AMD FX 8150 Revisited

CPU by leeghoofd @ 2011-11-01

After the hectic week of testing this brand new 8 core CPU from Advanced Micro Design, it's time to go a bit deeper. In this review we are gonna retest the Bulldozer CPU versus it's main rivals. Being AMD's own Thuban 1090T, Intels 2600K and the almighty Gulftown 990X CPU. Mainly because our test suite had to be slightly updated to give the new Zambezi architecture a shot to maybe show it's true potential. But most important to show some people the real deal. I've myself read through a few articles on AMD's latest flagship. To be honest some reviews made me wonder if they were really done or just a copy paste of the marketing slides. It was also kind of funny to see some renown websites include completely GPU bottlenecked game benchmarks. Kinda hard to tell the importance of the CPU part don't you think ? Even if they call it real world scenarios, it still made my eyebrows frown as they hardly used any game tests in older reviews. Why now include them ? So without boring you too much with my frustrations, let's get it on...

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The FX cooling solution

The AMD press kits came without a cooler, so the reviewers had to use whatever was available in the lab. A week later most got the rebranded Asetek AMD FX all in one liquid cooling solution on the doorstep. Let's give it a spin.

 

 

 

As said before it's a rebranded Asetek/Antec 920 solution. Look at it as a pimped Corsair H70 with more flexible tubing and finally software fan control out of the box.

 

 

 

The thick 49mm 120mm fan radiator is aided by two fans to disperse the heat dumped by the FX-8150 CPU.

 

 

 

The dual fan solution, so push and pull can spin at a very low 700 RPM till 2400 RPM. They are controlled by the included software. Either opt for the silent approach ( easily doable up to 4.4-4.5Ghz ), Extreme preset or adjust it yourself with your own custom profile.

 

 

 

Quite normal to only find the AMD mounting kit in the box. I never reviewed the Antec H²0 920 cooling kit, but the mounting has seriously improved over the first Asetek/Corsair solutions.

 

 

The included Chillcontrol software leaves hardly any option open to adjust the fan speeds. Via either one of the two preset profiles ( silent and extreme ) or via a custom user defined setting. RGB colours can be adjusted, temperatures monitored, etc...

Some shots of the features of the Chill Control software :

 

 

 

 

 

We throw into the bundle Corsairs Hydro 100, 240mm rad solution and Alpenföhns K2 cooler. For the 3.6 and 4.5Ghz tests we set the Corsair to Balanced mode. Allowing the unit itself to choose the fan rpm itself. For the 4.7Ghz test the Hydro 100 was set to performance mode.

 

 

Running this CPU out of the box is no problem for any solution, even the FX cooling kit at silent mode ( really inaudible ) keeps it well under 60°C. The temps are read out by Coretemp, calibrated with a 14°C offset. Calibration was done by placing a sensor near the IHS. At 4.5Ghz and 1.39 Vcore the Silent mode starts to get a hard time to keep things cool. The FX cooling solution at Extreme preset keeps in touch with the Hydro 100 and cools adequately.

 

 

At 4.7Ghz at 1.47Vcore we ditched the silent mode and went either extreme or peformance mode for the all in one liquid cooling solutions. The monstrous K2 air cooler remains totally inaudible. The Hydro 100 takes first spot with a 5°C lead over the Asetek/AMD solution.

 

 

We could conduct the entire benchsuite at 4.9Ghz with the FX liquid cooling solution. Though prime95 was another cup of tea. Take note that your results can vary, our press CPU was an ES ( Early Sample ) CPU with a low VID of 1.2625. For your info low VID usually means a hot CPU :p

 

 

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Comment from Teemto @ 2011/11/02
Always been a fan of AMD, but Bulldozer can only be described as one thing:
Epic fail.
Comment from cesariuth @ 2011/11/02
Why you test only benchmark??
some space for test soft of the real world?
Comment from jmke @ 2011/11/02
yes why not test games or compression software or rendering performance ?

ow wait... you did
Comment from leeghoofd @ 2011/11/02
First up Cesariuth I don't have resources to real rendering software, secondly it is not my interest at all and I find it already very time consuming enough. The test suite in it's current state will highlight most of the performance issues or not from a CPU/platform.

Like said in the two conclusions, this CPU can be good with specially designed software. But in most apps, and for sure with older applications it will not be up to the task to handle even the competition in it's own ranks...

Let's hope for AMD Piledriver will get a bigger boost then the expected 20% ... Piledriver will probably be what Bulldozer should have been from the start...
Comment from Teemto @ 2011/11/02
I seriously doubt it. Optimizations can help but to bridge the gap with Intel (on Sandy Bridge - not even talking about Sandy Bridge-E) they'd have to have made serious design error in the initial design which somehow has crippled performance and which can then be fixed.

But how realistic is that?

But it's not just the performance, the power consumption of this thing is also not up to current standards.

So either they:

Scrap everything and start working on an FX2 with real cores instead of modules. But I doubt they have the funds to do it.

Or

Try to add a GPU to it and make a higher end APU? But that would've only worked if the FX power consumption had been ok.

Or

Stop with trying to make high end CPU's and focus entirely on their current APU products.

Maybe start looking into some ARM products?
Comment from cesariuth @ 2011/11/02
Thanks leeghoofd for your answer, but I think that BD have more performance in the real test vs SB , or benchmark don’t say much of the real performance of this chip...
Benchmark is always benchmark...but this is my opinion I don’t know if this is the opinion of all.

I hope that Pelidriver optimize more than 20% or close to this.

Thanks!
Comment from leeghoofd @ 2011/11/02
I know a benchmark is a benchmark, but one of the main reasons that the initial article had this follow up was due to the "rigorous" testing by some highly acclaimed websites... How to show a CPU works well : put the GPU on it's knees and see how they all score the same... that's ridiculous in my book... it was clearly in the reviewers guide shown how we should have done it it. But them proposed tests setups just looked to be more chosen to make a mainstream product look great...

Real rendering software doesn't cut my budget mate, I also have got no experience in that department. I know Flanker is doing some tests with BD at ExtremeSystems.org Though as always take everything with a grain of salt... I think you will find him in the AMD section
Comment from Massman @ 2011/11/03
It's funny how it's really hard to find these so-called "real-world" applications. No one is using those, but apparently only those hard-to-find apps are the only ones that are showing the "true power" of Bulldozer.

Fyi, you guys might want to read this: http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...rformance.aspx
Comment from Teemto @ 2011/11/03
Seems there's others which are not afraid to tell the truth

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Review/2...sappoints.aspx
Comment from WebNavi @ 2011/11/29
After the hectic week of testing this brand new 8 core CPU from Advanced Micro Design, it's time to go a bit deeper. In this review we are gonna retest the Bulldozer CPU versus it's main rivals. Being AMD's own Thuban 1090T, Intels 2600K and the almighty Gulftown 990X CPU.

 

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