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:
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.
450 Comments on Review Consensus: AMD FX Processor 8150 Underwhelming
www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/DESKTOP/PROCESSORS/AMDFX/Pages/amdfx.aspx
The features and benefit's are the first thing I see that shows something shady.
Overclock for a big boost......
Get an extra burst of raw speed...... Turbo Core.....
Push your performance with tuning controls.....
Enjoy stable, smoother performance...... (No shit it should be stable and smooth.)
If they practically recommend you to do this, that's the first sign they new what they were doing and they new the performance was going to be Shitty.
Be Epic. Be Brutal. ........
Some kid watching T.V. Ninja Titan's could have thought up that one.
*face palm*
And if it really uses 500+ watts at 4.6Ghz, they can get right the fuck out of here. I don't want to say it like that, but COME on.
Not even the Pakistani goverment
;);)
I gotta say, in the console market, over the past MANY YEARS, developer's have been able to incrementally increase performance by code optimization.
It's pretty obvious by the encoding benchmarks that there's really alot of math power in Bulldozer. You could potentially say it's just under-utilized. It's not like it's really all that bad. It's just a little too ahead of it's time is all. Can I guarantee developer's will take advantage of that math power? Nope.
And those three games are ones that kind of show that very well. And that's why I say that a lot of the reviews seem biased, because not one seems to look to highlight where Bulldozer is a success, and most seem focused on disappointment.
SORRY BUT NO! :shadedshu
A real performance chip would have beaten intel in more tests not 3 games . .. :mad: hence it's fail!
There AMD, and that is no joke, they should have known about the performance numbers, THERE is no way the could not have known!!!! They tested, they marketed way to extremely and even had some overclocking Guinness record, and by then they new there performance numbers. There is no way this came out of the blue, its impossible with that infrastructure. Impossible.
There is not an excuse that matter's when it come's to the overall number's everybody is seeing. Not optimized is so much bullshit its beyond untrue, they practically guarantied an ENTHUSIAST PRODUCT, they even market it with a HD 6990!!!!!
No ethical way I can see for this seriously being a mistake, or some weird ass optimization problem, AMD knew all along, and they might keep it that way anyways.
There is no excuse for it to be under optimized, AMD knew simple as that. It's there main market and has been sense the 1970's.
So what make's anybody think that its just under optimized yet, they have been pumping out processor's on every window's platforms for a while. There is just no excuse....
There's a reason companies do not comment about unreleased products, and yes, AMD very much broke that this time. But, officially, they did an effective job of marketing from the business perspective, because literally every aspect of Bulldozer is something I personally expected. The power consumption, clocking, and performance, are all exactly where expected.
The marketing to the enthusiast failed. The Guinness thing should not have been mentioned except at launch. The FX moniker should have been explained, yet, if look back through Bulldozer posts..I knew what FX meant, but many many others didn't.
I do not understand, why, when adding two cores, and 6 cores weren't used to begin with, that peopel thought that magically there would be more performance. When the cores are used effectively, the 8150 does pull ahead considerably.
The fact these chips use such a high voltage while in max turbo mode, yet live on, no problem, is pretty incredible. The fact they can push 300++ watts through that small of a process is quite amazing, and is part of the reason that things like 8 GHz clocks are possible.
To be completely honest, I don't really see Bulldozer as a failure at all, and frankly, anyone claiming it is, really, is still buying into the hype, because literally everyone is buying into these reviews, and the negative outlook. Clearly there are issues when they are using ES samples for reviews. Why are there so few retail samples?
Nobody gets it. And I'm not about to explain things when it's so bloody obvious.
Oh well, not my problem. ;)
Free next delivery ftw!:rockout:
Where is the TPU review of AMD FX Cpu?
Is w1zz still cooking it?
I'm hungry, lol.-
I guess AMD are guilty of releasing the CPU too early. Perhaps if they waited a year or two, say early 2013 to mid 2014 software developers would have moved along with the times to multithreaded coding and results would sway towards AMD's new architecture.
In a away I sort of blame software developers too for holding back current hardware by dragging their feet with multithreaded coding.
Edit:
Was Engineering samples really used on the reviews. Isnt that unfair and bias?
If I had an AM3+ board, I would probably buy the 8150 just to test it myself. Have fun though!
Are you really gonna beleive a company that makes millions of chips couldn't find 50 single retail samples to hand out to reviewers when they said ES chips and retail are different?
And that is all.
Official reviews are equpped with a Crosshair 5 motherboards, a retail chip in the tin, a belt buckle, and a watercooler. If there are not pictures of all of these things, then the review should be ignored.
If the watercooler is NOT used, then the review is invalid, IMHO. If the review uses an ES chip, it is INVALID. I could add several more criteria here, but those two are enough.
I was thinking about getting a 8 core BD chip but it just wasn't worth the cost considering my overclocked X6 1055T pretty much in the same arena as it for now.
I'm also expecting the 6970's power consumption and heat output will be better then my current 470, Fermi runs hot as everybody has come to expect.
Granted some of the literal was extremely long, maybe my eyes missed the parts where they mentioned having ES only.
The 470 was a great card though. The heat and power was exaggerated a bit by some people, although it is a bit on the warm side. The 6950/6970 reference gets warm too on occasion, and is equally loud. It will outperform the 470 for sure though.
The 6970 is a great card. I'm running two myself, in eyefinity config with a 4th monitor for reading documents when I need it. Best setup evar.You, once again misunderstand where I'm coming from. I've owned a gtx 470, and I run two 6970's now. I think I know very well the difference between the two.
I wasn't speaking of VRAM differences. Of course the extra RAM will make a difference in future titles that use over 1GB. "Duh".
(Typical mail man knee jerk reaction)
If there is no CPU-Z, look for them using the provided watercooler, and for them using the ASUS Crosshair V motherboard. NO Crosshair 5 is an immediate disqualification, in my books, unless they somehow confirm that they have a retail chip.
Instead the reviewers used their own initiative and used an engineering sample.