AMD FX Series Piledriver Processor IPC and Overclocking @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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AMD FX Series Piledriver Processor IPC and Overclocking - AMD's new Piledriver core technology should not be a surprise to any enthusiast as much of its "embargoed" information has already been exposed on the Net. Today we take the AMD FX series model 8350 desktop variant, code named Vishera, and look at it in an enthusiast way as we expose its IPC at 4GHz, and a bit of overclocking.
 
unlike most of the other reviews, but holds true a bit better than Bulldozer. Nothing to write home about.

Thanks guys.
 
Interesting how your sample only got to 4.6 ghz with 1.5 vcore while many others got to 5.0+ ghz with 1.5 vcore, and no, they did not disable any cores either. And they used the included AMD AIO unit, not a full blown custom watercooling loop that [H] used.
 
Tsumi said:
Interesting how your sample only got to 4.6 ghz with 1.5 vcore while many others got to 5.0+ ghz with 1.5 vcore, and no, they did not disable any cores either.
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Not surprising considering what AMD said...

AMD did suggest that we could see variances of as high as 300MHz between Vishera samples if we had more to test, so it is highly possible that others could see "better" chips.
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And I might suggest that we are pretty hard on what we call a successful overclock.
 
Enlighten me please, because I suck at OC mostly. I just set it and forget it. I had trouble OC'ing my hexacore last year until I got 1866 RAM, only then did it hit 4GHz. How do you figure you can get a good OC with only 1333 RAM? Anand used 1600, which I consider the starting speed for enthusiasts.

My Ivy Bridge cannot use more than 1600 though.
 
verteron said:
Enlighten me please, because I suck at OC mostly. I just set it and forget it. I had trouble OC'ing my hexacore last year until I got 1866 RAM, only then did it hit 4GHz. How do you figure you can get a good OC with only 1333 RAM? Anand used 1600, which I consider the starting speed for enthusiasts.

My Ivy Bridge cannot use more than 1600 though.
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Unlocked multipliers makes memory speed irrelevant.
 
Oh dear. Couple this review with the fact that the new range of graphics cards from AMD will be barely 20% faster than the current models, and Intel will be releasing Haswell in less than a year.

The board of AMD should be sacked... Well I guess they will when the company goes bankrupt sometime in 2014.

RIP AMD.
 
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Stimpy88 said:
Oh dear. Couple this review with the fact that the new range of graphics cards from AMD will be barely 20% faster than the current models... The board of AMD should be sacked... Well I guess they will when the company goes bankrupt sometime in 2014.

RIP AMD.
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How does meeting their performance expectations constitute a failure...?
 
Wow guys. The laptop I purchased for my grandpa uses higher clocked memory. Do we need to throw you a bake sale to afford faster sticks?
 
Stimpy88 said:
The board of AMD should be sacked... Well I guess they will when the company goes bankrupt sometime in 2014.

RIP AMD.
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Go over to phoronix and check their benchmarks.

Btw AMD receives 5 times less then Intel for R&D, why would the board need to go all of a sudden?
 
It didn't blow me away, but I think I am more impressed with Vishera than Kyle was. I like the 8320 at $180 since it should have about as much headroom as the 8350 for $40 less.

I had my 8350 at 4.6 GHz at 1.4v with a Phanteks, and I think I am just about as strict with OC results. With the AMD liquid cooler it was 4.9 GHz stable at 1.45v, any higher would result in overheating and instability. With the air cooler it would actually throttle the multiplier. The key with these CPUs is to keep it strictly under 65 C I think. I am pretty sure I was limited by the motherboard with my OC.

BTW undervolting by 0.1v led to a 30% drop in consumption at stock speed, so there's that :)
 
So as expected not great for enthusiasts running benchmarks all day.

But perfectly fine for 98% of the rest of the computing world's userbase to actually do some proper real work and make money on.

Just a little perspective there for some of you.
 
daglesj said:
So as expected not great for enthusiasts running benchmarks all day.

