Wednesday, October 12th 2011
Review Consensus: AMD FX Processor 8150 Underwhelming
It's been in the works for over three years now. That's right, the first we heard of "Bulldozer" as a processor architecture under development was shortly after the launch of "Barcelona" K10 architecture. Granted, it wasn't possible to load close to 2 billion transistors on the silicon fab technology AMD had at the time, but AMD had a clear window over the last year to at least paper-launch the AMD FX. Delays and bad marketing may have cost AMD dearly in shaping up the product for the market.
After drawing a consensus from about 25 reviews (links in Today's Reviews on the front page), it emerges that:
After drawing a consensus from about 25 reviews (links in Today's Reviews on the front page), it emerges that:
- AMD FX-8150 is missing its performance expectations by a fair margin. Not to mention performance gains in its own presentation, these expectations were built up by how AMD was shaping the product to be a full-fledged enthusiast product with significant performance gains over the previous generation
- AMD ill-marketed the FX-8150. Hype is a double-edged sword, and should not be used if you're not confident your offering will live up to at least most of the hype. AMD marketed at least the top-tier FX-8000 series eight-core processors as the second coming of Athlon64 FX.
- FX-8150 launch isn't backed up by launch of other AMD FX processors. This could go on to become a blunder. The presence of other FX series processors such as the FX-8120, six-core and four-core FX processors could have at least made the price performance charts look better, given that all FX processors are unlocked, buyers could see the value in buying them to overclock. TweakTown took a closer look into this.
- There are no significant clock-for-clock improvements over even AMD's own previous generation. The FX-8150 drags its feet behind the Phenom II X6 1100T in single-threaded math benchmarks such as Super/HyperPi, the picture isn't any better with Cinebench single-threaded, either.
- Multi-threaded data streaming applications such as data compression (WINRAR, 7-ZIP) reveal the FX-8150 to catch up with competition from even the Core i7-2600K. This trend keeps up with popular video encoding benchmarks such as Handbrake and x264 HD.
- Load power draw is bad, by today's standards. It's not like AMD is lagging behind in silicon fabrication technologies, or the engineering potential that turned around AMD Radeon power consumption figures over generations.
- Price could be a major saving grace. In the end, AMD FX 8150 has an acceptable price-performance figure. At just $25 over the Core i5-2500K, the FX-8150 offers a good performance lead.
- Impressive overclocking potential. We weren't exactly in awe when AMD announced its Guinness Record-breaking overclocking feat, but reviewers across the board have noticed fairly good overclocking potential and performance scaling.
450 Comments on Review Consensus: AMD FX Processor 8150 Underwhelming
www.amazon.com/review/RV7ZTITV8B968/ref=cm_cr_rev_detup_redir?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxJHU1JA6RGBGI&cdPage=1&asin=B005UBNKZG&newContentNum=7&store=electronics&cdThread=Tx11VIXKGCH4PMP&newContentID=MxWIFRARWE6PHD#Mx26OZ7SIVR3DOZ
they obviously focused on servers for BD (which is fine) so i hope they shift gears and focus on Enthusiast desktop for PD!
This thread should definitely be closed down. I just keep watching the exact same comments back and forth, and it's giving me deja vu to be honest.
Well, once there's one with link to bigfoot sighting, that was pretty fresh actually :roll:
Do you ever want to stop waiting and start doing?
I don't have money to spend on both a BD and SB platform like you do.
this is why i don't mind waiting for PD, im not playing the waiting game, im just waiting for the best option for my MoBo... i upgraded to a 990FX because i needed a new MoBo but couldn't really afford another CPU at the same time so i had to get something that would work with my PII, now that things are settling down for me a bit i would like to eventually upgrade my CPU but i don't want to have to replace my MOBO to do that since i just got this one, BD seemed like the right choice before it released but its just not enough to push me to do it at this time, so maybe when PD is released in a few months it will be, or a revision of BD...
either way i want to use my AM3+ board so whatever chip entices me the most i will get
unless you consider the fact that since reviews were underwhelming it gives motivation to possibly wait for PD if waiting for a AM3+ chip haha
As of Today....26/10/11
:cool: BulDozer PCCG has now on for sale 1st Batch,
AMD FX-8120 8-Core Processor $259.00
AMD FX-6100 6-Core Processor $215.00
:cry:www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=18658
AMD FX-Series FX-8150 3.6GHz Socket AM3+ Box $394.44
AMD FX-Series FX-8120 3.1GHz Socket AM3+ Box $328.43
AMD FX-Series FX-6100 3.3GHz Socket AM3+ Box $277.14
AMD FX-Series FX-4100 3.6GHz Socket AM3+ Box $195.00
Next time no point in giant sizing the font or changing the color (lol changing hte color of hyperlinks tee hee) All you succeeded in doing was making a large font broken looking hyperlink.
Though I gotta admit why was the end colon of your emoticon orange instead of red???
Intel is usually the performance king. those people that cry "AMD better produce or are dead in 2 years" have been saying the same thing for 30 years. Ignore the morons.
With the reintroduction of RISC based processing and the improvements in GPGPU usage, it will be interesting to see how computers evolve over the next decade TBH.
Will we be running 80 core processors in 10 years? I think so, of course they will be risc based ARM driven units that require a .5W of power at load per core. And another 50-80W for interface. No to little cache as RAM will again be circumstantially pushed to new levels and looser timings. DDR6 running at 8,000 mhz effective (1,000 mhz actual) at 10-10-10 and latencies still in the 40-50ns range in octachannel unit running on a 256bit bus.. (cuz it will be intel powering it and we know they love bus limiting their stuff)
*sigh