Posts