Legit Reviews the Old AMD Iron

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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The AMD FX-9590 is sort of like an old Monster truck. It is huge and menacing, gets 2 miles to the gallon, and can do about anything...if you give it enough time. Seriously though, it was doing 5GHz, before 5GHz was cool. Killer Nathan Kirsch at Legit Reviews has the scoop, with one last look before Ryzen.

AMD’s flagship FX Series processor is the FX-9590 Eight-Core CPU that came out during the summer of 2013. This processor was a beast when it came out as it had 8-cores along with a 220W TDP rating, a 4.7 GHz base clock and a turbo clock of 5.0 GHz. The bad news is that they were extremely hard to get at the time due to only a handful of processors being able successfully hit those speeds not to mention only a handful of AMD 990FX boards supported a 220W TDP processor and you needed water cooling.
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I personally would have preferred to have seen that Asrock 970 board used to see how it does. However, I very highly doubt a $70 board would do anything other than extreme throttling with the 9590 or scream and die. :D
 
the AMD PileDriver architecture used on these FX series processors just can’t compete with what Intel has been releasing for more than half a decade now.
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And this is partly why we have the 7700k. Intel can sit on their butts since AMD hasn't been able to answer. I truly hope Ryzen will help to change that. Well, and of course, market conditions for PC's haven't been exactly favorable.
 
Shotglass01 said:
And this is partly why we have the 7700k. Intel can sit on their butts since AMD hasn't been able to answer. I truly hope Ryzen will help to change that. Well, and of course, market conditions for PC's haven't been exactly favorable.
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Shoot, my friend's latest machine runs a cheap i3 processor and it's still better than anything AMD has put out for gaming purposes.
 
Ahh right, Intel didn't release anything that did 5 GHz out of the box back then.
 
I'm very curious what intel has left in the tank to be honest. Apple is catching up on the low end with A10x. It's not going to directly compete given it's lack of supporting software and infrastructure, but it shows an ARM chip with intel-like performance. If Ryzen catches up on the desktop and server level.. how is intel going to respond?

I'm pretty doubtful they'll magically pull a 30% faster arch out of nowhere. They might finally double the core counts or cache sizes, maybe use hbm2 or 3d xpoint or something to dramatically speed things up. It'll be very interesting. I think intel has a lot to lose and is ultimately replaceable - far more so than microsoft. Most people wouldn't even know if you put an AMD processor in their system. Taking away their start button though almost ended the world.
 
andrew, that may be why intel is buying stuff from amd .. maybe they need the new algorithms to hit the next milestones although I believe it was mostly gpu related
 
I really do hope amd knocks it out of the park Athlon 64 style, but I honestly expect another "return of the FX" fiasco. Remember that horrible amd comic that came out as marketing then? The two Intel corporate guys sweating and talking about this new agent from the enemy, the FX.... Yeah that was a bad thing to do.
 
I'm very happy with my old FX-8320 rig. Still going strong at 4.8 GHz after several years. It's perfectly adequate for 1080p gaming and it still delivers excellent multithreaded performance.

I get that the individual cores are weak, but I don't think the Bulldozer lineage deserves the scorn a lot of people have for it. AMD took a gamble with smaller cores hoping that the consumer software world would be more multi-threaded when the product launched, obviously things didn't work out the way they'd hoped.
 
Never even realized AMD had a proc that could actually hit 5 GHz...then I looked at the review and remembered why I had never bothered. :p
 
DeathFromBelow said:
I'm very happy with my old FX-8320 rig. Still going strong at 4.8 GHz after several years. It's perfectly adequate for 1080p gaming and it still delivers excellent multithreaded performance.

I get that the individual cores are weak, but I don't think the Bulldozer lineage deserves the scorn a lot of people have for it. AMD took a gamble with smaller cores hoping that the consumer software world would be more multi-threaded when the product launched, obviously things didn't work out the way they'd hoped.
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Most games are 20-30% slower with AMD processors, no matter how many cores are on the CPU, compared to Intel. It's not just a bit slower. That's a massive difference. It may be "adequate" for you, but it isn't for me. WoW can't even hardly run at top detail levels with an AMD processor, no matter what GPU is used.
 
Isn't the real problem with IPC that EUV tech is late and there just isn't any more stretch within current immersion tech?

Read an interview with a guy from ASML today where he pretty much says just that, and that Intel is hoping to get back to their Tick-Tock ways once EUV is in full swing.
 
Being winter and all, I would welcome that space heater CPU under my desk. Come summertime, not so much.
 
If Zen was not coming and the 9590 was based on at least Steamroller, I would buy it. Now though, it is not worth it since I can get an 8300 for a lot less and overclock that instead. (Probably will not hit 5Ghz but also, it will not run as hot either.) That said, I still do not believe for a second that the Asrock 970 board would properly run the 9590, that is just wrong.
 
I would LOVE to see AMD get it together and spank Intel once again. I really miss those days......

It sure kept prices down when Intel actually had some competition....
 
Shintai said:
5Ghz turbo *cough* It was false marketing big time. Its a 4.7Ghz CPU.
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In my experience they can run all cores at 5GHz with 1.48-1.5v. The CPU can handle it, but you obviously have to turn off the 220w TDP limit and keep it from melting...

That said, my 8320 does 4.8 GHz at 1.45v. I don't see much point in spending twice as much for a golden chip with a 200MHz bump. Even the weakest FX chips will usually go to 4.5 GHz.

Shintai said:
But it didn't. Have you forgotten X2 prices? Looking on historical prices its actually the other way around.
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AMD is too small to matter. Intel didn't cut prices or rush out a decent successor to the netburst architecture over the A64, they just leaned on OEMs to keep AMDs market share from growing.
 
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