# Three New, 95 W AMD FX Series Processors Coming Up



## Cristian_25H (Feb 17, 2012)

Before the end of this quarter AMD is set to introduce a bunch of fresh FX Series chips, including three boasting a 95 W TDP, the FX-4150 quad-core, the FX-6120 hexa-core and the FX-8140 octo-core. 

The FX-4150 features a base clock of 3.9 GHz (4.1 GHz Turbo) and 12 MB of cache (4 MB L2 + 8 MB L3) while the FX-6120 has its cores set to 3.5 GHz (4.1 GHz Turbo) and packs 14 MB of cache. As for the FX-8140, it's clocked at 3.2 GHz (4.1 GHz) and has 16 MB of cache. All three models have an AM3+ package and are made using 32 nm process technology. No word on pricing yet.





*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## Mathragh (Feb 17, 2012)

I wonder whether these are still on the B2 stepping.


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## Norton (Feb 17, 2012)

Mathragh said:


> I wonder whether these are still on the B2 stepping.



Would be nice but if they are just binning the existing stepping for new model #'s I will pass and hold onto my 960T for a while longer


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## Thefumigator (Feb 17, 2012)

if price on the FX 8100 is reduced enough to make any sense then it would be interesting.


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## seronx (Feb 17, 2012)

Still B2

B3 won't come till after Q1


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## Mathragh (Feb 17, 2012)

Hmm Bummer, got a source for that?


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## fullinfusion (Feb 17, 2012)

Why?


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## naoan (Feb 17, 2012)

fullinfusion said:


> Why?



This.


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## blibba (Feb 17, 2012)

So, going from 8120 to 8140 you get 100MHZ. Going from 8140 to 8150, however you get 400MHZ. Makes sense AMD, makes sense.


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## seronx (Feb 17, 2012)

Mathragh said:


> Hmm Bummer, got a source for that?



You will know B3 by a 300MHz boost while retaining the same TDP bracket


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## suraswami (Feb 17, 2012)

FX-8140 - should be called as FX-8125?

FX-8100 around $160 would be perfect!


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## badtaylorx (Feb 17, 2012)

no 4170??? is that going to be a B3 release???


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## eidairaman1 (Feb 17, 2012)

Im assumin this isnt piledriver


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## seronx (Feb 17, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> Im assumin this isnt piledriver



Nope, Piledriver is June(Trinity) and October(Vishera/Delhi)


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## TRWOV (Feb 17, 2012)

Piledriver is FX-?300 series (8350, 6300, etc)


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## BlackOmega (Feb 17, 2012)

fullinfusion said:


> Why?



95w TDP as opposed to 125w TDP.


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## WarraWarra (Feb 17, 2012)

Any idea if 800m or more transistors would be missing from this as well or can AMD cpu division do a quality check before the release it ?

Come on Rory send the AMD cpu guys to school so they can count, just not sure how you Rory would get the AMD cpu guys to read if they can not count like a 2.5 year old foreigner child can do in 2 or more languages.


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## seronx (Feb 18, 2012)

WarraWarra said:


> Any idea if 800m or more transistors would be missing from this as well or can AMD cpu division do a quality check before the release it ?



~2.0B is from Interlagos

GFlops and Transistor count from Interlagos was ported to Zambezi and Valencia
(This is what made Zambezi(FX) sound more awesome*)

So, there is no missing transistors

*Explanation:

2B Transistors?!!?!!? OH FUDGE DRAGON! and only 315mm²!!!!(The max limit for the socket die size was ~1.6B for 32nm)
64 Flops per Clock this is only EIGHT CORES!!!!
64 x 3.9 = 249.6 GFlops <-- Everyone who was reading the bad marketing was expecting this
vs
32 x 3.9 = 124.8 GFlops <-- What people got after the reviews hit and the information delivered^ was falsified


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## Super XP (Feb 18, 2012)

Don't know what AMD is doing but the FX-8140 is a waist of a release. They need to stick with numbers that make sense. By releasing the HD 8120 @ 3.1 GHz, they messed up IMO. This should have been 3.20 GHz.


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## Inceptor (Feb 18, 2012)

It's not much of an improvement over the first batch, performance-wise.
But they do fall within the 95W power envelope, which is a step in the right direction.
As has already been said, maybe a bit of binning  (and possibly some improvements in GloFo yields).


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## hellrazor (Feb 18, 2012)

Cristian_25H said:


> As for the FX-8140, it's clocked at 3.2 GHz (4.1 GHz) and has 16 MB of cache.



I'm still confused to hell why AMD would shove 16MB of cache on a processor. Surely by that time you've started loading useless junk so that it's not empty (which would be even more useless)?

Or am I missing something important here?


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## seronx (Feb 18, 2012)

hellrazor said:


> I'm still confused to hell why AMD would shove 16MB of cache on a processor. Surely by that time you've started loading useless junk so that it's not empty (which would be even more useless)?
> 
> Or am I missing something important here?



Zambezi, Zurich, Valencia, and Interlagos are server/workstation CPUs L3 Cache is important

L2 is cache is unified between the cores(each core knows what is in the L2 cache) and is the prefetcher


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## Super XP (Feb 18, 2012)

I think they need to titen up the latencies and speed of the L3 cache. It just seems they are not utilizing it fully yet.


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## faramir (Feb 18, 2012)

seronx said:


> 64 Flops per Clock this is only EIGHT CORES!!!!
> 64 x 3.9 = 249.6 GFlops <-- Everyone who was reading the bad marketing was expecting this
> vs
> 32 x 3.9 = 124.8 GFlops <-- What people got after the reviews hit and the information delivered^ was falsified



Given the multitude of blunders pertaining to Bulldozer AMD might as well describe it with teraflops, as in "terrible flop; many of them".


