AMD’s 5 GHz Turbo CPU in Retail: The FX-9590 and ASRock 990FX Extreme9 Review
by Ian Cutress on August 9, 2014 8:00 AM ESTGaming Benchmarks
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. We test at 1920x1080 on Ultra graphical settings.
The FX-9590 seems to match the i3-4360, indicating that even more cores, more frequency and more PCIe lanes is not always a good thing. The i3-4360 is using PCIe 3.0 x8/x8, compared to PCIe 2.0 x16/x16 for the FX-9590, which should put them both equal in bandwidth.
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Again, the FX-9590 is trading around the Haswell i3 margin.
Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Tomb Raider has historically been CPU agnostic, with all the latest CPUs performing similarly.
Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is a benchmarking wet dream – a highly complex benchmark that can bring the toughest setup and high resolutions down into single figures. Having an extreme SSAO setting can do that, but at the right settings Sleeping Dogs is highly playable and enjoyable. We run the basic benchmark program laid out in the Adrenaline benchmark tool, and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
The FX-9590 loses 4-6 FPS on average to the latest Intel cohort, which is not bad considering the release date difference.
Company of Heroes 2
Company of Heroes 2 also can bring a top end GPU to its knees, even at very basic benchmark settings. To get an average 30 FPS using a normal GPU is a challenge, let alone a minimum frame rate of 30 FPS. For this benchmark I use modified versions of Ryan’s batch files at 1920x1080 on High. COH2 is a little odd in that it does not scale with more GPUs with the drivers we use.
Company of Heroes 2 is usually relatively CPU agnostic except for the older dual core CPUs, but the FX-9590 gets a win here.
Battlefield 4
The EA/DICE series that has taken countless hours of my life away is back for another iteration, using the Frostbite 3 engine. AMD is also piling its resources into BF4 with the new Mantle API for developers, designed to cut the time required for the CPU to dispatch commands to the graphical sub-system. For our test we use the in-game benchmarking tools and record the frame time for the first ~70 seconds of the Tashgar single player mission, which is an on-rails generation of and rendering of objects and textures. We test at 1920x1080 at Ultra settings.
Similar to Sleeping Dogs, the FX-9590 does not lose much considering the release date difference of the architectures.
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TiGr1982 - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Sorry, DreSden. My fault.SmokingCrop - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
lol wat.Here in Belgium, depending on your use, it's about € 0,13 - 0,23 ..
basroil - Sunday, August 10, 2014 - link
Germany is stupid and thinks solar is good for tech industries, Belgium has nuclear plants that give it huge rate discounts. Basically, you can buy this chip in Belgium just fine, but go get an intel chip for germanyDeath666Angel - Sunday, August 10, 2014 - link
You should change your provider. I pay 23c/kWh. Unless you have an "all green" plan, you shouldn't pay that much.KWIE - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Um, what? Where on earth are you living in Germany to be paying 54c/kWh??? I'm in Dresden and paying 24c/kWh across the board (no HT/NT).Flunk - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Haha, I can think of more important reasons YOU wouldn't want to live in England! You know Gas is more than $8 a Gallon there right? Also, they tax cars based on CO2 generation and cars are almost twice as expensive as they are in the USA!LemmingOverlord - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
@Flunk, you do understand that is basically the reality for most of the Western world? Gas (Petrol, not gas-gas) is expensive, period. Cars are expensive. Period.Skillztech - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
Totally unrealistic figures. Yet again intel fans come up with either straight out lies or complete nonsense. "Running this chip at load 24/7 at 18p per kWh for a year" *facepalms*dshk - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
HPC and supercomputers are built from Opterons, not from FXs. If you have been playing on your home computer on full load 24/7 then you have bigger problems than paying your electricity bill.Budburnicus - Saturday, January 10, 2015 - link
+1 I feel sad for AMD anymore! This FX can't even compete with a three year old i7-2600K!