AMD FX 8350 - 8320 - 6300 and 4300 CPU performance review

Ven0m

2012-10-25 09:22

Thanks for the review. It appears that among them FX-8350 looks the most interesting for general (Guru3D-like) usage, and FX-6300 for the more budget oriented rigs as the price is virtually the same as FX-4300. Is there any chance you could add Borderlands 2 benchmark in the future? It's very CPU-limited.

#4439096

sdamaged99

2012-10-25 14:52

More second rate processors by AMD. They still can't catch the aging 2500K, a quad core chip. Meh.

#4439149

BLEH!

2012-10-25 15:42

TBH I'd still consider the FX-8350 to be a quad core, with hardware hyperthreading. For the money it's a decent CPU.

#4439249

DSparil

2012-10-25 17:25

Ahh, very nice and thank you. It appears the FX-6300 is a strong performer but that the 6100 could easily match it with a decent overclock. The 6300, while better, didn't seem to be too far ahead of its older brother in most cases.

#4439309

PhazeDelta1

2012-10-25 18:35

More second rate processors by AMD. They still can't catch the aging 2500K, a quad core chip. Meh.

That's because AMD is not competing with Intel in the high end market. This is a mid range cpu. And comparing it to a high end cpu is a bit silly don't you think?

TBH I'd still consider the FX-8350 to be a quad core, with hardware hyperthreading. For the money it's a decent CPU.

That's exactly what it is. It's still a decent step up for anyone who has an older AMD cpu and is looking to upgrade.

#4439318

DSparil

2012-10-25 18:41

More second rate processors by AMD. They still can't catch the aging 2500K, a quad core chip. Meh.

lol, I just noticed this bonehead comment. Have you seen the cost of these new Vishera chips? Do you think they're trying to top Intel's high end? You're delusional. The 2500K costs $220. The competing FX-6300 costs $139. Do the math 🙄

#4439441

JohnMaclane

2012-10-25 20:45

lol, I just noticed this bonehead comment. Have you seen the cost of these new Vishera chips? Do you think they're trying to top Intel's high end? You're delusional. The 2500K costs $220. The competing FX-6300 costs $139. Do the math 🙄

They are second rate processors. The comment isn't bone headed at all maybe blunt. The parts AMD are putting out are not competitive for AMD themselves and in order to even dream of selling they have to price them really low. This little table featured here tells us everything http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested AMD's chips have massive die sizes even compared to sandy bridge parts (that's a nearly 2 year old processor). This has a number of hidden implications; First the parts cost more in absolute terms than an Intel processor from 2 years ago, second its a very good indicator at just how inefficient the design is (with the power consumption numbers to boot). So basically AMD is selling CPUs with razor thin margins, against mid to low level Intel parts (with massive margins), with okayish performance and abyssal power envelopes. All this in an industry which in order to survive must be able to compete with ARM. The Anandtech review does an interesting bit of work where he extrapolates the promised performance gains into the future, we see AMD could potentially catch up performance wise, AMD however can only dream of sub 10w parts like Haswel is going to bring.

#4439492

DSparil

2012-10-25 21:46

^ Its easy to make "massive margins" when your processors are as batsh!t expensive as Intel's are. Anyway, I think its pretty clear that at its price point, Piledriver is a solid chip and its hard to argue its performance value. I think the majority of people on this site would agree. Yourself probably not included.

#4439519

Copey

2012-10-25 22:12

Id agree that the FX 8320 seems great for the money, can overclock well past the standard 8350 so would be my choice, AMD lost the high end along time ago, thats not the market there competing for.

#4439526

JohnMaclane

2012-10-25 22:15

^ Its easy to make "massive margins" when your processors are as batsh!t expensive as Intel's are. Anyway, I think its pretty clear that at its price point, Piledriver is a solid chip and its hard to argue its performance value. I think the majority of people on this site would agree. Yourself probably not included.

