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 Motherboards
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things – better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal), at the expense of heat and temperature, but also gives in essence an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, memory subtimings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk which is clearly visible, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the purchase.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
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.
Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
Image Manipulation – FastStone Image Viewer 4.9: link
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.
The FX-8150 result for the Extreme9 compared to other motherboards shows one of two things - the latest Windows SP1 with core parking updates has an effect, or the BIOS is more efficient at handling turbo modes than our older reviews.
Video Conversion – 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.
Rendering – PovRay 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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thejshep - Sunday, August 10, 2014 - link
But even if you more than double the wattage of an i7, you're still not approaching the wattage this cpu takesSkillztech - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
Cause it is totally intel biasedSkillztech - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
No need to over clock this chip at all, totally powerful. intel and the low voltage low power chips just suck at the same price range.TiGr1982 - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
This FX-9590 is actually the last year's product. E.g., in Canadian Canada Computers this SKU (in the version without any cooler) lays on the shelves for months and almost nobody buys it. At the same time, they have a big turnaround of Haswell Intel i7's, which speaks for itself."Re-release" of this SKU happens because AMD has nothing better to offer, so they hope to get some public attention which it better than zero public attention :)
I'm not an old man (age 32 now), but I remember the times (2005) when even Alienware top laptops were based on AMD Turions (rebranded Athlons 64) - simply because these were better than Intel's Pentium M at the time.
And, in contrast, in around last three years since Bulldozer release AMD CPU business looks poorly.
Yes, I know, APUs, OpenCL, HSA. But the CPU side of things at AMD is sad.
Da W - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
AMD should just drop Bulldozer. That's probably what they're doing.Skillztech - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
8 cores high multi tasking and usage with high end core hungry software leaving intel in the dust. Plus the ability to game awesome. A real CPU.Budburnicus - Saturday, January 10, 2015 - link
Intel's i7-2600K SPANKS this POS in every conceivable way! AND it is THREE years old! This is even at stock clocks, just TRY comparing this CPU in any overclock to an i7-2600K at 4.4 Ghz (and overclock that basically ANY 2600K can handle - I have mine at 4.7 and 102.3 Bclock)And with EVERY benchmark available - the 4.4 Ghz OC,ed i7-2600K will COMPLETELY blow this POS out of the water! (BTW Not only is 4.4 easy to hit, but the TDP never goes above 125 - even with my 4.7 OC, as stock TDP is only 95w!)
I USED to be an AMD "Fanboy" back in the days of Intel's Pentium 4 "Net Burst" architectural FLOP! And the Athlon XP' superior gaming performance and performance per dollar - with better overclocking!
But since PileDriver FIRST came out, I have only shuddered at the thought of this architecture even existing, let alone being pushed farther and farther! Intel KNEW Net Burst was horrible, and dumped it ASAP for first Core and then Core2 architectures - which were very competitive in all ways for their day.
On the eve of SandyBridge, once benchmarks became available it was OBVIOUS that the SandyBridge Architecture was game changing, especially since the about $350 (at release) i7-2600k - and even the $250 i5-2500K completely SPANKED even Intel's own i7-900X extreme edition CPUs whicbh cost about $1000!
Ever since AMD swallowed ATI it seems they really dropped the ball (in both courts!) Continuing this HIGHLY inefficient chip design - which is ACTUALLY only a Quad core - with just 2x the ALU's per core serving as a full "dual core" processing unit - they left out MANY components that make up a FULL core, and most importantly, while L2 cache is slightly larget than Intel's chips for the most part, the caches are MUCH slower! And a "Dual Core Unit" has twice the ALUs vying for L2 access, where L3 cache is INCREDIBLY slow at something like 200 GB/sec to ALL cores - where Intel's i7-2600K has 168 GB/sec DEDICATED PER CORE! And that is at stock speeds too!
So you have REALLY got to ask yourself, when a 3 year old Intel part - which by now is not only cheaper - but FAR more power efficient, is MUCH faster, at stock clock, than a BRAND new AMD part - which takes well over twice the power and puts out over twice the heat, WTF is th point in buying AMD?
Especially when one considers that on a CHEAP Z68 or Z77 chipset board - this three year old i7-2600K can EASILY hit 4.4 Ghz - and it will STILL be more power efficient than the AMD part - as well as multitudes faster in EVERY way that truly matters - this just seem sad for AMD...
They are eating more power, and crapping less performance - even per $! Unless you really want a bargain basement gaming PC - then an A10 APU with a cheap GFX card will be cheaper than an Intel build with similar performance (but we are talking $500 and less for a entirely new build!)
So this FX just represents a sad bit of AMD history, sure the hardcore "fan-boys" will cling tightly to their AMD parts they have invested money into - but (and there is always that BUT) everything about this new FX chip is far behind, and the ONLY reason one should even consider purchasing one is if they already own a good Socket AM3+ mobo - for new builds? AVOID AMD FX CHIPS LIKE THE PLAGUE!
SlowSpyder - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
For those who are running their CPU's at 100% load 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, this isn't the right CPU. That's likely a quite small population of people. There are cons to the FX 9xxx CPU's to be sure, but I don't think what are often over-blown energy usage costs are one of them.MatthiasP - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
The real problem is, there is not a single pro for this processor.SlowSpyder - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
For someone looking to build a new system, probably not a lot of pros. For AM3+ owners looking for an upgrade from a lower part and guaranteed clocks, there could be some value in this processor.