But perfectly fine for 98% of the rest of the computing world's userbase to actually do some proper real work and make money on.

Just a little perspective there for some of you.
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This is a enthusiast site, not your average Joe site. [H] gave a proper review on PD. I don't see anything to cry about.
 
I didn't expect much, and got exactly what I expected.

thanks for the review!
 
daglesj said:
So as expected not great for enthusiasts running benchmarks all day.

But perfectly fine for 98% of the rest of the computing world's userbase to actually do some proper real work and make money on.

Just a little perspective there for some of you.
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You gotta remember, many people who read [H] will be saying:

"We are the 2%..."

Personally I have not been over clocking since processors hit 2Ghz. No real need IMHO.

(puts on flame retardant suit)
 
Rory Read, CEO of AMD, has in no way ever given me any true hope for Piledriver cores being competitive with Intel on the desktop.
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If you read the AMD sub-forum you would think they would be competitive. First they were going to 'bulldoze' over Intel, then they were going to 'pile drive' them into the mat ...

... had to :D
 
lordroy said:
You gotta remember, many people who read [H] will be saying:

"We are the 2%..."

Personally I have not been over clocking since processors hit 2Ghz. No real need IMHO.

(puts on flame retardant suit)
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For me as well.

Also, I wish [H] had done a non-overclocked vs non-overclocked cpu battle as that would have shown exactly what you get with stock processors (what I run).

Also: Showing benchmarks at under 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 isn't that informative. I think for my upgrading decision, this is probably more relevant to my personal cpu situation.
 
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lordroy said:
You gotta remember, many people who read [H] will be saying:

"We are the 2%..."
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Well actually I would put enthusiasts at maybe 0.5%, the other 1.5% would be folks that need some strong computational power in their job (research/scientists etc.).
 
Still gets owned by Intel but we knew that was gonna be the case. I admit I'm looking thru fanboy colored glasses but there are an awful lot of silver linings here. Piledriver made a 20% or more improvement over Bulldozer with basically the same architecture and same TDP. I was hoping for it to get a little closer to the i5 but looks like it's about 25% behind.

Now that's not the end of the world and considering the 8320 should be $170 pretty soon, that's not an unreasonable alternative to the $230 i5.

The main thing I was hoping for with Piledriver was something that would at least keep Intel honest and I think PD can do that with the 8320 being $50 cheaper but still being very overclock friendly and having enough horsepower to run anything just fine.
 
Thanks for the review Kyle and Co.

I knew this day would come eventually.

I am even almost ashamed of my 7970's as well just because Nnvidia has Physx not to mention better average performance, even if slightly.

What really does it in for me is the rumors that they will be laying off small part of it's work force. Also, AMD has had nearly every part of its upper management leave for greener pastures.

When you take all of that and put it together, it just cements if for me. I am pretty sure I will not be buying anything from AMD for personal use, now, or in the future.

I still may look to AMD as a low end, low cost solution if the need arises. But that's about it.

AMD is kinda like Dollar General to me now. If I need some cheap socks, some snacks, a cheap phone for a wilderness / camping get away, sure, I might look to AMD.

Best of look guys
 
daglesj said:
the other 1.5% would be folks that need some strong computational power in their job (research/scientists etc.).
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That is me. At work I need to do some operations that take an hour or 2 per case to complete even on 12 threaded 3+ GHz processors and I have thousands of cases. This is why I am very interested in BD. With that said there are large parts of the calculations that are single threaded so can not give up single threaded performance to get better multithreaded performance.
 
drescherjm said:
That is me. At work I need to do some operations that take an hour or 2 per case to complete even on 12 threaded 3+ GHz processors and I have thousands of cases. This is why I am very interested in BD. With that said there are large parts of the calculations that are single threaded so can not give up single threaded performance to get better multithreaded performance.
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Shouldn't you be looking at 4-8 socket xeons/opterons?
 
SixFootDuo said:
Thanks for the review Kyle and Co.

I knew this day would come eventually.

