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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Budburnicus - Wednesday, January 14, 2015 - link
Umm, it is QUITE possible to get a SandyBridge to 5 GHz, in fact I have my i7-2600K rock stable at 4.7 GHz (where my Haswell i7-5930k is 4.4) - and it TOTALLY SPANKS this POS FX 9590! Less power, same clock speed, MUCH higher performance!AT is being TOO EASY on AMD, not too harsh! This CPU is not a "win" in any sense!
bebimbap - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
No matter what any one that loves this FX-9590 says, this processor is just an exercise in gluttony, and devolution.I have been spoiled by computer evolution. coming from the commodore/Macintosh/SX286 days. you appreciate a few things. such as noise/heat/size reduction of modern systems.
50-80w cpus are quiet, compared to the pentium4 days.... or Hairdryer days...
SSDs are silent,
modern HDDs are basically silent, compared to 40MB drives and 3.5/5.25 floppies and don't forget the stack of floppies you had in the drawer instead of a single USB stick.
modern gpus not oc'd are quiet, still remember the hiss of my gforce3Ti
CRTs - actually have a noise when you turn them on, some buzz when in use... and don't forget the size.
case- you either had a monster of a case that would break your table if you put it on it, or a fugly thing that you wanted to hide under the table.
overall the heat produced compared to a 19" crt + pentium4/thoroughbred + 9800XT compared to a modern system also let you get rid of the window AC unit reducing a lot of noise.
so i am spoiled because i can now have a system where i'm not sweating like a pig and going deaf while playing my favorite game or browsing the web. I don't need a 1000w speaker system to hear the gunshots clearly over my cpu/gpu/psu fans or window AC unit.
I no longer need a computer be a 4in1 device that acts as a heater, a LOUD white noise generator, an air filter, and computer. It should be similar to a BMW-M5, everyday comfort and driveability but grunt when you want it, but of course with better fuel economy.
Leyawiin - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
This article makes me feel good about the FX-6300 @ 4.5 Ghz I have. At least with the games they chose to benchmark I'm doing fine.siberus - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Any chance we could get some testing with radeon gpu's using mantle ? :) would be pretty neat to see how some of the older/lower tiered cpu's break down. Unless you guys have done something like that already in another article then I apologize for asking.monstercameron - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
this cpu just chew through integer workloads, faster than a 4770k, where it fails is every thing else. I reckon a well optimized program written directly[fma?] for it would haul ass!resination - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
This is THE processor for the "rolling coal" set.CSammy - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Pathetic. The cover might as well be Intel pissing on this AMD processor, because that is quite literally the truth in nearly every single aspect.TiGr1982 - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Note that there is no recent Devil's Canyon Core i7-4790K here - this one, being around 13% faster than i7-4770K in CPU-bound tasks, would make the FX to look even less relevant.TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
"AMD clearly does care about the performance market"yeah, thats why they couldnt even be bothered to use the new kaveri cores, instead rehashing an old piledriver cpu with higher clocks and a TDP that puts netburst to shame. all the while, performing sligtly slower then a intel cpu with a third the tdp and running 1.5 GHz slower.
They care about the performance market so much, that they put this chip on the 3 year old AM3+ platform, rather than the new FM2+ platform, just so we can use old chipsets with feature sets from 2011.
And it costs as much as a core i7.
CLEARLY, AMD still cares about the performance market.
TiGr1982 - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
I perfectly understand your sarcasm :)I guess, it was something like that: AMD did not and does not have the resources and/or desire to invest into pure many-module CPUs beyond Piledriver FX CPU. So, from the engineering standpoint, they stopped there.
But then the marketing stepped in and said: "We need a faster CPU to brag. Because we aren't developing a new one, can you boost the current one?" And the engineering team said "Yes... Okay...". And they did. :)