AMD’s FX-8150 vs. Core i7 & Phenom II – Bulldozer Arrives!
The new “Bulldozer” FX-series CPUs released today from AMD, and ABT has been evaluating the “Zambezi” 8-core flagship FX-8150 for the past 5 days. We naturally want to know if it is a good upgrade from AMD’s aging Phenom II architecture and we will be comparing its performance to our overclocked 980 Black Edition also on the AM3+ platform and also to our overclocked Intel Core i7-920 LGA-1366 platform.
We will briefly introduce the new FX Bulldozer architecture and then head right into our evaluation which will highlight performance in 20 modern games at 1920×1200 and 2560×1600. We will also run synthetic and real world benchmarks on our stock-clocked and overclocked FX-8150. We will work to establish its performance in games when paired with a single HD 6970 and also with HD 6970 CrossFire-X2. In this way, we will see if the FX-8150 is worth the $245 that AMD is asking for it.
We notice that FX 8150 is positioned against Intel’s enthusiast CPU line-up and directly against the upper-midrange Core i5 2500K. Considering that AMD is introducing their new flagship processor at $245, we can expect that its performance should be between the 2500K and 2600K.
Here is how AMD visualizes their line-up. Although they say it is not indicative of performance positioning, it generally is. You may also notice that AMD does not include Intel’s highest end LGA 1366 platform and that Intel will again lock down the high end when Sandy Bridge-E launches later on this month.
AMD is releasing seven CPUs simultaneously and they are available globally later on today in quantity – from the lowest-priced 4-core FX 4100 for $115, to the the 6-core FX 6100 for $165; as well as the flagship 8-core FX 8150 for $245 and the FX 8120 which is also 8-core for $205 as shown in the table below:
Below is the Bulldozer family without the pricing but with more details of their differences. As you can see, the L3 cache remains the same as well as 1866MHz DDR support and all FX processors will use the AM3+ motherboard platform. It is likely that older AM3 motherboards will support these new FX CPUs with a BIOS update, so it is an upgrade path for older Phenom IIs.
The Bulldozer Architecture
AMD has been working on new CPU architecture since long before Phenom II. Phenom II reached its performance peak in gaming with the 980 Black Edition (BE) which we reviewed here a few months ago. It is AMD’s fastest 4-core processor and it sports a stock CPU speed of 3.7GHz. We were able to overclock ours to 4.3GHz and that is the speed that we shall test it at; very nearly at the current limit of the Phenom II architecture on air-cooling.
The stock speed of the FX-8150 is 3.6GHz; however, Turbo Core mode allows 4 cores to reach 3.9GHz on all 8-cores and 4.2GHz with 4-cores if there is sufficient thermal headroom. So basically we are putting up a 4.2GHz Bulldozer against a Phenom II clocked at 4.3GHz. And we also able to give our FX-8150 an overclocked boost of all 8 cores to 4.4GHz, to give you an idea of its scaling in games.
AMD’s Bulldozer versus Intel’s Sandy Bridge
AMD is positioning their top FX-8150 CPU against Intel’s upper midrange – specifically against the i5 2500K. Our test CPU is the older “Bloomfield” Core i7-920 which we can stably clock past 3.8GHz (with turbo on a single core to 4.0GHz). Overclocked, it should offer similar performance to the stock-clocked i5 2500K (3.4/3.8GHz) in gaming with a single powerful video card like HD 6970 or the GTX 580 at resolutions at or above 1080p. Here is AMD’s chart which shows AMD’s FX on-paper advantages over Intel’s competing CPUs.
The FX-8150 looks great on paper. The Phenom II’s tradition “weakness” against Intel’s Core2 processors have always been their single- and lightly-threaded performance. And with the recent release of Intel’s Sandy Bridge i5 2500K and i5 2600K, the performance gap has widened in Intel’s favor. We are going to be looking to see what AMD has done to close the gap with the new Bulldozer architecture.
Head over to the next page and we’ll find more out about Bulldozer architecture
Your review is a lot different than most of them out there. And that is a good thing. Its a different view comparing BD with the phenom 980 and the i7 920. Most other sites used the phenom x6 and intel’s Sandy Bridge. With the latter configurations its harder to see BD in a good light. Especially considering AMDs own 6 core phenoms which in, my opinion, currently a much better value. As a slightly revised model, I believe many ppl have overlooked the 1100t. it pulls away from then phenom x4 by a decent amount. Its a bar that bulldozer is struggling to surpass.
