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AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer CPU Review

CPU by leeghoofd @ 2011-10-12

It has been a while since AMD has revamped their CPU lineup. New Graphics Cards are introduced on a regular basis, though mostly their silicon motherboard processor variants are not. Mostly a brand new breed of CPUs goes hand in hand with the launch of a new CPU socket. And if the end user is really unlucky the RAM and CPU cooler need a swap too. It has been over 18 months since AMD introduced their hexacore Thuban CPU. So it was about time to give an answer to Intels SandyBridge lineup. Or why not even aim for Intels high end socket 1366 Gulftown lineup. With every new CPU release, speculations rule the various forums. How the design is gonna be, performance expectations, die size, TDP,.. you name it and has been dealt with on the tech sites. On the 12th of October AMDs new born CPU core baptized Zambezi, for the desktop PCs and for the servers Interlagos and Valencia will see the daylight. Let's open the press kit.

Windows 7 versus Windows 8 and Power consumption

I also did some multithreaded tests to compare Windows 7 versus Windows 8. The task scheduler in the latter is more optimised for multi core CPUs. Yet my finding were not that shocking in my test suite. 1-4% difference was maximum spotted. Nothing that would give the Scorpius platform that required significant boost. Rumour mill : apparently there's a Microsoft patch in the works, that should address the sometimes low multithreading performance of this CPU.

Wprime 1024 is a few secs faster in Windows 8, a good start. Same counts for Y-cruncher ( a multithreaded Pi test ) We ran the CPU at stock clocks for all the tests.

Even the X264HD test V4.0 gets a decent boost in Windows 8.

Similar small improvement in Cinebench, nice to see that even the single core score scales in the newer operating system. In the synthetic 3D tests we noticed close to no gain in the CPU tests.

Power consumption :

Time to measure how true the new powerefficient CPU statement really is. At idle it looks pretty good, consuming less then the older Thuban 1090T.

Though once loaded ( Cinebench all core test ) this thing goes trough the roof. This is really so un-2011ish.

Clocked at 4.5Ghz, a good speed, voltage and decent perform ratio. This thing will dimm the lights in your house if you go over 5ghz :p. 376Watts being pulled out of the wall with just the CPU stressed. At 4.9Ghz we breach 400watts. Note that for the OC tests APM was disabled for maximum performance.

Cold test on the next page

Comment from petervandamned @ 2011/10/12

Nice one

U did a great job bro !

Comment from Teemto @ 2011/10/12

Nice review. But still I feel FX is a dissapointment as I was hoping for it being at least on par with the 2600K.

Now the question arrizes:

What do I choose as next shrimp bench setup

:

1. Keep current Asus Z68 Gene-Z with
a) better 2600K (should ask for a Tones binning day

)
b) new 2700K (and hope for the best)

2. Wait for Sandy Bridge-E (most costly upgrade -> wife factor comes into play

)

3. Formula V + FX-8150 (hoping that with my new cascade I can manage a stable 5.5+GHz system). It'll look nice but will it be an improvement over my current 5.3 sandy bridge? I have my doubts...

Comment from leeghoofd @ 2011/10/12

I sold your CPU btw today... so something better is on the way if you are game...

For benching sorry but this CPU is only good at CPU-Z... it's a nice game platform or encoding machine as long as the apps support it. for benching plz look elsewhere...

Comment from larkin @ 2011/10/14

Nice NB overclocking test but you should really have high speed memory in there to see a bigger difference. I'm pretty sure PC1280 is a bottleneck at that OC.

Comment from leeghoofd @ 2011/10/14

thanks ir.

Yes i just wanted to have a reference. Sin at XS has tested NB scaling with 1866Mhz Link here : http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...locking-Guide- ... His results were not scaling to much.

Too bad we need to go subzero to go over 2800Mhz... I hope retail silicon will be a better as steppings progress...

Comment from leeghoofd @ 2011/10/14

thanks sir.

Yes I just wanted to have a reference. Sin at XS has tested NB scaling with 1866Mhz Link here : http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...locking-Guide- ... His results were not scaling to much.

Too bad we need to go subzero to go over 2800Mhz... I hope retail silicon will be a better as steppings progress...

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