A step in the right direction, but you are right. The prices have to come down a lot more. Also the power usage is still too high, especially with 77w IVB quad coming when Intel gets its act together or gets rid of all the SB backlog.
What junk. A phenom 2 unlockable to a quad was a good deal a long time ago, now the overclocked and rebranded entire amd phenom 2 line is still what anyone with a half brain would get, yet anyone with a full brain buys Intel, saves money, and has massive gaming performance over amd, perhaps one thuban excepted with prejudice.
The FX-4170 would probably beat the 8 core ones at that clock speed in most workloads, no? I'd actually be interested in reviews of these, most sites only review the top tier parts.
Yeah, right now the 4000s are the only FX that seem to have a decent price/performance - and only really for a budget build. They definitely need to drop prices and release new models, maybe on a new stepping with more headroom.
A meager 100 Mhz turbo on the FX-4170 seems kinda week in comparison when other FX chips typically get 400 Mhz or more from turbo. Then again, with only two modules, AMD maybe expecting each module to carry a higher average load than chips with all four modules enabled.
If they made the base clock 3.9 GHz instead of 4.3 GHz they could give you your 400 Mhz turbo boost. Would be a worse CPU, though. 4+ GHz is borderline for what AMD can guarantee these chips to run.
With liquid cooling, the four module parts are able to hit 4.3 Ghz base frequently with relative ease if you don't mind going beyond 125W power consumption. The design seemingly supports such high clock speeds but appears to be limited by power consumption and/or cooling. You'd think that with two fewer modules enabled, they'd be able to hit, say 4.5 Ghz for just turbo using an air cooler and still remain under 125W. I'd only have to hit such a clock speed with one active thread running for turbo while under the full load of four threads it'd run at is base 4.2 Ghz speed.
What's sad is the company that once proudly touted IPC and performance at lower clockspeeds over Intel during the Netbust era seems to have gone full 180 in the wrong direction.
These Bulldozer chips clock up to 3.5-4GHz, great, but its like they're running in place. There's just no performance behind them despite the increases in clockspeeds.
Case in point, these 3.8-4GHz parts perform about the same as a stock clocked i7 920 (@2.66GHz) in the best light and are still slower than the much lower clocked CPUs in the worst case......
They touted their design at the time, any and all companies are going to do that.
Its also pretty clear AMD didn’t want to have to rely on pure clock speed but they needed it to get to the somewhat competitive state they are in now, after a ton of delays. Bulldozer is not Netburst but clearly needs a lot of work, if they can get IPC improvements in on a regular basis they could turn things around.
Hopefully AMDs new cooperate strategy doesn’t mean they drop out of the enthusiast market altogether, but as long as they are going after the server market they should be some overlap with the high performance enthusiast market.
These still are not price competitive with Intel's Sandy Bridge chips. Since AMD seems dead set on not lowering their prices pricing the 8120 similarly to the i5-2500 that outperforms the highest performing bulldozer chip in 99% of applications is absurd.
Since the biggest cost in processors is the development you would think that AMD would want to move more volume, but apparently they just want to stay uncompetitive. Buying an AMD desktop processor right now just doesn't make any sense. The llano notebooks on the other hand are a decent GPU-CPU combo at the right price.
It would be unfortunate if AMD dies because of poor marketing.
I fully share your opinion. Previously I was an AMD fan, but, concerning the desktop, not anymore because of FX's lack of performance. But yesterday I was in computer store and I saw myself that people are actually buying AMD FX CPU's (together with FX990 MB's), so, surprisingly, in terms of sales things appear to be not so bad for AMD...
That's one anecdote, but looking at their financial results its their A-series APU's that have kept them up, not the FX series. They really should focus on the former, and I think that's what they will do since they said they no longer want to (and lets face it, no longer can) compete with Intel on the high end.
Right, A-series APU (Llano, specifically) are nice for the price (unlike FX).
In particular, just a few days ago I've bought a Llano-based laptop for my wife (15.6", A6-3420M, 8 GB DDR3 1333, HDD 750 GB) from ASUS. It is really fast enough for Web/Office/Skype, even for old games (say, 2006 and older). It is running very cool and quiet - almost silently most of the time. For its price of $500, I'd say, this is is a good deal, thanks to a relatively low Llano prices.
I have been an AMD fan since the advent of the K6-III 450. When the Athlon hit and gave Intel some competition I was stoked. When the first dual core Athlons hit, I built an Athlon X2 3800 box. That just died last Summer. I started buying components piece by piece waiting for Zambezi benchmarks and release dates. When I started seeing the numbers and the explanations, I started thinking, "Is this AMD's Willamette?" It sure started to look like the early P4s. I have since jumped ship and built my first Intel box using the i5-2500K. I have a safe overclock of 4.5332GHz. It performs wonderfully. Now I'll be keeping my eye on AMD just in case they produce an Intel-killer, but I won't be holding my breath. I truly wish AMD to stay in the market to keep CPU prices down because competition does just that.
I can't recall there ever being a CPU with a stock clock speed of 4ghz+...
