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 ESTProjected Performance: Can AMD Catch up with Intel?
I keep going back to this slide because it's incredibly relevant. It's the only indication we have from AMD of what its future roadmap will look like in terms of performance increases:
Each year AMD promised to increase performance of its high-end cores by roughly 10 - 15%. Astute observers will note that, at this rate, AMD will almost never catch up to Intel. AMD at the time was careful to point out that it's talking about 10 - 15% gains in core performance, and it could potentially see even larger increases in total chip performance by pulling other levers. Vishera is an example of AMD doing just that. The Piledriver cores by themselves don't increase performance tremendously, but they do give AMD a little more thermal headroom to work with thanks to some more efficient design decisions and better transistor choice. With Vishera, AMD took the additional power headroom and turned into a frequency advantage. The result is AMD's FX-8350 can operate in the same power envelope as the outgoing FX-8150, yet runs at an 11% higher base clock (turbo frequency remains the same). Through frequency and core level improvements, AMD was able to deliver a bit more than the 10 - 15% performance increased in promised.
If AMD is able to repeat these improvements again next year, I wondered whether or not it would get any closer to closing the gap with Intel - particularly when it came to single threaded performance. We already know from our Haswell investigations that Intel is expecting around a 5 - 15% increase in CPU performance from Haswell over Ivy Bridge. If we assume that Haswell delivers towards the 15% end of that spectrum, and if we assume that Steamroller delivers the same level of improvements that we saw from Piledriver/Vishera, we end up with some pretty interesting predictions for where things end up next year. I modeled the 2013 performance of high-end AMD and Intel platforms based on those two factors and plotted the curves in a few different benchmarks. For each generation I used the parts that AMD stacked up against one another (they are also fairly similarly priced). For 2011 I used the FX-8150 vs. Intel's Core i5 2500 and for 2012 I used the FX-8350 vs. Intel's Core i5 3570. The 2013 data is of course projected based on a 15% increase in performance from Haswell, and a repeat of the Vishera vs. Zambezi increase for AMD. This is mostly an interesting experiment so don't get too invested in the data.
We'll start with Cinebench, by far the most painful of the tests for AMD from a single-threaded performance perspective:
The Vishera gains here were decent but not enough to dramatically shrink the performance gap. Furthermore, Intel put a good amount of distance in place with Ivy Bridge and if it can continue that with Haswell I don't see much hope here.
The multithreaded Cinebench results begin in AMD's favor and remain so even with our projected performance data.
Mozilla's Kraken benchmark is another example of single threaded performance gone awry for AMD.
Thankfully, Vishera does close the gap by a decent amount and if AMD extends those gains it is on an intercept course with Intel. The bad news is, that intercept wouldn't be in 2013.
POV-Ray provides another point of view on single threaded performance, here the situation looks far less dire than under Cinebench:
Unfortunately the curves remain fairly distinct.
Once again, when we increase thread count we see AMD pull ahead.
SYSMark is a particularly telling benchmark as it is lightly threaded and does a good job of simulating all types of workloads:
The result here is AMD closing in, albeit slowly, on Intel's performance advantage. I suspect this is quite possibly the best case scenario for AMD, it doesn't necessarily want to surpass Intel in performance but it wants to get close enough where pricing and other factors (e.g. GPU performance in its APU parts) can make a bigger difference.
Our Visual Studio 2012 test is a good combination of single threaded and multithreaded workloads in one:
With Vishera, AMD did a lot to close the gap betwen itself and Intel. Another increase like this and we won't see AMD surpass Intel, but the two should remain fairly close.
These last two tests show us the other side of the coin. If both AMD and Intel continue on their present tracks, what will happen in a test where AMD already does well today?
In areas where AMD holds a significant advantage, Haswell would need to deliver more than a 15% gain in performance at the same price point to catch up.
None of the results here are all that surprising. AMD remaining on its current course isn't enough to dramatically change its standings vs. Intel in another year. Vishera definitely cut into the performance delta, but the 2013 follow-up will have to do even more to really have an impact. Steamroller is far more focused on increasing IPC, however without a new process node it'll be difficult to demonstrate another gain in frequency like we see today with Vishera. I suspect the real chance for AMD to approach parity in many of these workloads will be with its 20nm architecture, perhaps based on Excavator in 2014.
