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 ESTThe AMD FX-9590
The analysis in this review shows that even a year after the OEM release of the FX-9590, and almost two years from the architecture coming to market it remains AMD’s performance part. If power consumption is not a concern, as a CPU compute and an AMD gaming CPU (especially when considering SLI) the FX-9590 is the best choice at stock speeds. On that basis alone, it makes sense that AMD should actually release it as a retail part, assuming they have enough stock. One might argue that a user could buy an FX-8350 and overclock, but if our sample CPUs were anything to go by, a user needs a fair bit of luck. The FX-9590 guarantees a 5.0 GHz turbo with a warranty.
With the retail release of the CPU, that warranty might be based on using the water cooling provided for the lifetime of the CPU. One might argue that AMD had trouble finding enough dies that could reach the frequencies and voltages for the FX-9590, and hence the delay combined with selling the SKU in select markets only.
The FX-9590 is the same Piledriver architecture as the FX-8350, which in turn was used in the A10-5800K/A10-6800K APUs, codename ‘Trinity’ and ‘Richland’ respectively. Since then, AMD has launched the Steamroller architecture modifications in the form of Kaveri APUs. The difference between a PIledriver APU and a similar frequency Steamroller APU, if we put aside the move from 32nm SOI to 28nm SHP, is around 10% for CPU performance. If that was shifted into a four-module, eight-thread CPU, it would surely be AMD’s performance part. The issue here is that AMD has almost discarded the high CPU performance arena in favor of integrated graphics. From Trinity to Kaveri, the IGP inside those APUs has improved considerably, indicating where AMD is investing its research dollars.
AMD clearly still cares about the performance market, otherwise this retail FX-9590 with water cooling would have never been pushed through to retailers. The high power consumption, the lack of a modern chipset, and the comparison to Intel CPUs in single threaded benchmarks are the main barriers to adoption. If AMD is to return to the performance market, the power consumption has to be comparable to Intel, or if it is slightly higher, the chipset has to offer something Intel cannot. Any suggestions for what that feature should be should be submitted on a postcard/in the comments.
ASRock 990FX Extreme9 Conclusion
One of the big issues surrounding AMD motherboards is their price sensitive nature. With an Intel based product, a $250-$400 motherboard is common enough to signify the expense in research or extra features. Because the AMD ecosystem, even in the high performance segment, is a cost sensitive market there is little room to move. For example, this year sees the first overclocking based motherboard for AMD APUs since the AM3+ era. So at $170, the Extreme9 could arguably be described as ‘limited’ compared to Intel standards.
The motherboard itself has specified support for 220W CPUs, something other motherboards either fail to mention or advise against completely. The native SATA 6 Gbps ports were ahead of Intel at the time, plus ASRock adds in another SATA 6 Gbps controller for good measure.
The eight USB 3.0 ports makes the Extreme9 have more USB 3.0 ports than almost every other 990FX/AM3+ motherboard ever released. This is combined with plenty of legacy support, such as separate PS/2 connectors, a PCI slot, an IEEE1394 port and an IEEE1394 header. The Intel NIC is paired with a Realtek ALC898 codec, with the PCIe layout aimed at 3-way GPU users for both Crossfire and SLI.
Aside from an updated chipset, if we were building a high-end AM3+ motherboard in 2014, I would insist on WiFi support and an upgraded audio codec to the ALC1150 at the minimum. We cannot get around the lack of PCIe 3.0 support, although moving the CPU modules from Piledriver to Steamroller along with the IO support might help with that. If we are being greedy with what we would like, I would add in M.2 support as well.
There is plenty to speculate if AMD had kept updating their high-end performance CPU line, even if the socket was not updated. As it stands, users who want SLI either look back to 990FX or invest in Intel. Users who want high multithreaded CPU performance either look back to 990FX or invest in Intel. Users who do not want processor graphics either look back to 990FX, buy an APU with the graphics disabled, or invest in Intel. AMD clearly does care about the performance market, or at least someone senior in the company does.
