Review Consensus: AMD FX Processor 8150 Underwhelming

[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.

[dieterd]

damit you AMD, no Sandy price drop hopes for me now! and surely I can expect Sandy-E pricing like ing bad old, competition less, days!
this (Buldozzer) does not even deserve such a name like "Phenom III", because it (FX-8150) can not even beat 1100T and it costs lot more, I think AMD should EOL Bulldozer by the end of this year, rather than Phenom II!

[Altered]

I don't think it is horribly bad. However the power consumption is not what I would have thought. And to me the real kicker is the price I see on the egg. It is somewhat close to the 2500K performance but priced possibly as though Win8 and its hopeful 10-15% gains are already showing. Sort of like having automobiles before gasoline was being refined. If possible AMD IMO should put the price equal to the 2500K. If Win8 gives it a gain worth mentioning and more software and games are optimized for heavy multi threading it should sell for quite a bit longer even as newer chips arrive. At least as long as the consumer isn't power conscious.

I really wanted to go back AMD but glad I didnt keep waiting as it appears. Hopefully next version will be more refined. It does appear they may be on to something if they have some good insight to what the developers and so forth are doing the trend may go in their favor.

One question though. Has anyone seen a bench with Bad Company 2 runs? I know BC2 uses multiple cores so it should perform well but would be interested in how it stacked up vs the 2500K.

[pr0n Inspector]

Lesson: don't upgrade to a new board when you don't even know the performance of that new processor you're waiting for.

[Damn_Smooth]

Originally Posted by pr0n Inspector

Lesson: don't upgrade to a new board when you don't even know the performance of that new processor you're waiting for.

But I don't regret the board at all. It's the best board for a Phenom II there is. Vishera still has a chance at being decent too, so I still have an upgrade path with it.

[ViperXTR]

just looking at AMD's page:
http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/DESKT...ges/amdfx.aspx

Enjoy stable, smooth performance with impressive energy efficiency thanks to a 32nm die.

???

Be Epic. Be Brutal. Get AMD FX in Your System.

>8D

[seronx]

I would love to get 8 Sempron Cores in my system but for $280 no thanks

[laszlo]

maybe were better for amd to improve the 6 core line instead of launching a 8 core desktop cpu

we have many examples of console game ports to pc , bad ports and seems the analogy can be applied in this case from server to desktop;they should focus on quad or six cores and improved them step by step to get closer to intel perf. now they'll loose a lot of money if people due the reviews won't buy.

a home user don't really need 8 cores is like hawing a race car in garage and just running the engine daily inside but never go on track

[mtosev]

Originally Posted by seronx

I would love to get 8 Sempron Cores in my system but for $280 no thanks

For the same price you get an i7 2600K

[LifeOnMars]

Oh dear, oh dear....looks like I'm going Intel for the big build at the start of the year. It's a shame, healthy competition always sparks great pricing.

[Paulieg]

Ugh. I keep waiting for a reason to go back to AMD. Looks like now is not the time. Power. Consumption. Fail. They had way to long to design this chip to put out a subpar product. I really hope they get their act together. If they don't, we all lose, AMD and Intel fanboys alike.

[KainXS]

We can only pray that intel dosen't pull its old game and try to ram up their cpu's prices if piledriver is fail too.

[xenocide]

Originally Posted by Super XP

http://hardocp.com/article/2011/10/1...mance_review/1

Take a look at this page;
http://hardocp.com/article/2011/10/1...mance_review/5

If you can't spot the problem, god save you. I refuse to believe ~30% OC causes an 8% decrease in Average FPS. Clearly something is funky with their testing.

Originally Posted by KainXS

We can only pray that intel dosen't pull its old game and try to ram up their cpu's prices if piledriver is fail too.

When have they ever done that? Intel always starts their CPU's out at higher price points because they offer better performance. Sandy Bridge at this point was still a wiser upgrade choice than BD is\was.

[sunweb]

Ok, i only want processor for rendering, using Blender with internal, Cycles and LuxRender on Linux.

Where are linux tests anyway ? And some real renders, not that c-bench(why even bother with it, it lies so much).

Where i live i7 2600k is 305$ without cooler(though maybe i'll buy without oc feature). Is it worth to pay about 100$(proc+mb) more for i7 ?