I gave an in-depth explanation which obviously didn't convince you, you gave a 5 line answer with zero technical merit. Lemme illustrate so that there is little confusion. FACT 1. AMDs die sizes are massive compared to Intel FACT 2. AMDs power envelopes are terrible compared to Intel FACT 3. AMDs flagship processors compete with Intels low end offerings and EOL products From a consumer point of view the price is enticing and the performance ok to better then ok for certain workloads. From a technology/analysis point of view AMD is struggling big time. The prices AMD has to sell at are horrifying for the amount of silicon used, ever since the manufacturing has spun off to GF they have been slower to move to smaller nodes, they have no conceivable time table (nor plan) to produce a x86 chip to compete with ARM or Intel on the power envelope side. Please tell me what parts are not true, I am very interested in you're reply As regards to the general opinion of other gurus I wouldn't speculate like that.

#4439534

DSparil

2012-10-25 22:22

^ sigh, here we go again. I don't care about your "technical merit" analysis, and whether its true or not. It has virtually nothing to do with my point. I care about performance/price point for the consumer and thats what I spoke on and have based my opinion on. Don't manufacture "confusion" where there is none, I simply stated its a good value. Whats technical about that? good lord

Id agree that the FX 8320 seems great for the money, can overclock well past the standard 8350 so would be my choice, AMD lost the high end along time ago, thats not the market there competing for.

this.

#4439536

---TK---

2012-10-25 22:23

those chips do not impress me 1 bit, they do well in a couple multi threaded benches. single thread is still poo, gaming too. multi gpu gaming even worse. power hungry inefficient, large die size. and the most expensive 8 core is about the same as a 3570k or a cheaper 2500k, memory bandwidth is low compared to intel. too many negatives to even consider opening up my wallet.

#4439574

JohnMaclane

2012-10-25 22:54

^ sigh, here we go again. I don't care about your "technical merit" analysis, and whether its true or not. It has virtually nothing to do with my point. I care about performance/price point for the consumer and thats what I spoke on and have based my opinion on. Don't manufacture "confusion" where there is none, I simply stated its a good value. Whats technical about that? good lord this.

Fair enough I can respect your opinion. There is no need to be sarcastic, I thought I was talking to enthusiasts here who would take other aspects of the CPU to heart. If you are happy with OK performance and great prices then yeah its a great chip. I wouldn't buy it because for me its a disappointing piece of tech, I remember the same argument of "great value for money" for the dual core p4 "pressler" back in 05 because Intel could get aggressive on the price. Pressler was a second rate chip for the exact same reason why Vishera is.

#4439576

Copey

2012-10-25 23:02

The only thing that seems to suffer is gaming performance, nothin else is that bad really, new games are much heavier on GPU than CPU and once you go to certain resolutions the benefit a silly fast CPU becomes irrelevent (and the gain becomes smaller) to a point as a mid range will churn out near enough the same frame rate. Everyone who knows anything about computers will know that if you want the best gaming PC there is then Intel has to be the choice, but AMD doesnt really do that bad at anything else really. If your like me these days and go for just something thats good for the money then I dont see anything wrong with a 8350 or whatever. I like competition as it keeps the market healthy but the high end has been lost for a while as far as AMD are concerned, but thats not what there aiming for. The only issue i have with it is the power consumptions under load which i agree is high but then that wouldnt really put me off, if i can afford the processor itself then a extra few pounds of electiricity wont kill me. Ow and nice review Hilbert, been waiting for this one.

#4439664

Leviathan-

2012-10-26 00:26

Great comparison, you should start doing a CPU chart alike the VGA charts you have! Very usefull 🙂

#4441986

Pill Monster

2012-10-29 06:19

More second rate processors by AMD. They still can't catch the aging 2500K, a quad core chip. Meh.

Mate, if ignorance is bliss then you must be in absolute heaven. Seriously, take the time to actually read some reviews and get a clue... Obviously you haven't seen the multi-threaded benchmarks where Vishera came close to or beat i5 in almost every single test, even managed to top i7 at times. If someone wants the best CPU available that isn't power hungry and does nothing but play games, no doubt IB/SB is the way to go, no question. For everybody else however, there's the 8320/50... performs well in games, excels in heavily threaded applications, and is priced accordingly And who knows what more performance can come from increased NB clocks? Not to mention the 9xx AM3+ chipsets are great...(ASUS ftw) and AMD boards always last 2 or 3 CPU upgrades...another bonus. From AnandTech;

AMD does manage to pull away with some very specific wins when compared to similarly priced Intel parts. Performance in the latest x264 benchmark as well as heavily threaded POV-Ray and Cinebench tests show AMD with the clear multithreaded performance advantage.

