AMD FX-8350 & FX-6300 Overclocked: Real world power to performance testing

[Jos]

Intel has been beating AMD on every front but price for a couple of generations now, owing at least some of their success to being consistently one generation ahead in manufacturing process technology. Meanwhile, the Bulldozer microarchitecture and its descendants have had an unpleasant uphill climb. Power consumption, performance per clock, it all takes its toll. Arguably AMD doesn’t make things better for themselves by releasing the FX-9590 and FX-9370, chips with virtually no overclocking headroom and staggering 220W TDPs. And finally, FX chips still rely on the antiquated 900 series chipsets, which lack support for PCIe 3.0. Suffice to say, there’s a laundry list.

However, we took a couple of AMD’s most popular chips for a test drive and found that things aren’t anywhere near as bad as benchmarks might lead you to believe. Quite the opposite.

Sitting in our test bed today is AMD's most popular chip, the FX-8350, as well as their true mainstream champion, the $149 FX-6300. As we’ve done recently with Intel’s Haswell-E and Devil’s Canyon parts, today we’re doing a power-to-performance test to see just how much power an AMD FX-8350 and FX-6300 consume when faced with gaming and multimedia tasks.

Read the complete article.

 

[Guest]

Nice power consumption article. Only thing I would mention is the 6300 is under $100 at least in the US so that makes it an even better deal.

 

[Guest]

Just one mistake: the fx 6300 has been around 85 to 90 bucks during sales recently.

The sale price of the fx 8350 is around 150.

 

[Jos]

Price has been updated, thanks for the heads up

 

[GhostRyder]

This is a nice read, I appreciate seeing stuff like this as it helps explain/show some of the mysteries that go around the web. Some things are not as dramatic as people make them out to be especially in the world of power consumption.

Great article @Jos

 

[Cryio]

FX 6300 and 8320, some of the best CPUs for the money for 2 year now.

 

[yRaz]

On thing I would like to point out is that you use a very expensive PSU in this and a good PSU goes a long way in 1)keeping it stable and 2)more importantly, not blowing everything sky high. If you're on a budget you will probably get a budge PSU and these numbers wont reflect the overclocking numbers you'll get with a budget PSU. The headroom is there if you do have a good one, but those on a budget should be aware of this.

They'd probably have cheap ram to go with it which also contribute to the overall stability of a system.

Something that would be REALLY interesting is if you build the absolute cheapest piece of junk you can with current gen hardware you can and see how far you can take that. While we're on the topic of budget builds, I'd like to point out something I noticed recently. I was looking to buy the exact model of my motherboard so I could have a working one without installing windows. My mobo, new, cost $210. Now it is going on ebay for $60. I bought it in march 2013. Last gen hardware is often still plenty fast and can be picked up very cheap. That's just something everyone should keep in mind when they're on a budget.

 

[Guest]

Great article!
A comparison with the new FX-8320E would be great. It costs the same $150 at NewEgg, and consumes much less than the 8350. Probably overclocks just as high too.

 

[veLa]

I'm running an FX-8320 overclocked to 4.2GHz (4.4GHz boost). Just goes to show you that despite being underwhelming, they are still good performers.

 

[URBAN303]

I confirm that FX-8320 can be run to 5033Mhz but !! you must to have excellent motherboard (and not only Water cooling (aio or custom)). So ! there is no problem for FX-8350 and FX-8370 ( See the cpuid of my FX-8320 24/7 with AIO H110.)

 

[Spykezxp]

This was a good read article, because I myself have a FX 6300. Have been using it for 2 years now and its been running strong at 4.3 GHz on a Hyper 212 Plus, with keeping temps down in the upper 20's on idle and lower 50's on intense gaming, all the while getting good boost gains. I am able to (and have - 4.65 GHz) push it further, but I do not feel the need to at this time. These two chips are fantastic for overclocking, and maintaining the overclocks, while keeping heat and wattage draw as low as possible.

 

[Captain Five]

I've built my main desktop that I use with a Gigabyte 970 and a FX-6310, like 3 years ago. I have 16 G HyperX blue memory and a HD 7850 Radeon. I have the OS on an SSD (which I paid a fortune for 3 years ago) and 2 WD Black 1 Tb in RAID 1. Plug into a UPS. I turn that thing on and it has never been turn off since. I don't do a lot of gaming, so I don't overclock, but I work with a lots of videos and pictures. Solid and powerful.

 

[cliffordcooley]

I love my i7!

[size=1]Don't bite the troll hook.[/size]​

 

[red1776]

I love my i7!

[size=1]Don't bite the troll hook.[/size]​

oh sure, take an AMD article and turn it into an Intel .......oh you minx!
hehe

 

[SuperVeloce]

Still feel this is not the whole story. Sure you can still buy an FX for a good performance per money (I still have an 8320 for rendering), but power constumption and ancient chipset are understated in this article. It was shown many times that minimum frames are much lower than on haswell in many games (pentiums excluded, those cpus are just not what anyone should buy for new games in 2014/15, so the lowest you can go is something like athlon 750k), games still lack a good effective multithreading despite using more and more cores (so there must be some serial loads that require a fast core).
On review sites you can quickly see that stock 8350 consumes at least as much as 4930k or even 5960x under load. The likes of stock i5 and i7 are way behind. So you need good motherboard, PSU, better vented case... all that adds up $$$ for "overclocking on a budget". In the end you buy an i5 4460 and cheap'o h81 or b85 and you are a happy cam.. err gamer.

 

[Dragoncracker]

Still feel this is not the whole story. Sure you can still buy an FX for a good performance per money (I still have an 8320 for rendering), but power constumption and ancient chipset are understated in this article. It was shown many times that minimum frames are much lower than on haswell in many games (pentiums excluded, those cpus are just not what anyone should buy for new games in 2014/15, so the lowest you can go is something like athlon 750k), games still lack a good effective multithreading despite using more and more cores (so there must be some serial loads that require a fast core).
On review sites you can quickly see that stock 8350 consumes at least as much as 4930k or even 5960x under load. The likes of stock i5 and i7 are way behind. So you need good motherboard, PSU, better vented case... all that adds up $$$ for "overclocking on a budget". In the end you buy an i5 4460 and cheap'o h81 or b85 and you are a happy cam.. err gamer.

If you're going budget and most budget builds are for your kids, a g3258@4.8ghz with a 280, 280x, 290, can get 60 fps 1080p easy. Theres no reason to get 100+ fps when ur screen can only show 60. That same setup can be used to upgrade to the new broadwell cpus coming out since it is same socket.
Only thing I found to hinder that cpu is using MSAA, turning that off in games netted large fps gains.
But what can you expect from a budget build.

 

[Guest]

I bought my FX8359 for $130 on newegg about 4 months ago.I OC it to 4.9ghz and doesn't go over 54C.When DX12 hits these CPU's will improve .

 

[JA222]

If you're going budget and most budget builds are for your kids, a g3258@4.8ghz with a 280, 280x, 290, can get 60 fps 1080p easy.

The anniversary Pentium is a waste of money unless you are either building an emulation box or are building a system where the only games that will be played a minimally threaded (like a Sims box for a niece, or an MMO box). 2 threads is not enough for good settings with games like BF4 and Crysis 3.