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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.

RAM timings to the rescue ?

Alright another page of graphs and more chit chat. We already looked at increased CPU frequencies, RAM frequencies. Now it's time to go more into fine tuning of the RAMs. Since 2133Mhz is a nice daily ram speed, plus giving a nice boost from lower RAM clocks. Time to pop in the Corsair GTX2 kit and see how it all works out at the below ram speed settings.

CPU running at 4.5Ghz, rams at 2133Mhz speeds, NB at stock 2200Mhz. RAM timings tested are :

CL9-9-9-27
CL8-8-8-24
CL7-7-7-21

SuperPi 32M gains a healthy 5 secs in an untweaked run with tighter RAM timings. Wprime is not a ram lover in any sort. Similar to Cinebench that gains close to nothing from tighter timings.

Similar light scaling with AIDA64 Bandwith test. If you want the best rams for your system CL7 it has to be ( or lower ofcourse :p )

In general with higher ram speeds and tighter timings the overal system will get faster. It's a rule of thumb, that over and over is proven with current platforms. Socket 1366 had some issues with extra latencies when high speed rams were popped in. Though AMD's Scorpius platform is all about raw power for best performance.

The tighter it gets, the faster the synthetic tests of Futuremark run. Sadly in games tight timings usually mean close to nothing. Only Mafia II had scaling, others are within the margin of error.

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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