AMD FX-8320E CPU Review: The Other 95W Vishera
by Ian Cutress on January 13, 2015 10:00 AM ESTAMD FX-8320E Conclusion
Anyone building a new performance system today is not exactly spoiled for choice. On the super extreme end, native octo-core processors with threading are in the market. AMD’s high end FX models start by comparison to the Core i5 line but boasts double the threads, albeit at almost double the power consumption. Without looking at the reasons for AMD’s E-series launch, it can be easy to scoff and write these processors off.
AMD’s aim with the FX-8370, FX-8370E and FX-8320E was in part to generate new customers at a lower price portfolio and for those wanting to upgrade their AMD CPU from something lower down the stack. Users who purchased an FX-4100 or FX-6300 can happy get more performance by swapping in a CPU, rather than replacing the motherboard and potentially the DRAM to fit. The 95W power point for the E series allows 8-threads for almost all AM3+ motherboards ever made.
That being said, performance of the CPU is still reminiscent of 2012 when the first FX-8000 CPUs were launched and the 32nm process node on which it is formed. Back in our review of the FX-8370E, our conclusion was that it performed much like the FX-8150 except in power consumption, and it was perhaps a foregone conclusion that the FX-8320E was not going to be any better given the statistics on paper.
A plus point worth noting is that the turbo mode seemed a lot more aggressive than our FX-8150 and FX-8370E numbers. This allowed for higher frequencies in some of our variable threaded benchmarks, and gave some better results which is rather odd. However, it was only for a few select benchmarks in the end, with the pure single threaded ones and the fully multithreaded results still grasping at the FX-8150 numbers. The plus side in all this is that our FX-8150 power consumption measured significantly higher than the TDP (156W vs 125W TDP) and the FX-8320E gave a lower result (86W vs 95W TDP), essentially handing any performance/watt trophy to the FX-8320E.
The big number from our review however was the overclocking potential of our sample. Our FX-8320E overclocked like a beast (yes AMD, you can quote me on that), although your mileage may vary (as long as you quote this bit too). Our single data point gave 4.8 GHz at 1.550 volts for a 50% raise in both frequency and POV-Ray results, although the power consumption was over 3x the stock value (262W vs 86W). Most AMD users would also state that 1.550 volts was a bit high, so at 1.375 volts the CPU still gave 4.5 GHz which is still a good end.
The end result of the FX-8320E will be similar to that of the FX-8370E. Users will have to look at their use case and decide if an iterative CPU upgrade, from one of the earlier FX models or the Phenom II range, makes sense in their future computing. Putting down $150 on a CPU is reasonable enough if you have everything around it, although one might argue that if we add in the MSI 970 Gaming ($100), some memory ($50), some storage ($100) and a mid-range GPU ($150), then gaming at around $650 when you factor in the case and PSU is more than possible, especially when a similarly performing Intel system might cost more. AMD's key metric in this instance is pricing.
The end here will be the same as the FX-8370E review:
At the end of the day, most users feel that AMD needs to upgrade the architecture (and the chipset) to potentially increase performance or reduce power. At some point the architectures of the FX and APU line either need to diverge their separate ways, or there needs to be a hard earned reconciliation attempt to find a node and a manufacturing process suitable for both low power graphics cores and high frequency processor cores. We know about AMD's plans for 2016, dealing with ARM and x86, and the announcements on K12 so far point to AMD targeting servers, embedded markets and ultra-low power client devices. Here's hoping desktop side gets a good boost as well.
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Kevin G - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
Updating the chipset is necessary to get new IO on to a platform. Things like USB 3.0 can then be integrated into the chipset so that a 3rd party controller is no longer needed.Rather the nice thing is that AMD hasn't changed socket in 5 years with AM3+. Intlel on the other hand has had three sockets of chips with dual channel DDR3, 16 PCIe lanes and DMI to the chipset. Sure, a few things changed between socket 1156, 1155 and socket 1150, but it would have been nice if Intel was forward thinking and maintained compatibility. The quad core Lynfield chips are still respectable in terms of CPU performance today.
Penti - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
They has basically frozen their whole platform with the failed Bulldozer release. Their chipset's hasn't changed much since AM2+/AM3 days, the NB is basically the same as the 2007 790FX. The only thing 990FX added over 790FX is probably the IOMMU-support (and updated the PCIe lanes used by the SB to PCIe 2.0 also called A-link Express) which was first found in the identical 890FX, also IOMMU was found in server chipsets built on the 800-series back in '10. The southbridge on AM3+ hasn't changed since launch and is basically the same as the 2010 SB850. It's planned that they have a 4 year or so gap. They canceled a lot of designs and plans. Including new server socket and server chipset. They scrapped the plans for new BD chips for AM3+/successor socket also which is why you have no Steamroller or Excavator, and why you have no 10/20-core 2-gen Bulldozer/Piledriver for servers. So the chipset is really 5 years old and based on the same tech as 7 year old NB built on the same process and had HT3 support back then too. So the NB is really 2007-era with minor changes, SB has no USB3 support.Intel basically did have a platform which didn't get a chipset update for ~3 years – the X79. That wasn't such a good deal thanks to no native USB3 support, few SATA6 ports and so on. Lots of bugs too.
stefantalpalaru - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
Here are a series of benchmarks I did on the same (rather modest) motherboard with a Phenom II X6 at 3.9 GHz and the FX-8320E at stock frequency and a 4.5 GHz overclock: http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1412036-KH-MERG...mikato - Wednesday, January 14, 2015 - link
Very cool! Thanks for this. If I interpret the colors correctly, it looks like the X6 wins mostly, but when the FX-8320E is overclocked, it wins mostly.LarsBars - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
I used some of the sorting tools and it looks like your summary is correct.But keep in mind that the Phenom II X6 is overclocked... so it's kind of hard to draw conclusions from it. I guess it would have made sense if it was stock vs stock (which we sort of already have in the AT article) or OC vs OC (since AT didn't OC an X6).
$0.02
SpaceRanger - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
The only graph that I wanted to see was the power consumption graph, and it's not included.. :(I really wanted to see just how much they chopped off the power consumption with this go-around.
silverblue - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
Toms benched the 8370E and appeared to get some very interesting power readings. Though this doesn't necessarily ring true for the 8320E, it may be helpful nonetheless:http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-fx-8370e-c...
sonicmerlin - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
The most painful aspect of AMD's single threaded performance woes is that Intel hasn't even bothered with increasing IPC since Sandy Bridge. AMD needs their new architecture to be a smash hit if they want to avoid bankruptcy.silverblue - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
And that's what bothers me about Carrizo not coming to the desktop. We don't know if that 30% IPC boost is across the board or mainly as a result of FPU gains, but at the very least, Carrizo should bury Phenom II and previous Bulldozer designs, and at least equal Lynnfield/Nehalem, at the same clocks but for far lower power consumption. Still, performance wise, it's not exactly a lofty goal - you'd need more than four cores for that.xenol - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
Software most people use didn't take advantage of Bulldozer because they weren't multi-threaded. It's because software most people use don't take advantage of CPU performance period. Most of the programs in your task manager idle.Modern software is multi-threaded, as in, they have multiple threads. And all the major OSes (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) schedule at the thread level on any available resource. If they don't take advantage of multiple cores, it's not because they are "single threaded", it's because what they do isn't very taxing for a CPU to do.