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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coder111 - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Now what I'd like to see is how many of these benchmarks are compiled with intel compiler. In case you don't know yet, Intel Compiler disables a lot of optimizations if you are not running a Genuine Intel CPU, even if your CPU supports required features and would benefit from these optimizations. In other words, anything compiled with intel compiler will run slower on AMD cpus just because of Intel compiler.Now you can argue that this is a reflection of real performance on Windows, as in Windows quite a few of DLLs are compiled with Intel Compiler as well.
What I'd like to see is some more benchmarks for Linux operating system and/or professional software. Things like data base servers (including something non-Microsoft, like PostgreSQL or MySQL), java application servers, GCC compiler benchmarks, apache/PHP server, virtualization, python/perl/ruby, LibreOffice/OpenOffice productivity.
Now, back to Vishera. This looks like a nice CPU. I haven't been CPU bound in my work for a while now, so performance wise this would be sufficient for my needs. What I'd like to see however is lower power consumption. Unfortunatelly I don't see that coming until Global Foundries minimizes their process...
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
So amd has abandoned gamers on the cpu side.Good to know.
Blibbax - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
The dragon age origins graph has the 8150 in blue and no i3.Blibbax - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
SC2 and WoW also.dishayu - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
7zip as wellBlibbax - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
"As I mentioned earlier however, this particular test runs quicker on Vishera however the test would have to be much longer in order to really give AMD the overall efficiency advantage. "If you think about it, efficiency is unrelated to length of test.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
He was talking about electrical usage vs work done, hence with amd's higher per second use of electricity, it must complete the test MUCH faster than Intel in order to win that.It completed faster, but not fast enough to use less power.
This lesson is over for amd.
iTzSnypah - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
In price per performance. A 125w part beating a 67w (Not sure about that figure) will cause Intel to keep the same TDW for 2014 and just have a 35-40% performance increase. I can only hope.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
If you're used to running or servicing Intel cpu's then you pick up the LEAD WEIGHT that is the modern AMD cpu, all that HEAT SINKING comes to mind.I mean they are just honkers. You pick it up and it's like what the heck !?
meloz - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
I wish Anandtech would include some form of value scatter graphs like Techreport does in its reviews. The graphs do not have to be an exact imitation of what Techreport does, and the benchmark(s) used to determine the 'overall performance' can be different. Perhas we could even get performance per watt per dollar graphs.Graphs like these make the whole exercise of comparing competing products so much more relevant to users, because most of us will buy the most performant processor per dollar.
As example:
http://techreport.com/r.x/amd-fx-8350/value-scatte...
http://techreport.com/r.x/amd-fx-8350/gaming-scatt...
This is, of course, considering the result without any attention to performance/watt. If you include power consumption in the calculations at all, Intel is an easy choice.
Difficult to see how AMD will cope with Haswell, even if they get another 15% boost next year. The gap in performance / watt only seems to be diverging, Intel taking a commanding lead.