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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NeatOman - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
I have a FX-8320 @4.5Ghz, and never goes over 75c. I got it because it was $215 for both the CPU and a very good motherboard, and paired it with two HD 7850's. With that said, an overclocked i5@4.4Ghz is better then anything AMD can do over clocked even @5Ghz (for the most part) and at times far out classes it. But, an i5 and good motherboard will cost about $350 and $400+ for i7.. Almost twice. FYI, I live in Illinois and the electricity here is very very cheap.colinstu - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
a $300+ AMD chip?! LOL. Who the heck would buy this? It's not efficient, it's definitely not fast compared to $100 cheaper intel offerings (or similarly priced offerings in some of the other benches).swizeus - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Second your opinion... It has been 3rd generation (or more ?) since FX gone out the door and AMD should have a solution to at least match Intel's performance by now, but why this ? It is pointless to have a power hungry beast that lost in the match with a processor that is halved in TDP in an Unzipping archive operation, not to mention electricity bill and the noise to cool down 220Watt TDP Processor... Not worth itRussianSensation - Sunday, August 10, 2014 - link
The amount of generations or the time span doesn't have any correlation with AMD catching up. Take an i7 4790K and manufacture it in 28-32nm node and see how awful it is. In other words, unless AMD can manufacture chips on the same node as Intel, it has no chance of competing whatsoever even if by magic their CPUs had identical IPC and clocks to Intel's. The delta in performance and performance/watt will only grow once Intel launches Skylake on 14nm next year.Budburnicus - Wednesday, March 11, 2015 - link
Umm a 4790K even at 32nm would still spank this chip across the board. How "awful" indeed...I mean forget the 4790K for a second, the 2600K at STOCK will beat this CPU out in nearly everything. and basically any i7-2600k on any board that supports overclocking WILL easily hit 4.2-4.4 - hell I had mine at 4.4 with a STOCK POS Intel Heatsink (POS in terms of its ability to cool, it is actually more than effective enough with how little heat the CPUs generate) - And at those speeds the 2600K beats out any and every AMD consumer CPU at almost everything, and what few benchmarks it will be behind in, it will not be by too much. And those benchmarks would include only VERY highly multithreaded applications of computational power - basically, server-type stuff. Certainly not in gaming!
Then there's the NEWER Intel CPUs like the i7-5930K (which I also own) which aren't too much more expensive than this flop, and will beat it out in absolutely anything and everything - at stock clocks again! With the exact same CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO I have on my i7-2600K machine (AWESOME cooler for the money, though I will probably replace the one currently on the 5930, as it does not provide the maximum OC headroom possible like it does on my 2600 machine) - with dual fans, I have all cores running totally stable at 4.4 GHz with 105.7 Bclock!
AMD really needs to dump this architecture for the consumer class entirely (though I admittedly am not too familiar with Server-class CPU benchmarks, from what I have read the newer Intel Xeon are spanking the current Opterons, but IIRC they still represent good value for money in the high end workstation and server classes - though Enthusiasts generally seem to stick with the Xeons as they like to be able to game at insane speeds and resolutions as well as do encoding, editing, CAD, etc. As I have seen quite a few "ULTIMATE Rig builds" where money is no issue, by people like NCIX, Linus Tech tips, PCper, and others on YouTube, but I have yet to see an ultimate Opteron machine)
So, yeah... All that speaks volumes to people who look at information objectively and without bias. IF AMD were to come out with a new chip tomorrow which not only spanked everything Intel has ever made, but also made it cheap like the original SandyBridge parts - and therefore changed the game, DAMNED right I would be coveting a brand new AMD rig, and would likely sell off my 2600K machine, despite my deep love for it (and the fact that it games slightly better than the 5930 due to higher core speeds by a decent bit) to try to fund such a build ASAP!
But as it is? You would have to be a blind fanboy to buy a CPU like this for a brand new build, as it does not perform well and eats power like crazy, requiring AMD to bundle a friggen AIO water-block with it! And even with the best of the best, it will BARELY overclock! So the stock speed benchmarks will never be too far from a sustainable, stable, overclock - a FAR different story from the i5-i7 2000-5000 K series CPUs - as I said, a pretty average overclock on an i7-2600K is 4.2 GHz, a full 1 GHz above stock speeds, as the 3.8 GHz turbo only works when a single core is under load, and even then it will still beat out tthis 5950 in most ways!
lurker22 - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Is AMD even trying anymore? That power draw is PATHETIC in the year 2014xdrol - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
I think the fact that this very processor is still 'the' flagship shows that no, they are not even trying.TiGr1982 - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
No, they actually don't. This is just cherry-picked and overclocked FX-8350 from October 2012 with all the associated power draw and heat growing superlinearly because of the much higher operating voltage.However, AMD does develop their CPU side of the business, but since Kaveri this January the results go only into APUs (same will happen with Carrizo coming next year).
AMD APUs are actually very fine in their class, they are just in a shy situation regarding these factory overclocked 220W FXes. The rest of their lineup is fine.
StrangerGuy - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
300W alone for a CPU, holy mother of god. An entire Haswell gaming rig with 750 Ti would probably draw less power.BTW $250 is insane for any motherboard let alone an AMD one. That's an i5 4590 and a budget mobo right there already.
Daniel Egger - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
> 300W alone for a CPU, holy mother of god. An entire Haswell gaming rig with 750 Ti would probably draw less power.Don't know where you got that 300W from but yes, a decent Haswell system with 750 TI will not just probably but definitely draw less power than 300W. Mine takes around 35W idle and up to 120W in games.