Hardware AMD FX-8150 Review

There's a lot of truly disappointed people out there. People who have flown the flag of support for AMD for many years now. The Bulldozer release was supposed to be their vindication, their triumphant chest beating. The stick two fingers up to everyone, especially me for ever doubting the credibility of AMD and it's chances of pushing forward and releasing a product better and cheaper than the competition. I think people would have even settled for better and a little bit dearer than the competition.

However, I have to question who starts this frenzy of support for a product before it is even released. Is it the AMD marketing department for releasing the odd few paragraphs and "leaks" saying how fantastic the world is going to be with their new product. or is it the fans, the ones who would be willing to spend their hard earned cash on their favoured manufacturer, only if it was good enough.

I don't know where it all starts but unfortunately it's ended the same way again. That really is a shame.

(This is not written with any malice or boastful tone as this really has been a disappointment for me, no trolling please)

 

I was hoping it would at least compete with the 2600K, but it turns out my i7 920 could slap it silly. An entirely new architecture, more 'cores' and an 8% increase in clock speed can only manage an 8% improvement on the 1100T, in the media benchmarks!

Wow, what a steaming turd.

Actually, I'm feeling a bit gutted and a little sad.

 

Well this makes my Intel purchase quite justified then.

Still a sad day for AMD, they should've done a bit better. Although perhaps this debacle can be salvaged..

 

Bit-Tech, do you have a range of Bulldozer CPU's on the bench at the moment? Is there at least one in the range that could be suitable in any range of budget? There's usually at least one good for something.

 

I'm genuinely dissapointed.
While I never expected it to beat Intel's better offerings, the lack for performance (particularly in single threaded applications) really took me by surprise.
I've moved back and forth between Intel and AMD CPU's over the years, depending on which offered the best performance for my budget at the time. Given the long life cycle of AMD architectures (2003-2011 for K8/10) I can't see me buying an AMD CPU again any time soon.
I think most of us would have liked to have seen some competition again in the CPU market (okay, there might be for servers), but in all likelyhood, Intel will dominate the consumer market for years to come. The only hope I can see for AMD is in low powered laptops, but that's only a short term hope in my eyes.

 

I wonder if AMD is planning to leave the CPU consumer market altogether.
With Windows 8 supporting ARM, could we have Intel v ARM rather than Intel v AMD on consumer PC's/laptops/tablets? They may think the only real profit margins for them these days is in servers.

 

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I'd considered a couple paths to Bulldozer, but I sort of got pushed into the one I wasn't going to go with - first I got a screaming deal on a X3 720 to replace my ancient A64 X2. Then my M4A78 Plus died on me. I got an M5A97 EVO, figuring if I had to get a new board, I might as well get an AM3+. While the sort-of-new (the only original part left is the CM Hyper TX3) system is loads improved (11 second difference in WPrime, for example) over the original build, I really wanted to get a proper, huge upgrade with BD.

Goddamnit, AMD, I had big ****ing plans for a proper scratch build once Bulldozer landed. 5+ years of this BS and you've got me actually considering switching to the dark side, for the first time since I had a 150MHz Pentium.

Oh well, at least I can perform incremental upgrades (...suck that, Intel, I guess...)

 

The ray of hope I can see for AMD is as some have already said "Server" based. With everyman and his dog running for Cloud based solutions then I can see AMD making some money here. Hell, even I have an Opteron server.

 

I don't necessarily see that happening anytime soon - We're still a ways off from ARM landing on the desktop, or even something like the Atrix (which I think is a fantastic idea, tbh)

It's still a little far out before we'll see real applications (not these stupid 'apps' the kids won't shut up about) for ARM - the money isn't there yet. I find the idea of an ARM-powered desktop oddly fascinating, but I would guess it's at least 5 years out. I will say, though, I find the idea of that being Nvidia's path to competing with Intel intriguing, after the rumors a while back about Nvidia buying out Via to get their hands on an x86 license.