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Ukdude21 - Thursday, August 15, 2013 - link
Geez I think this intel fanboy should stfu and stop talking a load of verbal shit lol.redwarrior - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
I looked over the tests this character devised. ONly a few were multithreaded. Tom's Hardware had a very through testing procedure , explaining eacg application and what it showed about the architecture of the various cpus being compared. They were very balanced in single threaded apps and multithreaded apps. They did NOT do a lot of synthetic benchmarks because many of them are skewed in a prejudicial way. He also used win zip , photoshop cs5, video editing software, etc. Games were not all single thread shoot-em-ups, they were a collection of widely diverse games.. The FX-8350 came out ahead of not only the I5 3450 but also the I5-3570. He had some criticisms of course , but he said it was the best bang for the buck in the $200 price space. This review was shallow and meaningless done by somebody who either is lazy or on a mission to discredit. By the way The FX-8350 had the highest score on win zip bettering even the I7 3770. This reviewer owes us a well-designed retest and apology for a bunch of misleading garbage.silverblue - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Well, that's the beauty of product reviews - there are multiple for a specific product, and all with different tests. What you need to do is find the test that matters to you, and if it excels at it, you may buy it solely based on that (even ignoring bad points). If, on the other hand, it doesn't perform so well in the discipline of your choice, that is really making your mind up for you to go buy something else.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
LOL - no that's the beauty of AMD's "we are not evil" LIE, and their "totally and completely proprietary build of the "open source!!!!!!!! not like nvidia physx!!!!"W I N Z I P
Now, all you freaking amd fanboy liars and losers have to be constantly reminded about your evil, sick, proprietary, "open source" AMD LIED AND COMPATIBILITY DIED - winzip BS !
LOL - let it dig into you fanboy, let it sink in deeply. All those years amd played your wet brains like limp noodles get played, and you scowled and spit and hated and howled nVidia and PhysX and open source and OpenCL and amd is not evil and they aren't thta kind of company and then you went and had the stupid 3rd grader amd gamers manifesto stapled to your foreheads....
LOL
You didn't find it in your evil fanboy manual to let your amd fanboy freind there know about the HACKING amd did on winzip ?
Tsk, tsk. for shame for shame.
Brainling - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Translation: I am either paid by AMD, or a total fanboi, and these benchmarks did not say what I want them to say. So I am going to come on here and plug a different reviewers website, that is known to be AMD biased, and tell everyone how unbias they are and how their conclusions are the right ones, because they agree with my world view.yumeyao - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
I suggest stopping using x264 HD benchmark and looking for another test case.Let's look at what x264 HD benchmark does:
Source film:
MPEG-2!!! 6931kbps on avg, with a maximum bitrate of 12xxxkbps!!!
You guys know that MPEG-2 is DVD standard...... DVD has a resolution of 480p(720x480 for wide-screen), but for FullHD it's 1920x1080, 6 times pixels as DVD has! And dvd has a ~5000kbps bitrate on avg, so what quality of the source film could we expect??
And then let's look at its output:
OMFG! 8000kbps!! h264!!!! I'd say for such a source, 2000kbps is fairly enough for an h264 output....
So do you guys think such a test could ultimates a cpu's calculating potentials?
I suggest finding any ts/BD-ISO source, and use proper options on x264 (basically you can directly use --preset xxx), then use it as a reference...
Brainling - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
It's 125TDP part that gets consistently blown away by the 95 TDP Ivy Bridge, which has more transistors and a smaller more modern node process....and at the high end, it's really not that much cheaper than an Ivy Bridge i5.*sigh* Oh AMD...how the mighty have fallen. Can the real AMD, the one that gave us Thunderbird and Athlon64, please stand up?
redwarrior - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
To the Intel fanatics whose bottom-line is" My car's better than your car, my car's better than yours. What infantile sensibilities . The computer is a tool. A multifaceted tool that has 1001 purposes. The AMD technology meets the needs of 99.99% of computer users with a better bang for the buck. Only a one-dimensional person can say otherwise. Myopic gamers need to open their eyes and see there is a bigger world out there.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
Here we go again, the activist on another preaching rampage, with his attack on Intel cpu owners.... nice little OWS protest against the rich Intel people...You wouldn't mind then if I said I can't stand you cheap, broke, ghetto amd dirty little rascals who can't pay for themselves let alone the education they need to properly use a computer.
Not to mention your ignorance in supporting a losing, technologically backwards second tier set of idiots wasting monetary resources that could be spent on something good for the world instead of on foolish amd misadventures that pay interest on amd's debt and not much else.
You ought to support the company that pays a LIVING WAGE, instead of the one firing their employees, axing them over and over again.
Thanks for not being capable of properly acquiring and using a computer.
7beauties - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
I've rooted for AMD against Intel before I built my first PC with the 700Mhz Athlon in 2000. AMD stole Intel's thunder to much acclaim. For a while AMD and Intel dueled for supremacy, exchanging leads, much like the tit for tat between Radeon and Geforce GPU's are engaged in. AMD's scrappy fight spurred Intel's clock to speed up its ticks and tocks, and the computing world benefited from this. It would be bad for all of us if AMD goes out of business. I root for the underdog, for David against Goliath, but David is lying on the ground and boasting of winning. It was embarrassing when the Phenom was so unphenomenal. Then AMD heralded the Bulldozer. Bulldoze what? The empty hype makes the truth more painful. Intel plans to integrate the South Bridge onto Haswell's die, and folks, AMD will lose teeth and get bloodied. I'm growing weary of being a sort of Cubs fan.