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## NC37 (Feb 18, 2012)

seronx said:


> Zambezi, Zurich, Valencia, and Interlagos are server/workstation CPUs L3 Cache is important
> 
> L2 is cache is unified between the cores(each core knows what is in the L2 cache) and is the prefetcher



It also played a role in gaming. Remember Athlon II vs Phenom II. PIIs would always beat the AIIs in many game benches because of the L3. Think there was some other non gaming uses where it was better, forget now which. 

Was a factor when I went to get my 945. I thought about the 640 but when I bought, the difference between the two was maybe $25 due to sales. Just worth it more for me to have the 945 since I knew I'd use the L3.

Past gens of AMD chips I'd consider more as lacking in enough cache. Both L2 and L3. Heck my last chip before that was a 5000+ BE with only 512K L2 on each core. Yeah it was a big clocker but all the CPUs with 1MB L2 were just walking all over it in benches. Intel at the time was dumping on cache beyond that. High amounts of L2 with high clock speeds...no wonder AMD got left behind.


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## Thefumigator (Feb 18, 2012)

we shouldn't forget these are all 95watts processors, if pricing is ok then power consumption will drop to competitive levels. Performance won't be improved tho


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## Inceptor (Feb 19, 2012)

This is just speculation, but it just occurred to me:

B2 Bulldozers are numbered FX-x1xx.
Piledrivers are supposedly FX-x3xx.
So, B3 Bulldozers will be FX-x2xx?

It _seems_ reasonable but reasonableness on this topic doesn't give me much confidence.
Any opinions or scraps of info?


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## Super XP (Feb 19, 2012)

Inceptor said:


> This is just speculation, but it just occurred to me:
> 
> B2 Bulldozers are numbered FX-x1xx.
> Piledrivers are supposedly FX-x3xx.
> ...


Great catch, makes sense. Piledriver will either be B4 or C2/3 stepping IMO. I know for a fact AMD modified Bulldozer's original design many months before Bulldozer's release and named it Code Name Piledriver. So they've been messing around with Piledriver for some time now. That so called 20% better performance (clock 4 clock) for Piledriver over today's Bulldozer may very well grow to over 20% by the time it's released sometime in Q3 2012.


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## jpierce55 (Feb 19, 2012)

Thefumigator said:


> we shouldn't forget these are all 95watts processors, if pricing is ok then power consumption will drop to competitive levels. Performance won't be improved tho



It is a surprising move in the correct direction at least.


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## jihadjoe (Feb 19, 2012)

NC37 said:


> Past gens of AMD chips I'd consider more as lacking in enough cache.



AMD knows exactly what cache can do, and has known for a long time. The main reason the K6-III was so good was the large amount of on-die L2 cache running at full CPU speed. At the time of release, the K6-III 450 was one of the fastest x86 CPU around, handily beating out the K6-II 400 and Pentium II 450 in integer, or when running stuff that made good use of 3DNow.


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## Wile E (Feb 19, 2012)

I know this has probably been asked before, but never really answered to my satisfaction. What would the equivalent power envelope be in an Intel cpu? Would an Intel that consumes this much power also be rated at 95w? Higher? Lower? What?


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## TheGuruStud (Feb 19, 2012)

Wile E said:


> I know this has probably been asked before, but never really answered to my satisfaction. What would the equivalent power envelope be in an Intel cpu? Would an Intel that consumes this much power also be rated at 95w? Higher? Lower? What?



Lower. 

Neither really calculate TDP the same, but intel doesn't include non-core into the figures (aka lying).

Unfortunately, testing this is very hard since intel also draws power besides the 12v rail (really convenient). Intel finally admitted to it and IIRC non-core can consume up to 28 watts as per their documentation (I'm skeptical of anything they say, I don't trust crooks, but it does seem realistic).

You would think total system power consumption could show a clear picture, but it doesn't. With the new FX, power figures are varying greatly, b/c of crap bioses (not sure how much has been fixed). AMD boards seem to be designed a lot different, regardless. The heat produced isn't matching the power figures. If an X6 was really drawing more power than intel's, then how come it runs pretty cool even when OCed? Nothing adds up right. You can't claim an AMD chip is using 250 watts OCed if it's running cool haha. I doubt that the design of the chip can account for using that much power, but not turning it into heat.


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## Wile E (Feb 19, 2012)

Any independent links on this? Somebody had to test it at some point.


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## Mathragh (Feb 19, 2012)

Wile E said:


> Any independent links on this? Somebody had to test it at some point.



Thats part of the problem, because of the way processors use current from different sources(like the both the motherboard, and the CPU 12V socket).

If both processors are not comparable in how they use the current provided to it by both the mobo and PSU directly, you cannot compare the power draw, because measuring the powerdraw from the motherboard to the cpu directly cannot be done in any easy way.


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## Thefumigator (Feb 20, 2012)

Wile E said:


> Any independent links on this? Somebody had to test it at some point.



All I can say is that I have an amp clamp multimeter to measure power consumption
and I've measured power consumption of things (usually entire systems like TV, ovens, computers, but not the individual parts that conform them) on several scenarios. I find impressive how energy consumption can drop when using a "low power" energy profile, no matter which system while modern enough (post 2006 I imagine). Its funny how the readings in the clamp meter drop instantly with just a mouse click over energy saving profile, (that if cool n quiet -or the intel equivalent- is enabled of course)

Maybe I should make some tests again and document them. I also did (a long time ago) 80plus vs non-80plus test on the same system and I can't remember a thing.


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