OTOH, there was an article somewhere yesterday about Canonical demonstrating Ubuntu on an ARM server, so maybe we're closer than I think...

Back to your point, though, BD better be a huge fckng monster when it drops into G34 boards, otherwise they better start begging Intel to bail them out so as to not be left a monopoly (AMD's share of the server market has fallen off a cliff the last few years, too)...or start shopping an x86 license around (either one, on that count - AMD could kill off the CPU division and live on as a rebranded ATI - I suspect that's where the bankroll comes from at this point.) Intel and Via being the last two standing is a scary thought.

 

Every man and his dog in big companies. I've yet to actually meet anyone who wants to keep and edit all their files/photos/videos etc online. It was pointed out in the currect edition of PC Pro that most internet connections (not just the poor ones) could take weeks to upload an individuals data to the cloud. Sure we'll get there in the end, but it'll be years (in the UK) until that is dominant. Plus the cost of these services is larger than a good sized HDD.
Personally I don't plan to use the cloud at all. I like having my 2TB od data at my fingertips.

 

The problem with VIA is that seem to be years behind, even though their latest designs are quite good. Intel and AMD are getting clooser and closer to what is effectively a system on a chip, but VIA only have a CPU on their CPU dies. I've not heard about any plans for that to change either.

 

This is a forward looking chip; unfortunately Windows 8 won’t come around for another year. We all need AMD to succeed or we can all say goodbye to competitive, choice etc.

 

Intel have no reason what so ever to release SB-E or IB now.. I can see the guys at intel sitting back with some light beers and their feet up for the next six months given the atrocity that is BullDozer!

Based on how some of those benchmarks actually panned out it looks as though Bull Dozer is still behind the i7 920 and similar in most tasks... AMD are 3 years if not more behind intel now. Its a white wash and quite frankly a bit of a joke.

Bull Dozer in some cases even manages to fail to beat the 1100T at slower clocks.. This tells me that clock for clock BullDozer essentially cant beat a 6 year old design thats had a few tweaks here and there...

I cant see many advancements in CPU technology for desktop now AMD have provided this..

Bad bad times..

 

Wonder how it will perform with f@h

 

For some people, that's gonna lift the rating to at least a solid 7/10

 

Bit tech showing their intel bias again it seems... Bulldozer is a disappointment but I think the bigger picture has been missed, its not a 50% score item.

 

"which gives it an eBay frequency of 19.8GHz;"....

I Lol'd.

Unlike the review as a whole, genuinely angry that AMD could bring such a turd to market after all the delays.

Company sackings inbound.....

 

if you take a scale from negative to positive - 0 being hate the product 100 being love it, having now read 5 reviews, I think most are giving the chip a 7.5 with more expected going forward, but a quite favorable first impression for a new architecture.

Bit Tech seem out on their own in the total negativity that surrounds their review, I always think they seem to go into a review of an AMD product expecting it to fail, and liking it when it does. The opposite seems to be true when they review intel.

Still got quite a few more sites that I want to dip into to see what the impression is but so far Bit Tech does seem to have gone over the top in their negativity (IMO).

Personally though I have to admit I was "hoping" for more than this.

 

A disappointing show but a not surprising one. As with everyone else, I was hoping it would start to make Intel sweat a little, but obviously not. I did however, find this over at Anand....



... I'll be watching Bulldozer mature and hopefully with better BIOS/EFI releases, drivers and (Windows) updates we'll see some (cringes whilst saying it) significant improvements.

 

This is still a damn shame. I, like many others, was hoping on Bulldozer to be able to perform well. You'd expect it to at least beat the K10.5 Architecture.

Dammit. There goes my plans to try and scrounge up the money for a new motherboard and a Bulldozer chip. Although there might still be hope if I can get the cheapest of the eight-cores and overclock it up to 4-odd ghz.

Still a crap deal overall, however. AMD's stocks are going to love this...

I do like how AMD were raving it was 10-20% faster per clock against the Phenoms... Clearly not. Did they build and send out first-revision processors by accident, rather than the revised stepping?