Finals Words and conclusion
Final words and conclusion
The cheapest 8-core processor your money can purchase you has just been reviewed, granted it is not a power-house but within Windows 8.1 the CPU feel extremely snazzy and fast. Gaming remains a bit of a debatable topic. In Full HD with a mainstream GPU you will however not have an issue at all. If you seek extreme performance, the very best framerates and are seeking to break 3DMark scores, that's where you probably want to go with Intel. However what AMD offers here at 125 EURO is pretty terrific in our book ! As we all know, the multi-core awareness in applications is picking up, and opposed to two years ago 8-core processors make a lot more sense these days. Gaming with the per-core performance that the octacore AMD series offers remains tricky to explain. My generic advice here is that if you stick to mainstream PC gaming (and do not use high-end graphics cards or Crossfire/SLI), only then you are OK with an AMD FX processor as tested today. The PileDriver based FX 8320E processors from AMD does what we expected it would do. Overall these CPUs are based on a very a sound architecture if we lived in a world where all games and application would make use of massive multi-threading then AMD would be competing very well with Intel. And though things slowly change most often applications use up-to four cores, and that's why Intel with its higher per core performance will win time after time. It's simple per physical CPU core Intel is twice as fast over the AMD FX CPU core. But again, with Windows 8 things are slowly changing and the overall performance you can't complain about. You get a fast and responsive PC and operating system with fast apps and program responsiveness. Gaming however will remain a bit of a conundrum with a high-end graphics cards as games often only use two to four cores, and a faster per physical CPU core performance remains incredibly relevant if you are not GPU bound.
Multi Threading
AMD has set the strategy to pursue processors with as many CPU cores as possible. 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. But yeah, the hardware needs the software in order to shine. Times are slowly changing though, I mean we had the single core to dual-core revolution, quickly followed by four, six and thus now eight cores. So where multi-threaded applications are programmed right AMD really starts to shine with the FX series.
Real World Usage
So the opposite effect of AMDs offering is that with applications that prefer say one or two CPU threads and thus utilize only one or two cores, that's where the FX series have a really hard time as the per core performance starts to hinder AMD very much. As I always do with CPU reviews, I've been using the FX 8320E processor for a couple of days now though and granted the overall experience with this processor is once again great. The OS responds more than fast enough and for you everyday usage you'll have a hard time noticing any difference to say a Core i5 processor. Once you start up applications that allow for it, multi-threading kicks in really nicely performance will quickly see high-end grade performance.
Gaming
In games we see similar behaviour but the FX remains relatively weak on most games due to its very average per core performance. But if you take for example a Radeon R9 285, then it would be in good symbiosis with the processor performance. Overall in the higher resolutions you'll be GPU dependant more then CPU dependant. So I stated this before, gaming at Full HD with an AMD FX 8320E series processor will be excellent. Once you go a step higher with a R9 290X or Crossfire, that where at a certain point you'd be able to see more extensive bottlenecks in terms of CPU utilization. But with mainstream gaming and combined with a terrific overall Windows 8.1 experience we guarantee that the processor will be be liked by yourself.
Video encoding and Decoding
For the ones 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. Considering that the FX 8320E will cost merely 139 USD we can state that the processor offering great value, under the condition that you use multi-threaded encoders. Video playback is not an issue, the per core performance is fast enough to deal with any Blu-ray or 1080P content stream. And if you need a little more boom boom pow, then overclock it a bit .. 4600~4700 Mhz is easily achieved.
Energy Consumption
Power consumption wise we are a little reserved in judgment, the platform with this processor uses roughly 65W in idle yet when we stress the CPU cores all at once, we peak closer to 160 W. Power consumption is platform dependant though, so your motherboard might be responsible for a lot more or less. 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, 4.7 to 5 GHz on proper liquid cooling should be achievable as well but will require a lot of CPU voltage.
Pricing
We mentioned pricing a couple of times already, the FX-8150 when it was released it costed around 244 USD/EUR at launch. The new FX 8320E was introduced at 139 USD. Honestly that is good value.
Final Words
I rather have four cores that are twice as fast per core opposed to 8 cores that are slower, so again I'll say this, personally I would have preferred a faster per core performing AMD quad-core processor. realistically, we have been working with the FX 8320E processor for a couple od fays and really, overall is offers a truly great PC experience. Your system is fast and responsive. The main Achilles heel simply remain single threaded applications. The bigger problem here is that it effects game performance quite a bit, especially with high-end dedicated graphics cards and that's why in it's current form the FX series simply is not that popular among the gaming community. Good for AMD that Mantle popularity seems to be growing, this will greatly help AMD get freed from CPU bottleneck performance issues. Overall the AMD 8320E is a processor we can recommend in the mid-range PC gaming and desktop space. Eight CPU cores is trendy to have in a PC desktop environment and with the right software you can fire off many threads at it. And if you love to compress, transcode or use your PC as a workstation then it will bring heaps of performance and value. These 95 Watt 'E' models do offer great value for money, that has to be said. This processor can easily be tweaked to the 4600 MHz range on just a simple air cooler. The FX processors deserve a lot more credit then they have gotten thus far. At a price of 139 USD the AMD FX 8320E offer a total fun 8-core CPU PC platform experience. But it remains to be a mainstream segment processor.
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