Like many I've been enjoying overclocks north of 4ghz since my first Wolfdale CPU, but if this is truly the first 4ghz+ stock CPU I need to give pause and congratulate AMD for hitting this milestone.
Hollow as it might be because of overall performance when compared to lower clocked CPUs from Intel this achievement is still pretty cool.
Keep fighting the good fight little guy. Your next Athlon XP may yet be right around the corner.
I suspect that we are seeing performance issues due to the whole "modules" approach, and there is a lack of cache cohesion between the modules that is causing the performance problems right now. This is why I am waiting on Piledriver, since that may fix the problems with performance.
Right now, if you tweak Windows to prioritize cores 1,3,5, and 7, and only put minor background tasks on cores 2,4,6, and 8, you get far better performance than if you use the stock scheduler in Windows. Doing this would basically give you a nice performance boost since the penalty for AMD using modules does not come into play.
As I said, I hope that Piledriver will fix the problem, perhaps a dedicated 8-core without using the modules approach will do the trick and make AMD more competitive.
"Right now, if you tweak Windows to prioritize cores 1,3,5, and 7, and only put minor background tasks on cores 2,4,6, and 8, you get far better performance"
This is false, as this is exactly what Window's bulldozer patches tries to do. Still doesn't help. The problem lies in the CPU having to rely on RAM due to a missing oversided L3 cache. This is why running a Bulldozer with 2166MHz DDR3 performs loads better than the crap 1333 or 1600 RAM that Anand et al test with "because we want to keep it fair with the max Intel supported 1600MHz RAM."
Well with 2166 MHz you're well outside AMD's supported speeds too, their spec sheet says up to 1866 MHz. Normal tests should be with stock/supported speeds, if you want 2166 MHz numbers that's fine but it belongs under overclocking.
Sounds fair. So test the FX with 1866, which is the highest official supported speed. Although it won't help all that much. I'm hoping that BD's successor, combined with Win8, will be a bit more competitive. Even if it's for no reason other than keeping prices in check across the board.
i need guidance to buy AMD 8 core FX processor for Vmware study which one is good for me? or should i wait for new AMD processor launch in 2013. My budget is around Rs.10.000-12000.
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Belard - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
500Mhz = AMD FX-6200?? How about 6150...The 6X00 / 8x00 should mean generation number. Hence i5-2500 (2nd gen i5) and the upcoming i5-35x0 chips.
Sell the FX8510 quad-core (I mean 8 core) for $160 and then it will be competitive against the i5-2400... barely.
frozentundra123456 - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
A step in the right direction, but you are right. The prices have to come down a lot more. Also the power usage is still too high, especially with 77w IVB quad coming when Intel gets its act together or gets rid of all the SB backlog.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
What junk. A phenom 2 unlockable to a quad was a good deal a long time ago, now the overclocked and rebranded entire amd phenom 2 line is still what anyone with a half brain would get, yet anyone with a full brain buys Intel, saves money, and has massive gaming performance over amd, perhaps one thuban excepted with prejudice.tipoo - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
The FX-4170 would probably beat the 8 core ones at that clock speed in most workloads, no? I'd actually be interested in reviews of these, most sites only review the top tier parts.Alexvrb - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
Yeah, right now the 4000s are the only FX that seem to have a decent price/performance - and only really for a budget build. They definitely need to drop prices and release new models, maybe on a new stepping with more headroom.MrSpadge - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
And I doubt they'll actually draw that much power. Looking forward to a proper review!maroon1 - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
No, it doesn'twww.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/amd_fx_8150fx_8120fx_6100_and_fx_4170,6.html
Kevin G - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
A meager 100 Mhz turbo on the FX-4170 seems kinda week in comparison when other FX chips typically get 400 Mhz or more from turbo. Then again, with only two modules, AMD maybe expecting each module to carry a higher average load than chips with all four modules enabled.MrSpadge - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
If they made the base clock 3.9 GHz instead of 4.3 GHz they could give you your 400 Mhz turbo boost. Would be a worse CPU, though. 4+ GHz is borderline for what AMD can guarantee these chips to run.Kevin G - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
With liquid cooling, the four module parts are able to hit 4.3 Ghz base frequently with relative ease if you don't mind going beyond 125W power consumption. The design seemingly supports such high clock speeds but appears to be limited by power consumption and/or cooling. You'd think that with two fewer modules enabled, they'd be able to hit, say 4.5 Ghz for just turbo using an air cooler and still remain under 125W. I'd only have to hit such a clock speed with one active thread running for turbo while under the full load of four threads it'd run at is base 4.2 Ghz speed.chizow - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
What's sad is the company that once proudly touted IPC and performance at lower clockspeeds over Intel during the Netbust era seems to have gone full 180 in the wrong direction.These Bulldozer chips clock up to 3.5-4GHz, great, but its like they're running in place. There's just no performance behind them despite the increases in clockspeeds.
Case in point, these 3.8-4GHz parts perform about the same as a stock clocked i7 920 (@2.66GHz) in the best light and are still slower than the much lower clocked CPUs in the worst case......