But your review focus is interesting because it does show BD isnt that bad compared to the phenom2s (4 core versions). Its not so bad at all in this comparison. AMD can only improve on this design from here. It will get better. Its just a terrible way to start it off. only if that 1100t (and 1090) wasnt in the picture, bulldozer would be a much better looking AMD option!
Thanks for your angle in reviewing the BD, it is something unique and useful. Its a review that i enjoyed mostly because it helps see a more complete picture.
The benchmark charts was a clusterfuck that I couldn’t understand. The gaming chart was much better. Need to create readable charts and organize the scores accordingly instead of copy and paste results at tiny pics which are hard to see, this review is a fail.
I don’t understand why this review was posted in the shape it’s in.
First off, apoppin, this is way below your standard just in terms of presentation. The pasted screenshots make comparisons awkward.
SATA scores with some 500GB seagate drive.. wtf? Use some high-speed SSD, maybe some fast USB flash to evaluate the south bridge performance.
Sometimes you have Intel scores, sometimes you don’t. How much work is it really to run SuperPi on the Intel setup?
And lastly, why the 920? The AMD chip just came out, I think it makes more sense to compare it to current Intel chips. The Sandy Bridge comparison is fair in terms of price and availability. Who buys a 920 today?
Overall this isn’t up to ABT’s standards, I feel.
First of all, I have to agree. And I am not going to make excuses for it. There is not even a real conclusion in my article.
Let me start with the last issue first – the i7-920. Don’t forget that it is benched at 3.80GHz with turbo on to 4.0GHz. That is faster that the current stock i7-960, Intel’s fastest LGA 1366 quad-core on their lead platform – the X58 motherboard (until it is replaced this month). As noted in the article, it would be about as fast as a stock i5-2500K. So it is a very valid comparison. That said, we are also again evaluating new CPUs from Intel and I just received a Core i3-2105 for comparison so we can see how the dual cores perform, including the Phenom II X2 in gaming.
The main issue with the FX-8150 evaluation was one of lack of time. Reviewers mostly had 7 days from the receipt of the FX-8150 until publication which is time pressure enough. However, the ABT review kit’s ASUS AM3+ motherboard was DoA; a hardware issue and it would not even post.
It took over two days to get a replacement AM3+ MB and that left only about 3 days for the entire evaluation (considering that it takes a day to set up Windows and 20 games and all of the benchmarks, updates and patches – and I did it twice).
Worst of all, CrossFire didn’t scale well with the stock-clocked FX-8150 on the replacement motherboard and it also had issues which meant a lot of retesting. While overclocking the FX-8150, the MB’s LAN became defective and a PCIe riser pulled loose from the MB with the video card, and I am now waiting for a third motherboard as replacement so that I can finish Part two of this FX-8150 Evaluation.
In the meantime, I will clean up my charts and put up easier to see images as needed. And I will add in the few comparable Intel benches which I had no time to run. An overall summary chart would also be nice. But I am saving that for Part two which will also explore CrossFire scaling with the overclocked FX-8150 (at 4.4GHz on air and perhaps further under watercooling).
All of ABT’s evaluations are always done from a gamer’s point of view. That is why you see 20 games benched as a minimum with far less emphasis placed on other CPU functions. Also, normally I run Total War: Shogun II and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but they BSoD the PC when I tried to launch them with the FX-8150. AMD acknowledged it and believes that it may be due to an issue with Steam.
Over the next couple of days, I will clean up this article. But watch for Part II – that is the important part with a real conclusion about FX-8150 as a gaming CPU. Having two weeks with it (now) makes a lot of difference than taking a superficial 3-day look at it. I am not under time pressure now.
If I may make a suggestion to everyone reading this, follow us on ABT forum. The members find out exactly what is going on – first, before it is polished up for an article and you may even have input into the way the testing is conducted before we do it. How and what we test is driven by our members.
Fair enough — waiting for Part II. Thanks for the explanations!