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Discussion on Article:
AMD FX-Series "Vishera" Microprocessors Available for Pre-Order Online.

Started by: idonotknow | Date 09/20/12 02:07:14 PM
Comments: 36 | Last Comment:  10/06/12 03:10:09 AM

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5 13 [Posted by: idonotknow  | Date: 09/20/12 02:07:14 PM]
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If you want to know how a modern CPU actually performs, run real applications, not benches that are skewed to favor Intel. In blind test consumers have regularly chosen AMD systems over Intel systems when both systems were priced the same.

The smarter PC reviewers have come to understand that the benches are becoming more bogus all the time as they are influenced by Intel money. You will start seeing more price-point PC testing of real applications once the rest of the PC industry realizes they have been duped by tainted benches favoring Intel.

As always I recommend that people buy what makes them happy. You can vote with your wallet against corporate crime if you buy AMD.
21 9 [Posted by: beenthere  | Date: 09/20/12 08:39:15 PM]
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2 12 [Posted by: kailrusha  | Date: 09/20/12 09:10:48 PM]
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You'd be surprised how different real apps run compared to tainted benches.

What most consumers care about is system performance not what brand of CPU, what clockspeed, etc. it operates at. I realize some folks base their entire self esteem on owning a particular brand or model CPU, but they need to get a life.
18 5 [Posted by: beenthere  | Date: 09/21/12 06:24:06 AM]
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I love AMD, and wish them to succeed, but do you have any proof for what you say?

As far as I'm aware, the only tainted benchmarks are by BapCo (SysMark), otherwise most others give a fairly good indication of processor capabilities.

And in fact, various real-world benchmarks actually show AMD to be fairly behind Intel, such as this: -

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/334

Also, check this out for real-world gaming performance, which sadly puts AMD to shame: -

http://techreport.com/rev...rformance-with-today-cpus
5 4 [Posted by: wislam  | Date: 09/21/12 04:08:06 AM]
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Many benchmarks do not use the AMD subset instructions while properly written software does. You can run your own real apps and see for yourself that AMD CPUs actually run fastener that the tainted benches show. PC reviewers are finally learning of Intel's influence.

Use real apps if you want reality. Af far as games are concerned the eye cannot differentiate true FPS above 30 FPS. So it doesn't matter what the FPS is as long as it's above 30 FPS. The rest is for bragging rights and you pay dearly for something you can't actually use.
18 3 [Posted by: beenthere  | Date: 09/21/12 06:28:34 AM]
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I agree with your comments about benchmarks. It also depends on C compilers as well. Most programmers choose to optimise for Intel CPUs due to their market penetration (do you remember the days when there was an AMD compiled package of Firefox for Linux? I remember how much faster it was compared to the stock package). I reckon this Intel advantage will change with OpenCL and AMD's APU/ HSA platform. As far as 30fps being enough, I disagree. Why is there 1080p60 video with interpolated 800Mhz subframes and why does it look so good? The eye can tell because the brain calculates at a high frequency (except when you're drunk). I believe 24fps is the minimum to trick the brain into believing the motion is somewhat real. The more frames you have, the more the brain doesn't need tricking. It's huge PPI count on screens where technology starts becoming overkill in terms of human perception.
16 0 [Posted by: linuxlowdown  | Date: 09/21/12 09:48:51 AM]
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While I recommend Core i5 for gamers, if you actually run a highly multi-threaded video encoding, rendering workstation, an FX8350 @ 4.8ghz will mop the floor with a Core i5 @ 4.5ghz.