The reason i want some real tests(no benchmarks) on both linux and windows is the real difference most of times is pretty big:

[techtard]

Most of these enthusiast sites are Windows only.
You may need to wait for Phoronix or someone else to put the FX chip through its paces in a Linux environment. Looks like they didn't get a review sample, though.

But they did link back to this thread for their members to see what Bulldozer is like on Windows.

[sunweb]

Ok, thanks. Will stick with Phoronix.

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by 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.

amd's plan is to release what they released now. this will make intel engineers fall asleep, cash in on their stock options or go for early retirement. once intel is at its weakest, amd will unleash the real bulldozer cores (via software update) and catch intel with a netburst-athlon64 left-right combo. intel stock price drops to negative values so amd can buy intel and gets money for saving humanity.

now the secret is out and amd secret service will come and kill me for revealing their plan for world domination

[Wrigleyvillain]

If only this were true.

[Dent1]

Hardware Heaven shows Bulldozer in a positive light. They give it 9/10 overall.

In particular it shows Bulldozer beating the i7 2600k in games. How can this be?

Deus EX
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...evolution.html

F1 2011
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...w-f1-2011.html

Shogun Total War 2
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...-shogun-2.html

[nINJAkECIL]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

amd's plan is to release what they released now. this will make intel engineers fall asleep, cash in on their stock options or go for early retirement. once intel is at its weakest, amd will unleash the real bulldozer cores (via software update) and catch intel with a netburst-athlon64 left-right combo. intel stock price drops to negative values so amd can buy intel and gets money for saving humanity.

now the secret is out and amd secret service will come and kill me for revealing their plan for world domination

I don't even wanna imagined when AMD dominate the world of cpu.

Seriously, I can tolerate the performance of BD compared to SB. I already sense that AMD can't deliver, judging from the over-hype marketing. But, that power consumption is what I can't tolerate.

Oh, I see now why the RED color on AMD FX cpus are for.

They should also change the color of their logo, from green to red.

[btarunr]

Originally Posted by Wrigleyvillain

If only this were true.

If it were, I'd be helping w1z setup his hideout/cottage in the Himalayas.

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by btarunr

If it were, I'd be helping w1z setup his hideout/cottage in the Himalayas.

but mr. witness protection ... i want sun, beach and bikinis

[Crap Daddy]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

amd's plan is to release what they released now. this will make intel engineers fall asleep, cash in on their stock options or go for early retirement. once intel is at its weakest, amd will unleash the real bulldozer cores (via software update) and catch intel with a netburst-athlon64 left-right combo. intel stock price drops to negative values so amd can buy intel and gets money for saving humanity.

now the secret is out and amd secret service will come and kill me for revealing their plan for world domination

As we speak right now half of the Intel engineers that are not sent in a paid vacation to Hawaii, so the ones that still have to be at work but are bored to death, have found a new occupation while pretending to work on Ivy Bridge. From their fat wages and bonuses they managed to put some money aside and bought some FX 8150 (that's why there's no availability) and while at work they compete in overclocking these new beasts.

[TRWOV]

Originally Posted by Dent1

Hardware Heaven shows Bulldozer in a positive light. They give it 9/10 overall.

In particular it shows Bulldozer beating the i7 2600k in games. How can this be?

Deus EX
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...evolution.html

F1 2011
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...w-f1-2011.html

Shogun Total War 2
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...-shogun-2.html

The FX-8150 is faster in some and slower in others. That is to be expected given the number of threads. What people didn't expect was that even the older Phenom II manages to beat it in lot of benchmarks.

If the 8150 had beaten the old Phenom II X6 consistently and traded blows with the 2500K/2600K I'm sure that people would be pleased, but its erratic performance prevents people from making a full recommendation. Whenever you'd want to get an FX will depend on what you want to do with it.

Not to mention the power consumption but with so much cache I think it was unavoidable.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by Crap Daddy

As we speak right now half of the Intel engineers that are not sent in a paid vacation to Hawaii, so the ones that still have to be at work but are bored to death, have found a new occupation while pretending to work on Ivy Bridge. From their fat wages and bonuses they managed to put some money aside and bought some FX 8150 (that's why there's no availability) and while at work they compete in overclocking these new beasts.

Ah, so deeply, deeply cynical. Brilliant.

Yeah, I'm pretty pissed off too that BD isn't what it should be. Giving the product such a hard-nut codename makes it all the more embarrassing, too.