The Bulldozer Review: AMD FX-8150 Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 12, 2011 1:27 AM ESTOverclocking
AMD indicated the FX-8150 was good for around 4.6GHz using air cooling, 5GHz using water cooling and beyond with more aggressive cooling methods. In our experience with the platform, hitting 4.6GHz, stable, on a stock AMD HSF was not an issue. Moving beyond 4.6GHz on air saw a significant decrease in stability however. I could boot and run benchmarks at 4.7GHz but I'd almost always encounter a crash. I couldn't hit 5GHz on air.
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JumpingJack - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
This is a good point.mianmian - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
How disappointed I am. I can't believe what AMD will claim later on.Marburg U - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
Cannot see a reason to wait for Piledriver. Am3+ won't survive that chip, and +15%, even in single thread, won't be enough (for Sandy, I'm not even talking about Ivy).If BD had not been so bad i would have hoped in a price drop of the Thuban, and would have gone for it. But now, i fear price spikes of the old Phenom II X6 as it approaches it's EOL.
Ethaniel - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
... using a chainsaw. Newegg sells a 2500k for USD 220. I'm thinking something like 170-180 for the FX-8150. I was expecting a lot from the FX line. And I think that was my mistake, probably. Too bad.Leyawiin - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
I guess we can take comfort in that some things never change - naming AMD processors are always behind the curve (since before Intel's C2 Duo). Guess I'll hang onto my X4 955 @ 3.6 Ghz for a while longer. It'll be the last AMD processor I'll bother with (and I'm tired of being faithful and waiting on them).richard77aus - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
""At the same clock speed, Phenom II is almost 7% faster per core than Bulldozer according to our Cinebench results.""I am far from being an expert in CPUs but isn't the main advantage intel has had since core2- sandybridge the per core performance? not closk speed and not multi core.
I've seen some benchmarks showing real world usage of the SB i3 dual core where it out performs a faster clocked quad core phenom 2.
richard77aus - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
Meaning AMD giving first priority to clockspeed and core count was the wrong thing to aim for even if they had achieved a 4ghz+ stock 8 core speed processor, but to actually go backwards compared to such an old arch. is a disaster. (my first post here, is there a way to edit posts?)Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
The thing is that Phenom II, which is AMD's arch, is FASTER clock for clock than their new Bulldozer arch. Intel is far ahead of both CPUs, but it's a bit laughable that AMD's older CPUs actually outperform their new ones.Saxie81 - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
Hey Anand, did you happen to get the power consumption numbers when you hit 4.7ghz?This is... disappointing. I knew the Single thread benchmarks were going to be bad, but you need to be running something thats needing the 8 cores, if not its of no use. Kinda like using a Magny Cours to run Crysis.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
I'm going to be doing some more overclocking tomorrow, but I broke 300W at 4.7GHz :-/