AMD’s FX-8150 vs. Core i7 & Phenom II – Bulldozer Arrives!
Synthetic Tests
HD Tune 2.55
HD Tune is a hard disk utility but it may give us some differences between the AMD AM3+ platform and Intel’s X58 motherboards. We are using the default setting of 64KB blocks for testing. First we run the standard benchmark with the Core i7-920 and the x58 MB.
Now we run the benchmark for the Phenom II and AM3+ motherboard; the minimum speeds are way down; something choked during the test.
Now we look at the FX-8150 in the same AM3+ motherboard as the Phenom II.
There is nothing conclusive here. It will be interesting to rerun the HDD tests with a SSD.
ATTO
The ATTO Disk Benchmark is an aging performance measurement tool which measures storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize the performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Here are the results of the Core i7-920/X58 platform benchmark.
Next the same benchmark in the same PC and identical conditions with the Phenom II/AM3+ motherboard.
It doesn’t really prove anything, but synthetic benchmarks are a little faster on the AM3+ platform with Phenom II. Let’s see if it holds for the FX 8150:
Well, we do see a higher transfer rate with the AM3+ motherboard even though the hard disks are identical 500GB Seagate drives. Again, it will be interesting to see results between X58 and AM3+ using a Solid State Drive (SSD).
Super Pi
We didn’t run Super Pi on Core i7 so here it is on the Phenom II.
And now the FX-8150
Phenom II is stronger in this bench. We will see this over and over. Unless an application is heavily-threaded or optimized, it will run faster on the Phenom II (nevermind the i5 or i7 which is faster than the Phenom II). We notice a trend of lower IPC with FX that AMD is trying to make up with more cores and increased clockspeed. Did they succeed? Continue on to Fritz Chess Bench.
Fritz Chess Bench
Fritz Chess Benchmark is found within the game’s program files and basically it crunches numbers to test your processor’s speed. Deep Fritz takes advantage of massive calculations and multi-threaded performance to work any CPU fully. It loads all threads 100% and will drive your CPU temperatures way up.
Besides showing relative speed when compared to a P3 1.0GHz CPU, it also shows the nodes completed. The faster your CPU, the more nodes completed. First up is the i7
Next the Phenom II
Finally the FX-8150
The FX-8150 is faster than the Phenom II but still lags behind the Core i7.
CustomPC Benchmark
CustomPC benchmark use widely available open-source applications to carry out the tasks that most of us perform on a regular basis. There are three tests, each of which measure different aspects of a PC’s performance. These tests themselves are not synthetic benchmarks but instead they use real world image, video and multi-tasking tasks to test the performance of your computer.
The tests are:
- GIMP Image Editing
- H.264 Video Encoding
- Multi-tasking
As usual we test with the Core i7-920 first.
Now the same test is repeated on the Phenom II 980 BE and it is much slower.
Finally we test the FX-8150.
The Phenom II partly by virtue of being +100MHz faster, scores slightly better than the FX-8150. It cannot be denied that the new Bulldozer architecture is a bit weaker for single-threaded applications than even the Phenom II architecture is. Clearly the Core i7-920 at 3.8GHz is easily much faster in image editing and video encoding where the applications are not heavily multi-threaded. Even the multi-tasking test is solidly in favor of the Intel architecture.
CINEBENCH
CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s professional 3D content creation suite, CINEMA 4D. This latest 11.5 version of CINEBENCH can test up to 64 processor threads accurately and automatically.
First up, the Core i7 with a rather shortened CPU test. (We will update this)
Next up the Phenom II which got a lot more detailed testing. The i7 is significantly faster in the CPU test than the Phenom II.
And now the FX-8150
In some ways, FX architecture has improved over the Phenom II architecture except for single core IPC, but it still lags behind Intel’s older Core i7/X58 platform. Again we see FX improvements for heavily-threaded applications but a decline in single-threaded performance from Phenom II.
X264
We ran this bench quite late in out testing and only managed to see if the FX 8150 had bettered the overclocked Phenom II 980 BE. Basically this test encodes a HD video clip into a x264 video file. The first pass is very quick and the second one is much slower and much more demanding of a task as it does the actual encoding. This benchmark is heavily mult-threaded and should favor the new architecture.
Faster is better and first up is the Phenom II 980 BE.
Next up, the FX-8150.
As we can see, although the first pass is quicker on the Phenom II, it is far more important to have the second pass encode quickly as it is far more time-consuming. The first pass simply calculates and doesn’t even use 4 cores whereas the second pass will use all eight for the actual encoding. Finally a solid win for FX over Phenom II in a heavily-multi-threaded task.
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!