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 ESTFinal Words
Vishera is a step in the right direction for AMD, it manages to deliver tangibly better performance than last year's disappointing FX processor without increasing power consumption. Thanks to architectural and frequency improvements, AMD delivers up to 20% better performance than last year's FX-8150 for a lower launch price, while remaining within the same thermal envelope.
AMD does manage to pull away with some very specific wins when compared to similarly priced Intel parts. Performance in the latest x264 benchmark as well as heavily threaded POV-Ray and Cinebench tests show AMD with the clear multithreaded performance advantage. Other heavily threaded integer workloads also do quite well on Vishera. The only part that didn't readily beat its Intel alternative was AMD's six-core FX-6300, the rest did extremely well in our heavily threaded tests. Look beyond those specific applications however and Intel can pull away with a significant lead. Lightly threaded applications or those whose performance depends on a mixture of single and multithreaded workloads are typically wins for Intel. The story hasn't really changed in that regard. For AMD to become competitive across the board it needs significant changes to the underlying architecture, some of which I don't know that we'll see until the 2013 - 2014 timeframe. Even then, Intel's progress isn't showing any signs of slowing.
Power consumption is also a big negative for Vishera. The CPU draws considerably more power under load compared to Ivy Bridge, or even Sandy Bridge for that matter.
Ultimately Vishera is an easier AMD product to recommend than Zambezi before it. However the areas in which we'd recommend it are limited to those heavily threaded applications that show very little serialization. As our compiler benchmark shows, a good balance of single and multithreaded workloads within a single application can dramatically change the standings between AMD and Intel. You have to understand your workload very well to know whether or not Vishera is the right platform for it. Even if the fit is right, you have to be ok with the increased power consumption over Intel as well.
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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 :-)