It is true that Bulldozer sucks for gaming but for actual multi-tasking, i5 is slower. Alternatively, you'd have to spend $100+ more on an i7 3770k.
15 3 [Posted by: BestJinjo  | Date: 09/21/12 08:46:48 AM]
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Sucks for gaming, except I've been gaming with FX for a year now without the slightest bit of lag. Get real, it doesn't suck for anything. On Linux, it topples your 3770k with ease.
10 0 [Posted by: mmstick  | Date: 09/21/12 12:30:54 PM]
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Good for AMD. These are very competitive products and they will greatly restore faith in AMD's ability to design and ship solid performing CPUs and which close the performance gap with Core i series considerably. They won't beat Corei5 Ivybridge in all benchmarks, but they don't have to.
10 3 [Posted by: phileasfogg  | Date: 09/20/12 03:24:45 PM]
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4 15 [Posted by: kailrusha  | Date: 09/20/12 05:39:06 PM]
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These are pre-order prices to get some media traffic. They are always higher than actual prices.
2 0 [Posted by: PsiAmp  | Date: 09/21/12 03:07:17 AM]
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If you take a look at Phoronix Linux benchmarks where there is no shady Intel C+ compilers going on to skew benchmarks, you will find that even the old FX-8150 stomped core i5 in the dirt, even toppling i7 2700k.
6 0 [Posted by: mmstick  | Date: 09/21/12 12:29:26 PM]
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AMD only needs to continue offering products that mainstream consumers desire, and they will. As AMD's roadmaps show Piledriver should be a ~10-15% increase over Zambezi and each iteration after Piledriver, i.e. Steamroller and Excavator will also deliver a ~10-15% performance bump over the previous iteration CPU.

FWIW, numerous reviewers already know the performance of Vishera and it is as stated above.
16 3 [Posted by: beenthere  | Date: 09/20/12 08:31:19 PM]
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5 12 [Posted by: kailrusha  | Date: 09/20/12 09:39:59 PM]
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Who cares what clock is if it runs smooth? In multithreaded programs bulldozer reaches i7 2600 performance. If will be 15% improvement, I will go for FX8350 because I need cheap and well threaded machine for rendering and calculation. For now I have FX4170. An it handles everything I throw to them.
And about heat. My FX4170 overclocked to 4.5Ghz with stock cooler on heavy load reaches 45C.
7 3 [Posted by: kvarta  | Date: 09/20/12 11:49:39 PM]
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0 11 [Posted by: kailrusha  | Date: 09/21/12 05:36:25 PM]
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@beenthere "AMD only needs to continue offering products that mainstream consumers desire" - yes, but they have to make more compelling products than Intel's if they want to start making real money again. Having said that, I don't believe they should gun for desktop processor prestige, because they will not be able to catch Intel's very top products in the foreseeable future. Beating Intel on price alone is not a sustainable business model for the long term - Intel have previously dumped processors on the marketplace. AMD must be "up there" again winning the mid-range. I believe AMD's best chance in the near term is with their upcoming Steamroller core with shared CPU/GPU memory reducing a major bottleneck. But they must also begin to speed up their tick-tocks to keep pace with Intel's die shrinks, particularly in the mobile and tablet markets. It's called product execution. I believe this is starting to happen under Rory Read. Overall, I'm positive about this company's future with their compelling APU and HSA consortium of companies that includes the who's who of Silicon Valley, ARM and Samsung working to agree to cross license each other's silicon IP in this space. This is the only way they will manage to out muscle Intel across an increasingly diverse and wider market - with the "Voltron" approach.
12 2 [Posted by: linuxlowdown  | Date: 09/21/12 10:13:18 AM]
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2 11 [Posted by: Azazel  | Date: 09/20/12 11:16:34 PM]
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3 7 [Posted by: tks  | Date: 09/20/12 11:27:12 PM]
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0 17 [Posted by: AvonX  | Date: 09/21/12 07:16:51 AM]
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Disagree AvonX. The ex-AMD foundry now included under the control of Global Foundries has more money pumped into it and a broader base of customers so it can tool up quicker for die shrinks. They announced today they will be able to do 14nm by 2014, in just 18 months. I don't think that a near broke AMD would have managed to do that.
13 1 [Posted by: linuxlowdown  | Date: 09/21/12 10:33:34 AM]
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I agree that Steamroller will be the comeback. Maybe then Excavator fabricated at TSMC 20nm with FinFET transistors?
11 2 [Posted by: linuxlowdown  | Date: 09/21/12 10:23:16 AM]
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FX Piledrivers are just pretty much a fixed version of FX Bulldozers. So i don't expect a lot of improvement overall over the first gen FX series, but any improvement is a step in the right direction. As for Steamroller it should be a decent improvement in performance over Piledriver, but the chip i'm really expecting big things from is Excavator which should be the first FX chips to use a DDR4 memory controllar as well.
12 1 [Posted by: SteelCity1981  | Date: 09/21/12 06:08:15 AM]
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Each new announced AMD desktop CPU iteration will show ~15% improvement. Excavator may be more but it's too early to confirm. DDR4 is primarily of value only to servers as desktops running DDR3 at ~1333 MHz. are not bottlenecked by the DRAM.