Operandi - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
They touted their design at the time, any and all companies are going to do that.Its also pretty clear AMD didn’t want to have to rely on pure clock speed but they needed it to get to the somewhat competitive state they are in now, after a ton of delays. Bulldozer is not Netburst but clearly needs a lot of work, if they can get IPC improvements in on a regular basis they could turn things around.
Hopefully AMDs new cooperate strategy doesn’t mean they drop out of the enthusiast market altogether, but as long as they are going after the server market they should be some overlap with the high performance enthusiast market.
Flunk - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
These still are not price competitive with Intel's Sandy Bridge chips. Since AMD seems dead set on not lowering their prices pricing the 8120 similarly to the i5-2500 that outperforms the highest performing bulldozer chip in 99% of applications is absurd.Since the biggest cost in processors is the development you would think that AMD would want to move more volume, but apparently they just want to stay uncompetitive. Buying an AMD desktop processor right now just doesn't make any sense. The llano notebooks on the other hand are a decent GPU-CPU combo at the right price.
It would be unfortunate if AMD dies because of poor marketing.
TiGr1982 - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
I fully share your opinion. Previously I was an AMD fan, but, concerning the desktop, not anymore because of FX's lack of performance. But yesterday I was in computer store and I saw myself that people are actually buying AMD FX CPU's (together with FX990 MB's), so, surprisingly, in terms of sales things appear to be not so bad for AMD...tipoo - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
That's one anecdote, but looking at their financial results its their A-series APU's that have kept them up, not the FX series. They really should focus on the former, and I think that's what they will do since they said they no longer want to (and lets face it, no longer can) compete with Intel on the high end.TiGr1982 - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
Right, A-series APU (Llano, specifically) are nice for the price (unlike FX).In particular, just a few days ago I've bought a Llano-based laptop for my wife (15.6", A6-3420M, 8 GB DDR3 1333, HDD 750 GB) from ASUS. It is really fast enough for Web/Office/Skype, even for old games (say, 2006 and older). It is running very cool and quiet - almost silently most of the time. For its price of $500, I'd say, this is is a good deal, thanks to a relatively low Llano prices.
StormyKnight - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
I have been an AMD fan since the advent of the K6-III 450. When the Athlon hit and gave Intel some competition I was stoked. When the first dual core Athlons hit, I built an Athlon X2 3800 box. That just died last Summer. I started buying components piece by piece waiting for Zambezi benchmarks and release dates. When I started seeing the numbers and the explanations, I started thinking, "Is this AMD's Willamette?" It sure started to look like the early P4s. I have since jumped ship and built my first Intel box using the i5-2500K. I have a safe overclock of 4.5332GHz. It performs wonderfully. Now I'll be keeping my eye on AMD just in case they produce an Intel-killer, but I won't be holding my breath. I truly wish AMD to stay in the market to keep CPU prices down because competition does just that.DocRussell - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
I can't recall there ever being a CPU with a stock clock speed of 4ghz+...Like many I've been enjoying overclocks north of 4ghz since my first Wolfdale CPU, but if this is truly the first 4ghz+ stock CPU I need to give pause and congratulate AMD for hitting this milestone.
Hollow as it might be because of overall performance when compared to lower clocked CPUs from Intel this achievement is still pretty cool.
Keep fighting the good fight little guy. Your next Athlon XP may yet be right around the corner.
Targon - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
I suspect that we are seeing performance issues due to the whole "modules" approach, and there is a lack of cache cohesion between the modules that is causing the performance problems right now. This is why I am waiting on Piledriver, since that may fix the problems with performance.Right now, if you tweak Windows to prioritize cores 1,3,5, and 7, and only put minor background tasks on cores 2,4,6, and 8, you get far better performance than if you use the stock scheduler in Windows. Doing this would basically give you a nice performance boost since the penalty for AMD using modules does not come into play.
As I said, I hope that Piledriver will fix the problem, perhaps a dedicated 8-core without using the modules approach will do the trick and make AMD more competitive.
Ammaross - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
"Right now, if you tweak Windows to prioritize cores 1,3,5, and 7, and only put minor background tasks on cores 2,4,6, and 8, you get far better performance"This is false, as this is exactly what Window's bulldozer patches tries to do. Still doesn't help. The problem lies in the CPU having to rely on RAM due to a missing oversided L3 cache. This is why running a Bulldozer with 2166MHz DDR3 performs loads better than the crap 1333 or 1600 RAM that Anand et al test with "because we want to keep it fair with the max Intel supported 1600MHz RAM."
Kjella - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
Well with 2166 MHz you're well outside AMD's supported speeds too, their spec sheet says up to 1866 MHz. Normal tests should be with stock/supported speeds, if you want 2166 MHz numbers that's fine but it belongs under overclocking.Alexvrb - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
Sounds fair. So test the FX with 1866, which is the highest official supported speed. Although it won't help all that much. I'm hoping that BD's successor, combined with Win8, will be a bit more competitive. Even if it's for no reason other than keeping prices in check across the board.Prasad - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
Hi,i need guidance to buy AMD 8 core FX processor for Vmware study which one is good for me? or should i wait for new AMD processor launch in 2013. My budget is around Rs.10.000-12000.