AMD FX-8320E CPU Review: The Other 95W Vishera
by Ian Cutress on January 13, 2015 10:00 AM ESTCPU Benchmarks
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.
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.
For Low Quality conversion, the 8320E has trouble keeping up with the full-fat i3, but beats them by a good margin when the frame sizes open up.
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.
Dolphin historically prefers high IPC single core performance, which the 8320E is lacking.
WinRAR 5.0.1: link
The eight threads of the FX-8000 series show through here, beating all the i3 and some of our i5 parts.
PCMark8 v2 OpenCL
A new addition to our CPU testing suite is PCMark8 v2, where we test the Work 2.0 suite 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.
For x265 conversion those extra threads end up highly beneficial for the FX-8320E, nudging inbetween our i5 data.
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. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.
While single thread performance is behind, the overclocked FX-8320E storms ahead of our FX-9590 results.
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.
Web Benchmarks
On the lower end processors, general usability is a big factor of experience, especially as we move into the HTML5 era of web browsing. For our web benchmarks, we take four well known tests with Chrome 35 as a consistent browser.
Sunspider 1.0.2
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
WebXPRT
Google Octane v2
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xenol - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
Since I can't seem to edit (or it's not made obvious)...I wanted to point out if a program is "single-threaded", it's using a synchronous threading model, where in threads will wait in line to be run. I'm pretty certain a lot of modern programs are asynchronous.
eanazag - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
With an updated chipset and new manufacturing node, this CPU could still play in the market.At release the 900 series chipset was better than Intel's current solution which had no USB 3 and no SATA 3. It took a generation too long for Intel to catch up with SATA 3 (Sandy Bridge). At Ivy Bridge Intel passed AMD in every aspect.
We're talking Broadwell now and it is plain sad at this point. The Core i3's from Haswell beat the processor much of the time when not overclocked. The value proposition is not in AMD's favor unless some just wants to overclock something.
hojnikb - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
>At release the 900 series chipset was better than Intel's current solution which had no USB 3 and no SATA 3Not really. 900 didnt have native usb3 (so pretty much the same deal as intel -- they had to use 3rd party solution). And in 2009, sata6g wasn't really a thing yet (no fast ssds back then).
hojnikb - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
correction; 900 series was released in 2011, where sata6g ssds started to pop up...Laststop311 - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
You just can't defend these FX line cpu's. You are a just a million times better off coughing up an extra 200 dollars and getting a nice z97 board + devils canyon i5 and overclocking it to an easy 4.4ghz. Even in software that can make use of all 8 cores for BD a 4.4ghz i5 devils canyon has a good chance of out muscling it or coming very close and for anything else the i5 just blows BD away.If you are going to buy an AMD FX based system just stop yourself and put 50 dollars away on your next 4 paychecks and get an i5-4690k + Z97 system instead and u will be much happier. Even if for some reason i had to have 8 cores in my next system i'd spend an extra 1400 or whatever and get an i7-5960x + x99 system. It's disgusting that an 4.0+ghz overclocked phenom II x6 1100t can outperform the new FX chips at MANY tasks and I would actually recommend an AMD buyer to just get an 1100t with quality water cooling over a current FX chip can find super cheap 1100t's which makes the 1100t + good water cooling the same price as a new FX + decent air cooler and u can just get better performance with the massively OC'd 1100t.
III-V - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
>You just can't defend these FX line cpu's.Oh yes you can. There are thousands of people in the AMD Defense Force that do just this every day.
silverblue - Wednesday, January 14, 2015 - link
Haha I like this one. :)jabber - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
To me the difference is like going into a restaurant and ordering the AMD pizza which comes in at 15" for $20 or ordering the Intel pizza which is 18" and costs $5 more. Most people probably can't manage to eat the AMD let alone the Intel.It's not like we are back in the days with AMD stuck at 20 FPS average and Intel at 30FPS average.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
That's a really awful analogy. If your primary taxing use for your computer is gaming then AMD processors are a poor option.jabber - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Not really."Oh noooo my $100 AMD chip is only giving me 86FPS!" How terrible!
How did we manage back in the 1990's.