DD4 is a point-to-point design meaning you must install all the RAM from the get go or replace all the RAM to increase capacity.
12 4 [Posted by: beenthere  | Date: 09/21/12 06:20:44 AM]
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point to point doesn't mean that...

point-to-point topology is where each channel in the memory controller is connected to a single DIMM.

it's not just about the speed it's also about the bandwidth and the voltage. One big area DDR4 will help is in mobile devices due to the fact that DDR4 has lower voltage then DDR3 does. So DDR4 isn't just for show it has it'a practicly purpose.
2 0 [Posted by: SteelCity1981  | Date: 09/21/12 12:20:26 PM]
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3 20 [Posted by: AvonX  | Date: 09/21/12 06:57:48 AM]
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You are a humble soul.
14 2 [Posted by: linuxlowdown  | Date: 09/21/12 10:35:48 AM]
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0 20 [Posted by: AvonX  | Date: 09/21/12 08:09:01 AM]
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The last performance CPU? You still reading ridiculous rumors from a month ago? AMD has already outlined the updates to the architecture with Steamroller and further intergration of HSA within their next generation APU designs up to 2015.

http://www.guru3d.com/new...d_2015_gpu_codenames.html

You can't expect a company with 3 billion market cap to have the R&D and manufacturing capabilities to actually beat Intel, right? Let's get real now. Intel is already 1 generation ahead in terms of node and 3D transistor. Even if AMD's engineers design a faster CPU on paper, it will continue to be 1 node behind Intel.

Either way, any improvement is welcome.
16 1 [Posted by: BestJinjo  | Date: 09/21/12 08:54:32 AM]
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0 15 [Posted by: AvonX  | Date: 09/21/12 11:35:40 AM]
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Yes, my humble one, AvonX.
12 2 [Posted by: linuxlowdown  | Date: 09/21/12 10:47:35 AM]
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Intel, the great stagnanter, kills the awesome Atom so its sales won't cut into their crappy Celeron line, now scrambles to catch up to the rest of the world.

Morons with dollar signs in their eyes!
4 0 [Posted by: andresgriego  | Date: 09/21/12 12:41:30 PM]
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Do I have to remind people that AMD is the INNOVATOR while Intel follows. You see, no matter what AMD does, Intel will always do anything to stay on top.

If it wasn't for AMD's head strong CPU design innovations, they would have been finished. AMD really cannot afford to make mistakes whereas Intel can.

By the time Steamroller hits the street, AMD should either be tied or beat Intel's equivalent offerings.

For now Piledriver should be approx: 15% to 20% faster Clock for Clock versus Bulldozer...
3 0 [Posted by: nt300  | Date: 09/22/12 01:45:20 PM]
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All one has to do is look at a benchmark that shows the actual calculations a processor is capable of performing. For example, there is no i5 processor that is faster than the FX-8150 when all things are equal.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Looking at the list above, you can see that even the i5-3570k is behind the FX-8150. The FX-8350 is 5% faster than the 8150 when performing single threaded applications. On multi-threaded apps it is 10% faster than the 8150 and when overclocked it is 15% faster. This is in fact a significant improvement over the 8150. This puts the FX-8350 at 2500k single threaded performance while completely blowing away a 3570k in multi-threaded performance thus putting it at the i7-2600 level without overclocking.

Don't forget that the FX-8150 tied or beat the i7-2600k when both were overclocked to around 4.5ghz in multi-threaded benchmarks but trailed the i5-2500k in single threaded performance by less than 5%.

http://techreport.com/rev...-8150-further-overclocked

The FX-8150 is already a heavy multitasking monster compared to even the i7-2600k when performing heavy tasks at the same time.

Another consideration to take is that Windows 7 will never fully support the 8150 or 8350 so some results will prove to be unfavorable. Preliminary benchmarks of the Fx-8150 on Windows 8 show roughly a 5% increase.

With all that said though Intel is still far ahead and has a great product for those willing to spend the extra money.
0 0 [Posted by: Kool-Kat  | Date: 10/01/12 08:48:40 AM]
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12. 
Thanks for the info everyone.

Great thread!
3 0 [Posted by: oldengineer  | Date: 10/06/12 03:10:09 AM]
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