I've said this before, but wouldn't some of you think it'd be a great thing to have some good old fashioned AMD vs Intel banter happening in the forums.. Do any of you long time Guru's remember all the debates we used to have back in the A64/Conroe days? Guys like Ledhead used to live for that...I kinda miss it....:3eyes:

#4442194

JohnMaclane

2012-10-29 13:34

Mate, if ignorance is bliss then you must be in absolute heaven. Seriously, take the time to actually read some reviews and get a clue... Obviously you haven't seen the multi-threaded benchmarks where Vishera came close to or beat i5 in almost every single test, even managed to top i7 at times. If someone wants the best CPU available that isn't power hungry and does nothing but play games, no doubt IB/SB is the way to go, no question. For everybody else however, there's the 8320/50... performs well in games, excels in heavily threaded applications, and is priced accordingly And who knows what more performance can come from increased NB clocks? Not to mention the 9xx AM3+ chipsets are great...(ASUS ftw) and AMD boards always last 2 or 3 CPU upgrades...another bonus. From AnandTech; I've said this before, but wouldn't some of you think it'd be a great thing to have some good old fashioned AMD vs Intel banter happening in the forums.. Do any of you long time Guru's remember all the debates we used to have back in the A64/Conroe days? Guys like Ledhead used to live for that...I kinda miss it....:3eyes:

You kinda cherry picked Anands conclusion which isn't honest. You quoted the first two lines and missed the whole other 2 paragraphs which basically say that for him to recommend it you must have high multithreaded needs. He also says how otherwise it does badly and at the last line reminds us about the terrible power performance you get for the good multithreaded performance. Anyways full conclusion here http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/9

#4442201

Pill Monster

2012-10-29 13:42

^OK, but regardless they did have good things to say about PD, and overall impression was favorable. I was trying to point out that PD is not a train wreck in the way BD was... contrary to what some people (in this forum) would have us believe. But here's the whole conclusion...

AMD does manage to pull away with some very specific wins when compared to similarly priced Intel parts. Performance in the latest x264 benchmark as well as heavily threaded POV-Ray and Cinebench tests show AMD with the clear multithreaded performance advantage. Other heavily threaded integer workloads also do quite well on Vishera. The only part that didn't readily beat its Intel alternative was AMD's six-core FX-6300, the rest did extremely well in our heavily threaded tests. Look beyond those specific applications however and Intel can pull away with a significant lead. Lightly threaded applications or those whose performance depends on a mixture of single and multithreaded workloads are typically wins for Intel. The story hasn't really changed in that regard. For AMD to become competitive across the board it needs significant changes to the underlying architecture, some of which I don't know that we'll see until the 2013 - 2014 timeframe. Even then, Intel's progress isn't showing any signs of slowing. Power consumption is also a big negative for Vishera. The CPU draws considerably more power under load compared to Ivy Bridge, or even Sandy Bridge for that matter. Ultimately Vishera is an easier AMD product to recommend than Zambezi before it. However the areas in which we'd recommend it are limited to those heavily threaded applications that show very little serialization. As our compiler benchmark shows, a good balance of single and multithreaded workloads within a single application can dramatically change the standings between AMD and Intel. You have to understand your workload very well to know whether or not Vishera is the right platform for it. Even if the fit is right, you have to be ok with the increased power consumption over Intel as well.

.....

#4442210

Leviathan-

2012-10-29 13:47

It is a step forward in my opinion from AMD, but it is still far from Intel. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a new era for AMD and bring some competition to Intel.

#4442216

Pill Monster

2012-10-29 13:50

Cache latencey is quite high which makes me wonder how an increased CPU/NB would improve performance. I asked Hilbert already if he would test NB scaling but he wasn't really interested. I'll do it myself though when/if upgrading to Vishera becomes an option.....