AMD FX-8150, FX Series Review - Bulldozer makes debut

GL guys, I'm sure you'll have fun with your oc's. Remember, if you burn the chip out trying to get more performance just send it back to amd and demand a refund. I'm sure the r & d team saw you coming a mile away.

Ya know T, Schadenfreude is bad for the soul. :haha::wave:

Actually, I find the notion of requesting an RMA for the char-broiled remains of a cooked Bulldozer rather amusing ... in a twisted sort of way. After all he did wish us good luck with the overclock, even if it was slightly disingenuous

Regardless, it's always fun to take something like the FX-8120 and see just how much performance you can wring out of it. If I'm able to get 4.5GHz+ for a stable 24/7 overclock for $200 I'll be satisfied

First one down...donanimhaber **cough *AMD Marketing*cough** are reporting that AMD are supposedly moving production of Bulldozer based CPU's from Globalfoundries to TSMC....so it took all of 48 hours for AMD to throw its foundry partner under a bus.

Of course it's probably all bs -
1.TSMC doesn't have a 32nm process
2.Retooling for Bulldozer on TSMC's 28nm process would make a lie of AMD"s Piledriver in Q2 2012 claim.

@Mizzou
A preview of sorts over at Tweaktown exploring gaming performance with triple Crossfire, and FX-8150 / 2600K at their highest stable OC using the Corsair H100.

Holy moly rocky! this here ladies and gentleman is a case study on how to setup a "review/preview" to get a predetermined result you like. The conclusion page.....contradict yourself much?!. It's breathtaking in it's execution. Nice TweakTown:grinthumb

If the object of the exercise is to review the relative merits of the two best gaming systems from Intel and AMD then it does seem more than a little strange how the FX-6100 enters the final conclusion...other than to garner page hits for a tangentally- at best- related article...although to be fair, I do see Shane's point about leading with your strongest suit (price/perf.).Can't help but think that if the four and six core were reviewed as well as the top SKU, the reviews would have helped the overall situation for AMD.

Pretty soon intel fan boys are going to have to go protest at amd because they'll get tired of paying top buck for cpu's.

I'm pretty much there already.
AMD could have sat on the 8150 until they had a respun 8170 ready for market. That they didn't pretty much says AMD have ceded the upper-mainstream to Intel.
AMD obviously haven"t got shedloads of these CPU's- and probably never will have- so whats the point of releasing it? Shelve the desktop and push out the server parts.

My guess is that AMD reached a point where no one was buying their current Athlon II/Phenom II line (production probably ceased some time back to retool for 32nm) and needed something/anything to stop people migrating to Intel. AMD built up to much expectation, too many bogus performance claims and basically painted themselves into a corner

well done
/golf clap

:suspiciou The other alternative is that St. Rory and the AMD board decided to green-light BD regardless of performance/availability to help crater AMD's share price and soften up shareholders for a nice intimate takeover by ATIC.....I don't suppose the board of directors hold stock options...maybe they traded them in for Intel shares :suspiciou

So newegg notified me that they ran out of stock after I placed my order...and I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Then they quickly notified me that they did have BD's back in stock and it was on it's way...and I wasn't sure how I felt about that either...:haha:

Actually I was talking about this review on this site - sorry for not making that clear ;-)
Seriously though, minimum framerates say more to me than maximum ones anyway - I game with v-sync on (looks way better and any more than 60fps is a waste of resources) so the maximums mean almost nothing to me. Looking at all the minimum framerates AMD wins everywhere. Also the encoding benches that are being posted -- like here - are only compared by first pass on a two pass test where if you combine the times the AMD processors sometimes move upa notch or two in that ranking. There's bias in most of these reviews whether intentional or not. Legit reviews has a pretty fair comparison IMHO.

Your initial response happened because in the back of your mind you know you thought "At least I didnt waste my money."

If the results turn out to be what we're hoping for the FX-8120 would have to be considered the better deal. My personal metric for that will be acheiving at least a 4.4GHz+ stable overclock. Guess we'll know a whole lot more sometime Monday evening, if you don't hear from me ... it didn't go well

Yup, everywhere:

Except there I suppose...or here, or here, or here for example

There are actually a number of sites that provide x264HD benches (Pass 1 and 2). Firstly, being competitive in few benchmarks doesn't change the overall picture.
Secondly, the benchmarks that the 8150 excels in are mostly the same apps that Phenom II does likewise.
Thirdly, AMD are marketing the FX brand primarily as a gaming CPU and platform

The simple facts remain: Bulldozer is on a smaller node that Thuban, it has a smaller die, it is clocked lower but uses more power, produces more heat, is more expensive, and doesn't offer a performance increase commensurate with its power requirement. Bumping up a few scores (some of them artificially since Phenom doesn't support some instruction sets) doesn't alter the fact.

@Mizzou
C'mon! Go for broke

Yeah, It's shaping up to be that they both go to the same place. if you want a usable OC day to day, the 8120 makes sense. if you want to go high voltage and exotic, the 8150 is what you want. If Mizzou disappears in a CPU depression :wave:, Mine will be here on Wed. I will let you know how I make out.

But we didn't show the "maximum" frame rate?

Also accidental bias is a new one.

When there are 50+ reviews released on the same day at the same time and they all say pretty much the same thing there is only one possibility, giant conspiracy!

Thats cool, I will be the Guinea pig before you fire it up.......that was unfortunate.