AMD FX Excels -- real user experience

• Richbo
• 10/18/2011 8:54:21 AM
• Tech Level:
• Ownership:
• Verified Owner

The future of HPC

Pros: Amazing price to performance for HPC applications. Multithreading capabilities. Abundant overclocking capabilities. Significantly outperforms basic dual slot CPU workstations.

Cons: Most AM3+ motherboards currently on the market will require a BIOS update to support the FX series. In order to update the BIOS you’ll need to have a prior-generation AM3 compatible chip installed in your motherboard prior to performing the update. However I'm sure this issue will be resolved in the near future by the motherboard manufacturers.

Other Thoughts: Our company makes cellular image analysis instrumentation and software that takes advantage of the multi-threading capabilities of multi-core CPUs. Since our analysis software runs hundreds of parallel image analysis algorithms that are heavily multi-threaded the CPU is generally maxed out. We’ve been looking for a low cost alternative solution for our customers to replace their current expensive dual-slot Xeon CPU workstations. In early testing with our software my current configuration of a single non-overclocked FX-8150 (ASRock 990FX Extreme 4 motherboard) running Windows 7 64-bit is outperforming our dual-quad core Xeon E5600 workstations by as much as 27%. What makes this even more impressive is that our software code is optimized to use the Intel performance primitives. The results are encouraging considering the BIOS, C++ compilers and Windows scheduler haven’t yet been optimized for the Bulldozer architecture. Once the software catches up this chip should be even more ama

8 core sells--- Newegg sold out

All 8-core AMD FX chips have been sold out. See http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007671%20600213783&IsNodeId=1&name=Zambezi

Given the choice between i7 2600k and the AMD FX 8-core processor, many have no hesitation to choose the 8 core chip. Eight is 2x of four. Simple math.

It is glorious to have eight cores.

A FX 8150 user noted that the FX is faster than i7, and I copied it here despite the expectation that it will hurt Intel fanbois' feelings:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103960

Pros: 8 true cores. Yes, some use shared resources, but it is still 8 cores. Like another review I just read; You can do much more with more cores.

Fast! Handbrake encoding is crazy fast. This so far has beat my friends I7 2600K by almost 100 FPS in Handbrake.

Cons: I own zero stock in AMD.

As noted before, the AMD FX 8150 is 20% faster than Intel i7 980X in the CPU Hash benchmark.

At AMDZone, a user made the choice between AMD and Intel a moral issue, because "[e]ach time you buy an intel processor you are supporting a criminal who has enough money to buy its way out of a courtroom."

No doubt. Intel copied the AMD64, multi-core and Direct Connect architecture from AMD and is laughing to the bank with all these AMD innovations.

BTW, I bought a HP dm1z running the E450 APU today to show my support for AMD.

AMD FX Destroys i7 980X in Properly Optimized SHA1 code

As shown in this review, the AMD FX 8150 is 20% faster than Intel i7 980X in the CPU Hash benchmark. As the benchmark page explains:

This test measures CPU performance using the SHA1 hashing algorithm defined in the Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 180-3. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly, and it is optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variant by utilizing the appropriate MMX, MMX+/SSE, SSE2, SSSE3, or AVX instruction set extension.

Since SuperPI and Cinebench are such a widely used tools, AMD should spend some effort and optimize them for AMD FX.

My suggestion to AMD: Core count sells...

Why people are spending precious $ on slow CPUs such as Atom which can’t even do 720p? They are fast enough for typical word processing jobs. I bought a 1GHz C50 APU powered netbook and installed virtual machines on it. It served me well on a trip. I even did some development work on it. It is not very fast, but fast enough.

For my regular desktop, the CPU is a Phenom II X4 at 3.4GHz. The CPU is plenty fast for most tasks. To improve response time, the money is better spent for moving the system partition to a SSD, so OS and programs load fast…

If AMD can die shrink the Phenom II from 45nm to 32nm thus reducing power consumption along the way, I will be happy to buy a new one. A Phenom II 1090T at 80 watts would be very attractive.

When you have a new design coupled with a new process, the risk factors just multiply. Die shrinking should be one of the key strategies AMD adopt to react faster to market demand and reduce risk & cost.

Still, I will buy a 8 Core 3GHz processor just for the numbers. The bigger the better. 8 is greater than 4 and core count sells.

It is undeniable that the FX 8150 is indeed faster than i7 2600k on some benchmarks. There was some improvement. So it is not all negative.

From what I see, the AMD FX has a major memory bottleneck. Its memory write speed is substantially lower than Intel’s i7.

Intel copied the AMD64, multi-core and Direct Connect architecture from AMD and is laughing to the bank with all these AMD innovations. AMD engineers are very creative, but they have to work harder to create something much faster. Or they will end up jobless and have their names associated with a chip that disappoints the AMD support base and amuses the Intel camp.

AMD FX does frag Sandy Bridge after all

Real tests show that the FX 8150 is actually about 20% faster than i7 2600k.

Using the Cineform Neoscene professional transcoder, the AMD FX8510 took 692 seconds to encode a 30GB AVCHD video, Intel i7 2600k took 867 seconds. AMD FX 8150 is 25.2% faster.

Using the Cinema 4D (11) render, the AMD FX 8150 is 19.8% faster than i7 2600k.

Check the benchmarks here (http://quinetiam.com/?p=2356).

AMD FX did win some benchmarks against i7 2600k

There are a lot of negative sentiment about the AMD FX CPU. Many of us expected a wonder weapon that destroys everything Intel. It didn't happen.

Now, if you look at the benchmarks, the FX did score some points against the core i7 2600k. So, the results are software-compiler dependent.

It will be interesting see some Linux+GCC benchmark results.