The Vishera Review: AMD FX-8350, FX-8320, FX-6300 and FX-4300 Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 23, 2012 12:00 AM ESTVideo Transcoding Performance
x264 HD 5.0.1 Benchmark
We migrated to the latest verison of the x264 HD benchmark which features a much newer version of x264 and a much heavier workload. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
The latest version of the x264 HD test does extremely well on Vishera. With the exception of the FX-6300, AMD is able to come away with a win at all of its price points. The FX-8350 even outperforms the Core i7 3770K.
Visual Studio 2012 - Multithreaded Compile Performance
Our compile test is back and better than ever. With a much larger and faster SSD (Samsung SSD 830, 512GB), we're able to get more consistent compile times between runs. We're now using Visual Studio 2012 to compile Mozilla's Firefox project. The compile is multithreaded however there are periods of serial operation where performance is bound by the speed of a single core. The end result is a benchmark that stresses both single and multithreaded performance. Compile times are reported in minutes elapsed.
It's all or nothing with Vishera. Mixed workloads that stress both single and multithreaded performance don't turn out as well on AMD's platform. With the FX-8350 AMD is able to sneak up on Sandy Bridge, but the competitive Ivy Bridge parts simply pull ahead. If there ever was a reason to fix AMD's single threaded performance, you're looking at it.
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frozen ox - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Yes please! This is the only reason I even read reviews about CPUs with more than 4 cores.JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
What kind of usage scenarios are you thinking off? Because virtualizaiton benches are very prominent in our AT Opteron reviews.Virtualization on top of the desktop is rarely done to run heavily loads AFAIK.
sep332 - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
I do keep some VMs running on my desktop but they are not generally loaded. I'm assuming, because of the power draw, these would not be a good choice for a dedicated VM server build?MySchizoBuddy - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Can they do opencl like the Intel counterpart?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Keep in mind that Vishera doesn't have an on-die GPU. OpenCL can run on the GPU or the CPU (with the appropriate ICDs), but we're almost always talking about GPU execution when we're talking about OpenCL.Beenthere - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Test after test by many reviewers using real apps, not synthetic benches which exaggerate RAM results, has shown that DDR3 running at 1333-1600 MHz. shows no system bottleneck on a typical Intel or AMD powered desktop PC. Even when increasing the RAM frequency to 2600 MHz. there was no tangible gains because the existing bandwidth @ 1333 MHz. is not saturated enough to cause a bottleneck. APUs do show some GPU benefit with up to 1866 MHz. RAM.fredbloggs73 - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Hey Anand, great review!Can we please some undervolting results of the FX-8350 like the i7-3770k undervolting article?
Thanks
dishayu - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
It's absolutely ridiculous that even though AMD has pushed out quite a nice and competitive product (in that price range), Intel has gotten wayy too big in the past 6 years that AMD was sleeping and i don't think they'll be pressured to do any price cuts still. So, even though we still have so-called-competition, Intel has a virtual monopoly and i can't hope that the new AMD releases will help drive prices down any more.dishayu - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Additional thought : I do believe that apart from the power consumption, AMD has a more overall compelling processor with the 8350. Single thread performance has already long crossed the point where you could tell the difference in experience between AMD and Intel (the exception to this is gaming). And AMD is better in heavily threaded applications.So, IF ONLY they could fix the power problem, i wouldn't hesitate to recommend an AMD system for any other purpose than gaming. Just my 2 cents.
figus77 - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
But really... even in games where is the bottleneck with an FX?Remember than in 99% on monitor youìve got a 60hz refresh rate and you can't see more than 60 without glitches fps on that screen, so what's the difference beetween 85 or 95 fps??
I've got an FX8120@3.6ghz with an hd6950@6970 really i can't find a single game that didn't run smooth in 1920x1080 and playing to skyrim with 4 core allocated to the game while 2 pairs of other core are doing video processing on 2 anime episodes is pleasing :-)