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Sushisamurai - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
I think you guys are a little too harsh. The architecture was developed 2012-2013, so realistically, this is a sandy bridge/ivy bridge comparison. If you were to OC an ivy bridge/sandy bridge to this performance, you'd be looking at similar wattage (I'm guessing here, 5GHz on ivy/sandy doesn't seem possible on CLC). The fact it comes close to haswell for a year or two old part, I consider that a winDaniel Egger - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Who cares when it was developed to do a comparison. They release it today so it has to compare against todays CPUs and this one sucks on so many levels it's not even funny anymore. Also no sane person cares about clock, it's either single- or multithread performance plus sometimes iGPU performance and of course efficiency, if you want crazy clocks you can dig out some Netburst Pentiums... Last but not least if you desperately want to see this PoC loose in some benchmarks against some mainstream Sandy Bridge CPU then have a look at the graphs and check for "Core i5-2500K".TiGr1982 - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Indeed, clocks comparison does not work in terms of performance comparison between different microarchitectures.One simple number:
Haswell in single thread is around 70% faster (~1.7 times) than Piledriver (say, in Cinebench 1 thread) at the same clocks. ~70%. Check yourself. Nuff said.
Fouquin - Sunday, August 10, 2014 - link
Except they didn't release it today, they released it 14 months ago. So really, it's still an IB - FX comparison. AT was just really slow to put any press on this chips existence. It has no purpose other than to show the limit of the Bulldozer architecture, and it does that quite nicely. (Although I have an FX-8350 running at 5.12, so it isn't even the upper limits.)Really when it comes down to it though, it's a "for fun" chip. Like a super-car: it looks and acts fast, costs way too much, sucks down gas by the gallon, and is complete excess to your needs. But hey, it's shiny and looks good in the garage.
TiGr1982 - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
In fact, Sandy Bridge is much more efficient and has much higher IPC than Piledriver. So, Sandy Bridge i7 Core i7-2600K/2700K has to be overclocked around 4.3 GHz to match or surpass FX-9590. Ivy Bridge has slightly better IPC, than Sandy, so that 4.1-4.2 GHz should suffice for Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K to match or surpass FX-9590. And this is for full multithreading.For single threading, Sandy and Ivy are already faster at stock turbo frequencies than anything Piledriver can offer. Piledriver has to be clocked beyond 6 GHz to try to match Core i7 stock single thread (LN2 may help, actually :)).
Yes, single-threaded performance is not so important these days, as many people like to point out, but lack of single-threaded performance is still a considerable drawback.
Sushisamurai - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Yes, I realized clock to clock comparison doesn't really work - it would work if IPC was similar between different micro architectures... and well... I was over simplifying things. But, on the benchmarks, this FX core does seem to catch up to the i7-2500.My main point was to emphasize that this CPU has been around for a while, and was only recently "released" to the general public as opposed to OEM's. Had this been available when it was developed, it might have made a bigger difference for AMD - which could have potentially kept them in the CPU race.
TiGr1982 - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Well, to make a bigger difference, it had to be WIDELY released a year ago (say, around initial Haswell release) for, say, $250-280 (and not $350) for retail, and be supported immediately with at least 5-7 new MOBOs capable of working with 220W TDP out of the box. Since it did not happen, now it is maybe "too little, too late" - especially, considering the facts, that:1) Devil's Canyon Core i7-4790K is already on sale, and it costs the same $$$ as last year's Core i7-4770K. Core i7-4790K is even further ahead of FX-9590 in terms of performance at stock (4.0-4.4 Ghz) and i7-4790K is even a little further overclockable to around 4.5-4.6 GHz with no issues, and FX-9590 is actually not.
2) Haswell-E is coming, and the cheapest Haswell-E, rumored to be Core i7-5820K, is supposed to have 6 Haswell cores and cost something around $400. This is of course worth thinking about for the people getting/building a new desktop machine.
mapesdhs - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
Alas AFAIK the 5820K is a 4-core. 5930K is 6-core, 5960X is 8-core.
Ian.
TiGr1982 - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Not really; so far, all the sources point that Core i7-5820K will be 6 core - unlike Core i7-4820K and Core i7-3820 before it.mapesdhs - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
SB is such a nice chip. Every 2700K I've obtained has happily run at 5GHz no problem,takes just a few minutes on a board like the ASUS M4E/Z. Built five of them so far. And
unlike the latest HW, it won't throttle because the temps are still good.
Ian.