Wednesday, December 14th 2011

AMD Gives Bulldozer 6-core a Speed-Bump with FX-6200

AMD launched its AMD FX processor family with two eight-core parts (FX-8150, FX-8120), a six-core part (FX-6100), and a quad-core one (FX-4100), apparently a newer, slightly faster six-core FX processor is just around the corner, the FX-6200. Since all AMD FX processors are unlocked out of the box, the FX-6200 is essentially a speed-bump. Out of the box, it is clocked at 3.80 GHz, with 4.10 GHz maximum TurboCore speed. It features six cores, 6 MB total L2 cache, and 8 MB total L3 cache. Its TDP is rated at 125W. In a presentation to retailers sourced by DonanimHaber, AMD pitched the FX-6200 to have about 10% higher performance at Mainconcept HD to Flash conversion, than the FX-6100 (3.30 GHz nominal, 3.90 GHz max. turbo).
Source: DonanimHaber
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79 Comments on AMD Gives Bulldozer 6-core a Speed-Bump with FX-6200

#1
Athlon2K15
HyperVtX™
Quite a bump considering model numbers
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#2
mayankleoboy1
bump

yeah.
was expecting something like 100mhz and meh performance increase.
but a 3.8 ghz is great
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#4
RejZoR
I'm not gonna mock at AMD, i wish they'd get a breakthrough. We need a good battle between both rivals so prices go down. All for the benefit of us, the users.
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#5
bacan
It is strange that it's called model FX-6200 instead of FX-6120. Could this be the first stepping OR-B3 CPU?
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#6
dj-electric
DonanimHaber, you have proven to be trustworthy. Today (for some reason i can't explain :X) you bought my trust
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#7
GenTarkin
Would be nice if it was B3 but at same time, if its B3 and released as a 125watt part, that doesnt say much for their process refinement =/
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#8
repman244
The 6100 has a TDP of 95W, this 6200 has a TDP of 125W. So I guess the process didn't improve much...
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#9
Zubasa
repman244The 6100 has a TDP of 95W, this 6200 has a TDP of 125W. So I guess the process didn't improve much...
What you need to consider is that everything 96W and up must be marked with the 125W TDP envelope.
So we really don't know how much more power does it use with a ~15% clock increase.
So until a full review is up we won't know if there are any improvements.
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#10
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
entropy13how much? $170? $175? $180?
$175.
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#11
CDdude55
Crazy 4 TPU!!!
A 500MHz increase over the FX 6100 and 4GHz+ turbo is great, but still not significant enough for me to consider going BD just yet. A lot needs to improve.
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#12
Zubasa
CDdude55A 500MHz increase over the FX 6100 and 4GHz+ turbo is great, but still not significant enough for me to consider going BD just yet. A lot needs to improve.
I guess at lease for people that don't OC, The FX-6200 should be a worthy replacement for the PII X6s, so they don't have to find the older products.
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#13
AphexDreamer
I'm loving my BD at 4.5Ghz with 6 cores.
I think I can take it to 5Ghz with 4 core but haven't messed around a lot in that department.
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#14
Zubasa
AphexDreamerI'm loving my BD at 4.5Ghz with 6 cores.
I think I can take it to 5Ghz with 4 core but haven't messed around a lot in that department.
Might as well grab the 4100, those overclock very well and is quite cheap.
I am half tempted to grab one to play around with it if there they release a FX-4200.
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#15
AphexDreamer
ZubasaMight as well grab the 4100, those overclock very well and is quite cheap.
I am half tempted to grab one to play around with it if there they release a FX-4200.
Sure, if I didn't pay $100 for mine during Black Friday. :D
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#16
CDdude55
Crazy 4 TPU!!!
ZubasaThe FX-6200 should be a worthy replacement for the PII X6s, so they don't have to find the older products.
I agree that as the Phenom II's are phased out these chips will be seen as a good replacement, granted, they do not perform very well compared to the current Phenom II X6 chips you'd be better off sticking with an overclocked Phenom II chip then going over to BD if possible, i think these are good ''last resort'' chips.
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#17
EpicShweetness
Amazing a 6 core 125watt 3.8GHz CPU competing with a 4 core 95 watt 3.1GHz CPU :rolleyes:
Seriously its not a bad product, just as a "high performance" product it's kinda a joke.

Is it me or is K10.5 "Stars" the best core/watt/performance they've made?
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#18
pantherx12
CDdude55I agree that as the Phenom II's are phased out these chips will be seen as a good replacement, granted, they do not perform very well compared to the current Phenom II X6 chips you'd be better off sticking with an overclocked Phenom II chip then going over to BD if possible, i think these are good ''last resort'' chips.
There's only a 10% ipc difference betwen phenom and fx.

So my fx 8120 @ 4.4 is like a phenom x 8 ( theoretically) @ 4ghz.

That might not be true across the board but certainly in all the apps I use.

