AMD FX 8150 processor review

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Finals Words and conclusion

 

Final words and conclusion

Alright, conclusion time, and this is not going to be easy to explain -- a tough one really. The Octacore AMD FX 8150 processor surprised me positively in some ways, yet bewilders me in others.

AMD has set the strategy to pursue processors with as many CPU cores as possible. The Bulldozer design is scalable, very scalable, meaning they are focusing on more CPU cores. The benefit here is that massively threaded applications really like that very much. Look at the Handbrake (multi-threaded video transcoding application) results and content creation with MAXON's animation software CINEMA 4D. It's there where the processor really flexes its muscles.

To put it very simple, the hardware needs the software in order to shine. However, the problem remains that most software anno 2011 certainly doesn't multi-thread as well as we all would have hoped.

Most applications go for two, maybe four cores. It's already hard to utilize six threads simultaneously, let alone eight. As such, per-core performance is much more important than more processor cores.

That is a matter of time though, I mean we had the single core to dual-core revolution, quickly followed by four, six and thus now eight cores. So where multithreaded applications are programmed right AMD really starts to shine with the FX series.

 AMD FX 8150 processor review

So the opposite effect is that with applications that prefer say two CPU threads and thus utilize only two cores... well that's where the FX series has a really hard time as the per core performance starts to lack significantly opposed to the competition.

You have been able to see that the FX 8150 mostly is competing with the Core i5 2500 (which costs 180 EUR by the way). Once multithreading kicks in well, performance quickly rises and you'll see Core i7 2600 (260 EUR) performance. Surprisingly enough, even the Phenom II X6 1100T (170 EUR) stands ground and is mostly on par with the FX 8150 a lot of the time, that complicates things even more. So where do we need to position the FX 8150 then? I mean, this is supposed to be AMD's fastest processor.

In games we see exactly the same thing. We specifically took two titles to show you that difference. The older title, Far Cry 2, is where we can see a performance hit, in fact CPU limitation kicks in as the per core performance of the FX 8150 can't keep up with the graphics card (CPU bottleneck). A Core i7 2500 or 2600, though with four cores, have better per core performance, hence you'll see better overall performance.

In the extremely high resolutions the AMD platform will gain a little ground thanks to a better PCIe lane infrastructure. Intel offers 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes, AMD 16 PCIe Gen 2 lanes. We had hoped for PCIe Gen 3 support on the 900 / FX series as well, but that again is future stuff apparently.

So the other game title we used is Crysis 2, it's multi-threaded and more GPU limited than CPU limited. We did lower the image quality settings a little too loosen up things and give the CPUs a better delta to perform visibly in. It scales very nicely with several threads but here again the per core performance of AMD's rival really flexes its muscles. Gaming performance differences remain trivial though, if you play at 1920x1080 the GPU matters so much more than the CPU.

For the guys that use their PC for content creation and video transcoding, well this processor kicks in very nicely, and for a reasonable price you get impressive multi-threaded performance.

Combined with the 900 series AMD motherboard chipset the overall picture seems a little better from AMD compared to Intel. At lower prices you'll get an extensive feature set with embedded SATA3 (6G) supported right out of the chipset combined with a proper number of PCIe lanes available to you.

Power consumption wise we are a little tempered in judgement, the processor uses just over 100W in idle yet when we stress the CPU cores all at once, we peak well over 200W. That's not bad, but it certainly isn't excellent either. Overclocking wise we think the FX series will offer a lot of fun but power consumption there rises quickly when you apply CPU voltage tweaks. With a decent air cooler, 4.5~4.6 GHz should be a viable target to achieve, 5 GHz on proper liquid cooling should be achievable as well.

The LCS kit we have shown you on page 9 is lovely by the way, great looks, very nice performance and to be honest, just what a processor like shown today needs. Good cooling and some overclocking do make this a fun processor to tweak and fool around with.

A small update on pricing has just arrived from AMD (prices incl VAT):

  • FX-8150 costs around 244 euros
  • FX-8120 costs around 204 euros
  • FX-6100 costs around 159 euros
  • FX-4100 costs around 114 euros

Concluding then. The reality remains that for me personally I would have preferred a faster per core performing AMD quad-core processor rather then an eight-core processor with just 'nice' per core performance. Who knows, for you, that just might not be the case. It's going to be interesting to see what you as an end-user will prefer. Overall though, the AMD FX 8150 is a processor we can recommend for the upper segment of mid-range computers at best.

It is nice and fast in your desktop environment with the many threads you can fire off at it, and if you love to compress, transcode or use your PC as a workstation, well it will offer heaps of performance and features for a fair price. The AMD FX 8150 can be purchased for 244 USD or cheaper for all that 8-core lovin'.

Alright, that's it for this reference article. We hope you enjoyed us crunching the numbers for you guys. We also posted a performance overview with the AMD FX 8150 - 8120 - 6100 and 4100 processor, that article is basically a big performance chart covering the four models, you can find that right here.

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