Reviews - AMD FX-8150 at 4.7GHz. Does it stand tall?

[HEXUS]

Overclocked way past default speeds, how does it compare against its peers?

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[Biscuit]

Oh my word, 325W thats insane!

[13thmonkey]

it'll keep your feet warm this winter, i wonder if you could feed the water block into some kind of foot sized radiator for winter?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems to be a consequnce of using 2 billion transistors and on a process which probably is not very good ATM at high clockspeeds. The die is almost as big as the GPU in an HD5870!! Maybe,AMD needs to get more inspiration from its graphics division and engineer smaller CPU dies?? I hate to think how big Vishera is going to be!

Power consumption overclocked seems to be between an overclocked 32NM Core i7 990X and a overclocked 45NM Core i7 920:

http://www.hardocp.com/images/articl...QLiVuL_9_2.png

Sandy Bridge OTH seems to consume around the same power massively overclocked as a socket 1336 Core i7 quad core at stockspeeds! This is why a decent £20 to £25 cooler is more than enough IMHO.

[Jimbo75]

Just avoid this one until the power is fixed, those numbers are horrible.

[Steve]

Dynamic power dissipation = switching activity * switching capacitance * frequency * voltage^2

It's the voltage^2 bit that's the killer for power. Things get hot and thirsty when you bump up the voltage.

[Bagnaj97]

I know it's asking a lot, running a full suite a benches is very time consuming, but could you give us at least a few numbers with the CPU-NB clock increased? CAT's posted a link a couple of times showing that this has a significant effect on performance for K10 chips, I'm assuming it will also hold true for Bulldozer.

[warejon9]

What happens when you run the ram at 1866? Also what about if you overclock the IMC?

[Tarinder]

I know it's asking a lot, running a full suite a benches is very time consuming, but could you give us at least a few numbers with the CPU-NB clock increased? CAT's posted a link a couple of times showing that this has a significant effect on performance for K10 chips, I'm assuming it will also hold true for Bulldozer.

This overclocking article is designed as a quick and easy method by which you can push the chip to decent speeds.

We're next going to run it with a watercooling setup and with everything maxed out, to see what happens when it's overclocked to an inch of its life. Stay tuned for that.

[kalniel]

Just avoid this one until the power is fixed, those numbers are horrible.

It's not really horrible, just the same as other largish chips at the end of their performance window. Bloomfield was similar - this 920 article for example shows the huge increase in volts needed at the top end and corresponding power draw:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...i7,2268-4.html

Sandy bridge is smaller and hits other limits that you can't get around by simply raising volts.

The good news for AMD is that this kind of voltage driven speed can be improved by manufacturing process improvements and speed binning. Intel ended up knocking out loads of 950+ chips once the process had improved to allow the speed to increase at the same or lower voltages. In the future AMD could get a far faster performing chip without the needed power.

[Badbonji]

Sure the i7 920 consumed lots of power, but at the time there was no real competition. Now the FX-8150 consumes a lot of power and doesn't offer anything more versus Sandy Bridge. It will cost quite a bit more to run in the long run.

Hopefully AMD will actually be able to catch up, from slides of AMD piledriver they are only expecting a 10% increase in CPU performance. I don't think this will be nearly enough as it will be competing with Ivy Bridge where I have heard Intel is aiming for a 20% improvement over Sandy Bridge.

[Hicks12]

bit of an error in the article , last page
"Giving you pause for thought, we overclocked a Core i7 2500K "
Shouldnt that either be an i7 2600k or i5 2500k .

Not hopeful here, i know there are already benchmarks available in regards to the i series overclocks but would it be possible to have some sort of comparison say an i7 overclocked to 4.5 i5 4.5 and the fx 4.5?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is there any chance Hexus can do a review of the FX4100 and compare it against similarly priced Athlon II X4 and Phenom II X4 CPUs??

[Tarinder]

Is there any chance Hexus can do a review of the FX4100 and compare it against similarly priced Athlon II X4 and Phenom II X4 CPUs??

We'll certainly ask AMD for the FX-4100 chip.

[Terbinator]

Definitely looking forward to the CPU/NB overclocking. Rather than just including it in your 'all-out' approach, some charts where it had been raised along with your modest 4.7GHz clock would be nice also - hell, even the CPU @ stock frequency but with a faster CPU/NB would be nice as well if you have the time.

[Bagnaj97]

Is there any chance Hexus can do a review of the FX4100 and compare it against similarly priced Athlon II X4 and Phenom II X4 CPUs??

We'll certainly ask AMD for the FX-4100 chip.

Llano A6/A8 vs FX-4100 would also be interesting. Especially with the fairly decent graphics onboard Llano.

Edit:
It seems Guru3d have some fx-4100 benches up and it performs very closely to the A8-3850. With the reasonable GPU included with the A8 I can't see any reason to buy the fx-4100.