Super pi is a lot slower though :laugh: ( super pi is ancient code though)

If you have the cooling a BD chip will got a lot higher than a thurban core though.


I had a 1055t before this by the way.
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#19
Hustler
6 cores my ass...

Try 3 cores with a pimped up AMD type hyperthreading.
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#20
Casecutter
Well, basically matches the 1100T, shouldn't be more than $160, especially as not any better on power. Looks like they're yields still have bad core/modules, but might have more faith in raising the frequency, can’t say it from any real process improvements just have attained more confidence. I don’t see them given any BD anything like B2 stepping improvements, they leave that all for Piledrivers’ glory.
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#21
newtekie1
Semi-Retired Folder
Releasing higher clocked processors is pointless on a product line that has fully unlocked multipliers, unless this is a revision, and I don't think it is.
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#22
CDdude55
Crazy 4 TPU!!!
pantherx12There's only a 10% ipc difference betwen phenom and fx.

So my fx 8120 @ 4.4 is like a phenom x 8 ( theoretically) @ 4ghz.

That might not be true across the board but certainly in all the apps I use.

Super pi is a lot slower though :laugh: ( super pi is ancient code though)

If you have the cooling a BD chip will got a lot higher than a thurban core though.


I had a 1055t before this by the way.
It's definitely a case by case thing, an FX 8150/8120 does excel by a pretty good margin in software that will put the extra cores/threads to use as expected. I don't see how it's a good thing to say that it's practically like a Phenom with 8 cores though when clocked higher, as doesn't that still indicate that you'd be better off with a Phenom II chip if you don't use heavily threaded software?, so what would justify going with BD?
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#23
blibba
pantherx12There's only a 10% ipc difference betwen phenom and fx.

So my fx 8120 @ 4.4 is like a phenom x 8 ( theoretically) @ 4ghz.
It doesn't quite work like that.

Yes, Bulldozer has 8 "cores", but it shares a lot of resources between them. So, in workloads reliant on those shared resources, it'll perform like a quad. This is why you see Phenom x6 beating it in some threaded applications. In workloads that aren't so reliant on those shared resources, or that are a bit more balanced (e.g. real world multitasking), BD can start to behave more like an 8 core. However, the end result in benchmarks is the power consumption of an 8 core and often the performance of a hyperthreaded quad, and a lot of the bad press on launch was because of this.

Also, while you might be right about the IPC, it remains the case that for whatever reason BD's single threaded performance, clock for clock, is diabolical in certain programs.

If you forced me to buy an AMD rig tomorrow, I'd definitley go Phenom II - pretty much everything I do is limited by per-core performance. What I'd really like though (what I'd go out and buy voluntarily, in fact) is a 32nm Phenom.
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#25
pantherx12
CDdude55It's definitely a case by case thing, an FX 8150/8120 does excel by a pretty good margin in software that will put the extra cores/threads to use as expected. I don't see how it's a good thing to say that it's practically like a Phenom with 8 cores though when clocked higher, as doesn't that still indicate that you'd be better off with a Phenom II chip if you don't use heavily threaded software?, so what would justify going with BD?
Well depends how in to over-clocking you are.

Like I said by IPC matches a phenom @ 4ghz ( cept in some older software)

If I ran 1.45 volts through this chip I could probably hit 5ghz a good phenom can maybe get to 4.5 so again single core performance ends up the same but with 2 extra cores.

You have to bare in mind an 8120 is 20-30 pound more than a 1100t, for it's price it does perfectly.

The 8150 is completely waste of time though :laugh:



"Yes, Bulldozer has 8 "cores", but it shares a lot of resources between them. So, in workloads reliant on those shared resources, it'll perform like a quad. This is why you see Phenom x6 beating it in some threaded applications. In workloads that aren't so reliant on those shared resources, or that are a bit more balanced (e.g. real world multitasking), BD can start to behave more like an 8 core. However, the end result in benchmarks is the power consumption of an 8 core and often the performance of a hyperthreaded quad, and a lot of the bad press on launch was because of this.
"

Can you give me a few examples please, I'd like to try it out :toast:

It certainly doesn't effect cine-bench ( I can disable one core per module with my motherboard and it didn't really make a difference compared to disabling the last 2 modules)

But if you name what software is effected I can try and see if it really doesn't get an extra performance from those extra cores.


I think people forget that two extra cores( over a phenomx6) doesn't necessarily mean 33% extra performance.

Like going from single to dual didn't give us the 100% boost people would of expected.


Now just to before I get barrages of " fan boy" If I was doing this build from scratch I would go with a 2600k set up.

How ever I already had the 990fxa board so went with BD. But compared to my 1055t most things are quite a lot quicker .


For example you would expect a 50 performance difference between a phenom 965 and 1100t stock at cinebench, but the actual performance difference is closer to 28% .


It seems the hype killed these chips more then anything else.
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