I am even almost ashamed of my 7970's as well just because Nnvidia has Physx not to mention better average performance, even if slightly.
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actually no nvidia doesn't have a card that's competitive in any price point especially since cat 12.11 came out and gave the 7 series amd cards massive improvements so much so that the last stronghold for nvidia (bf3) has gone to amd's favor because the driver game it a massive 10-20+% increase depending on where you were at the time

on topic : I don't the you guys noticed but in all the PRICE POINTS (very important metric) below the 8350 is competing in amd holds either a close or better value for the consumer now let me show you why :

if you were going to pick up an amd octacore the most logical buy would be an 8320 seeing as they are just underclocked 8350's that cost $40 less on newegg and you can spend the money you saved against competing i5s (34 or 3570k) on cooling solutions that would allow you to oc and take the performance advantage back in games

the 6300 and 4300 already trounces any ivy i3 even in gaming at stock and that would only get worse with a decent cooling solution and an oc

so in conclusion : AMD is not in as bad a situation as you think
 
a step in the right direction, @ the right price..... maybe ...amd's not dead... but haswell is knocking on the door and forecast looks like the same situation we're in now.
 
Robstar said:
Shouldn't you be looking at 4-8 socket xeons/opterons?
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I would be more interested in 2 socket opterons if they were 4.0GHz stock. Remember I do not want to give up single threaded performance versus current 3 GHz i7 Intel cores. Also 4 socket systems would be way way over what the government will give me for equipment..
 
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aero449 said:
Wow guys. The laptop I purchased for my grandpa uses higher clocked memory. Do we need to throw you a bake sale to afford faster sticks?
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How exactly is this going to impact a look at scaling in terms of processor IPC in any meaningful way? I am all ears.
 
maboblivion said:
a step in the right direction, @ the right price..... maybe ...amd's not dead... but haswell is knocking on the door and forecast looks like the same situation we're in now.
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I don't think so haswell has been projected for a 15% increase in perf while amd has said that their changes to a 1:1 fpu core ratio, l2 cache optimization,and others not to mention the high density libaries bringing the same effect as a full node shrink would increase ipc by a whopping 30%
 
How does this compare to a 2500K price performance wise?

and is a 2500K a enthusiast part?
 
How does this compare to a 2500K price performance wise?
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I believe the new top end offers better value than the i5 2500K since it is priced cheaper than the i5 and it also narrowed the gap somewhat in per core performance which is generally more important for most desktop applications.
 
The Alias said:
I don't think so haswell has been projected for a 15% increase in perf while amd has said that their changes to a 1:1 fpu core ratio, l2 cache optimization,and others not to mention the high density libaries bringing the same effect as a full node shrink would increase ipc by a whopping 30%
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Source?
 
For me it's between the A10-5800K or the FX 4300 and discreet graphics, I will be building within a couple of weeks.
 
The Alias said:
I don't think so haswell has been projected for a 15% increase in perf while amd has said that their changes to a 1:1 fpu core ratio, l2 cache optimization,and others not to mention the high density libaries bringing the same effect as a full node shrink would increase ipc by a whopping 30%
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IMHO,
AMD really shot themselves in the foot when they decided to go from a 64KB L1 cache per core down to a 16KB L1 cache per core.

That right there is going to kill performace for any program that is able to keep even a little bit of stuff in cache.

Swapping it out to L2 and L3 cache is going to hurt performace quite a bit.

I have said this exact thing since day 1 of BD performace numbers.
 
As usual Good review guys but can you explain to me why you didn't use 1866 memory vs 1333 for Vishera? I understand you want to make it as even as possible but it seems AMD does benefit more from faster memory, especially compared to 1333? Not sure about Sandy/Ivy bridge though.
 
Robstar said:
For me as well.

Also, I wish [H] had done a non-overclocked vs non-overclocked cpu battle as that would have shown exactly what you get with stock processors (what I run).

Also: Showing benchmarks at under 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 isn't that informative. I think for my upgrading decision, this is probably more relevant to my personal cpu situation.
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I agree. Showing stock and overclock would be beneficial.
 
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