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 ESTCPU Benchmarks: Comparing the AMD FX-9590
The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern during environments with a variable threaded workload. There is also an added issue of the motherboard remaining consistent, depending on how the motherboard manufacturer wants to add in their own boosting technologies over the ones that Intel would prefer they used. In order to remain consistent, we implement an OS-level unique high performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode.
It is worth noting that the FX-9590, against the A10-7850K for example, has double the threads and +1 GHz of core speed, despite the generational gap. Considering only these factors, the FX-9590 is most likely similar if not better at single threaded performance, but also 2x for multithreaded results.
HandBrake v0.9.9: link
For HandBrake, we take two videos (a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short) and convert them to x264 format in an MP4 container. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.
The eight threads of the FX-9590 give it almost another third of performance over the A10-7850K for small frame videos and nearly 2x for the larger frame conversion.
Agisoft Photoscan – 2D to 3D Image Manipulation: link
Agisoft Photoscan creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.
The FX-9590 puts in the best AMD CPU performance, similar to that of the i5-2500K.
Dolphin Benchmark: link
Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53 minutes.
The FX-9590 beats almost everything pre-Haswell, showing the strength of a 5.0 GHz turbo mode. Note that it compares to the 3.5 GHz, 4MB L3 cache Haswell, which is 1.5 GHz slower and has half the L3.
WinRAR 5.0.1: link
PCMark8 v2 OpenCL on R7 240
A new addition to our CPU testing suite is PCMark8 v2, where we test the Work 2.0 and Creative 3.0 suites in OpenCL mode.
Hybrid x265
Hybrid is a new benchmark, where we take a 4K 1500 frame video and convert it into an x265 format without audio. Results are given in frames per second.
The FX-9590 holds up very well in the Hybrid x265 conversion, which makes me wonder how well an 8-thread Kaveri CPU would perform.
Cinebench R15
The FX-9590 still has the single thread edge over the newer AMD CPUs due to the high frequency, but is easily overtaken by the modern cheap Intel CPUs. For multithreaded competition, the 8 threads needs an 8 threaded Intel CPU to compete.
3D Particle Movement
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
Although the FX-9590 again performs as the best AMD CPU, the floating point nature of the calculations in this test seems not to be favored by this architecture.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.9
FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and results are given in seconds.
Similarly to 3DPM, for basic photo conversion any base 3.2 GHz Haswell CPU can outperform a 5.0 GHz AMD.
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just4U - Sunday, August 10, 2014 - link
In my opinion the best cpu AMD has right now is A8 7600 coming in at $120 CAD. I see no reason to go Intel i3 as long as that puppy is there. (A argument can be made for Intel's AE 3x) The downside for AMD is I also see no reason why anyone should buy a more expensive CPU/APU from them.. their A-10 is priced in the same range as lower I5's which is a bit of a head shaker and their AM3+ is getting long in the tooth with no refresh.I could see a new FM2+ FX branded cpu priced at the tier their offering their A-10s for as it would bring something more to the table.. but they do really have to do something about single threaded performance. Even if it wasn't being used as much in programs their line-up takes a beating in reviews which is bad optics for them and leads to people like us (who read these things..) to suggest other alternatives for people buying/building a system.
FightApathy - Sunday, August 10, 2014 - link
237W operational power consumption. This is just.... terrible for a 2014 CPU. And what is even worse, is that i7 with 1/3 of TDP performs as well or even better. AMD has to stick to APUs.KAlmquist - Sunday, August 10, 2014 - link
"One could speculate that releasing the next generation of FX-85xx might put them behind the FX-9590 in performance, or that the fabrication process was not suitable for a quad-module CPU with the new architecture improvements."According to the Steamroller review, the 28nm bulk process that Steamroller was designed for won't clock as high as the 32nm SOI process that Piledriver uses. So an 8 core Steamroller processor would execute more instructions per clock, but would be clocked at least 400 Mhz slower, and as a result would be only marginally faster than Piledriver.
AMD is expecting to achieve another boost in instructions per clock with Excavator, but unless something has changed they plan to synthesize Excavator using software that minimizes die area at the cost of clock speed, so I'd expect Excavator to do more to improve performance per watt than to improve absolute performance.
After Excavator comes a completely new design, which we can hope will be a major improvement over the bulldozer derivatives.
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duploxxx - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
funny to read all these replies. makes you wonder what avarage age and technology knowledge is of these tech sites.....All complaining about useless AMD and process tech but yet they don't understand that these own consumers are the ones to blame, they buy the jingle and bells and the marketing buzz... recent review on anandtech showed enough what was best to buy, yet most decide to buy the other marketing dominant brand as if there all day tasks are faster since the benchmarks show few percentage faster finished task... buyers need to blame themselve for there own stupid decisions. Want a fast system? get rid of Microsoft garbage. OEM-marketing kill the competition and consumers are the victim but they still dont understand it. (useless chipset revisions, socket changes, design rules like in ultrabook space and centrino, etc, etc..). poor consumers.
From a tech site you indeed need to review such a CPU, its mandatory but i don't think it gets the honor for what it supposed to be, anyhow there will be only few to sell since it has no reason to exist becide the mythical part.
I remember the days of pentium D and extreme, no reason at all to exist yet 1000's of buyers just for the brand....
duploxxx - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
since no edit button :) thx anandtech asking that already for more then 10yI meant age and knowledge of the readers of course
Klimax - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
Lovely nonsensical post. Including out of date bashing of Microsoft. 90s called, they want your nonsense back.Mugur - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
There is still room for AMD in my home. I have 2 SB Core i3s for the gaming machines and I've just replaced an 80W Phenom II HTPC with an Intel NUC 2820. But my server (currently an Athlon II X4) will be soon an A10-7800 at 45W on a FM2+ with 8 SATA board...jgarcows - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
How did you manage to post a review of a chip with a bundled retail liquid cooling system and not post a single picture of the liquid cooling system? How easy was it to install, what size openings are needed on the case, etc...LemmingOverlord - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
May I suggest:a) some impressions on the liquid cooling? (+pics)
b) underclocking the CPU (and lowering voltage), then map that to power v. performance curves for the same set of benchmarks you ran... just to see how big a drop it would be in wattage.