What to get: FX-6200 @ 3.8GHz or FX-8120 @ 3.1GHz?

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stop!theradio

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The first one is a six-core processor with a stock speed of 3.8GHz (which I'll run at 4-4.2GHz).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819106010

The second on is an eight-core processor with a stock speed of 3.1GHz. I'm fairly certain I'll be able to hit the 4GHz mark with that one as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103961

So - which one should I get? Which one would you get? Please don't say "neither" or "get a new mobo and an Intel processor", because those options are out of the question for me right now. Your input is very much appreciated, thanks in advance :)
 
Is it really THAT horrible? :confused:

EDIT: either way - of the two I linked - which one would be better to get?
 
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No...

I have an 8120. At stock speeds it feels similar to my oc'd 955BE. BD essentially matches the performance of the previous generation X6s and X4s - it doesn't blow them away and when oc'd it won't perform any worse.

Right now, replacing your [email protected] with BD isn't really much of an upgrade - unless you make a living encoding video or running vms.
 
Hmm...well I've got a couple weeks to think about this and gather more info. Thanks for the help so far, much appreciated :)
 
Wait for Piledriver if it comes out later this year I have a X2 555 Phenom 4 core unloacked and want to upgrade but it means getting a AM3+ socket which I'll get if Piledriver is semi decent.

I mean you buy the best Intel processor out there and it's no fun because you have the best of everything already =)
 
Huh so will they continue support for AM3+ then? If so then I might just wait. Although - my current CPU is actually a Phenom II X3 unlocked to X4 and overclocked from 3.0GHz to 3.6GHz. Seeing that the Bulldozer CPU's are so damned cheap right now it might not hurt for me to get one right now in case my current chip decides to die on me. Then I can make a more appropriate upgrade when Piledriver hits - so long as it's socket AM3+.
 
Depends a little on what games you play some see good improvements from Bulldozer other do better on Thuban (Phenom II x4 960T (unlocked overclocked).
 
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I personally use the 8150 after working with it I would like to say go with the 8120 as it uses a lower voltage and can most likely reach 8150 speeds on close to if not stock voltage and that leaves you a nice chunk of room for overclocking temp and voltage wise.
 
Keep your current Phenom and wait for Piledriver. Those upgrades would be marginal at best and certainly not worth paying that much for such a small bump in performance.
 
JohnnyH24 said:
No...

I have an 8120. At stock speeds it feels similar to my oc'd 955BE. BD essentially matches the performance of the previous generation X6s and X4s - it doesn't blow them away and when oc'd it won't perform any worse.

Right now, replacing your [email protected] with BD isn't really much of an upgrade - unless you make a living encoding video or running vms.
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All while consuming more power than any other consumer microprocessor ever made. (When OC'ed)
That's why I recommended an OC'ed Thuban. AFAIK, at 3.8GHz, Thuban will consume less power than BD. (Take that with a grain of salt, though, as I may have not remembered the power figures correctly)
 
If I stuck with AMD, it would have definitely been AMD FX 8120 if I was doing a straight upgrade from one generation to the next.


But, given the reviews I've read of BD, I would go with an X6 1090T if I could find it. However, given that reality, if unable to find a Phenom II X6 outside of eBay for a reasonable price, FX 8120 would be an alternative choice.
 
8120. The 6200 is only 10-20 cheaper, so that makes the 8120 a far better deal imo.

Crunch them videos, play a game+record, and make them 2500k boys all jelly inside.
 
May not be able to find an X6 anywhere as they're getting pretty scarce. I don't think it would be a bad idea to move up to a 8120. It wont be a huge upgrade but it will still be an upgrade. Plus if you like to overclock, it'll give you something new to play with. I'm probably gonna buy an 8120 for that very reason - something new to play around with til Piledriver gets here.
 
I have the 8120 and have no complaints about it. I think everyone puts to much stock into benchmarks that don't reflect real world use. I do a lot of multitasking and it is awesome in that regard and no hesitation doing anything. it will blow through most intensive programs without a sweat. If you like to run a lot of things at one time this is the chip for you.
 
I'm really thinking of getting the 8120 then. Most reviews seem to be good and with the input I'm getting here I think it's a no brainer. It's a cheap chip so it's not really a risk.
 
stop!theradio said:
I'm really thinking of getting the 8120 then. Most reviews seem to be good and with the input I'm getting here I think it's a no brainer. It's a cheap chip so it's not really a risk.
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Like I said it has done me and others that took the plunge well. An OS around the corner that is tailored to the higher core counts as well. I'm running windows 8 cp no problems at all.
 
Yep. Nothing wrong with getting one at all. Youll never be king of the benchmarks but for everyday use, itll work great and should be fun to overclock. Either way, itll be enough to hold you over til Piledriver comes along.
 
Well if the 6100 is cheap for like $100(Black Friday price), go for it if not get the 8120 then the 6100 @ retail price.
 
go with the 8120.

its not a bad processor, people will compare it to the phenom 2's, stock for stock the FX outperforms the older phenoms.


if you overclock the x6's gain ground on the FX processor, but when both are overclocked to their highest levels the FX comes out on top.

I like mine, 8 cores are nice. I manage the threads manually in my programs, nothing like running BF3 on 4 cores, and having the other 4 cores encode/decode video. I also use Vm's and Bulldozer is a god send to anyone using more than 6 vm's. Well least on a budget anyways. Overall the Fx platform is a-lot more flexible than the older thuban based systems. I will likely turn my system into a file server when piledriver is released and run two PCI-E ssd's to take advantage of the dual 16x pci-e links.
 
I'd avoid the FX 6 series in the same way the FX 4 ones are snooze fests. 8120 has come down in price it might be worth a look. There should be a new piledriver version with 95w TDP shortly unless you want to hang on for that one (might actually be worth a look)
 
ebduncan said:
go with the 8120.

its not a bad processor, people will compare it to the phenom 2's, stock for stock the FX outperforms the older phenoms.


if you overclock the x6's gain ground on the FX processor, but when both are overclocked to their highest levels the FX comes out on top.

I like mine, 8 cores are nice. I manage the threads manually in my programs, nothing like running BF3 on 4 cores, and having the other 4 cores encode/decode video. I also use Vm's and Bulldozer is a god send to anyone using more than 6 vm's. Well least on a budget anyways. Overall the Fx platform is a-lot more flexible than the older thuban based systems. I will likely turn my system into a file server when piledriver is released and run two PCI-E ssd's to take advantage of the dual 16x pci-e links.
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Hm, I have a 965 with 16G & 10 vm's without a problem.....almost all linux vm's though.
 
i just ordered the 6200FX this last weekend. My old am3 aus board was going out with a x4 945. For the price of 269$ i got a New am3+ 970 chipset and the fx6200. I should get it today.
I thought it will be a nice upgrade for the price and as long as my wife and kids can play all the games they want on it with no blue screen i will be happy.

will be paired up with 8 gig ddr3/ gtx460/ 1 tb seagate sata. and a 550 watt corsair PS.
 
Hm, I have a 965 with 16G & 10 vm's without a problem.....almost all linux vm's though.
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you can run more VM's than you have cores, but when you will get serious slow downs when doing any computation under each vm.
 
lorenzostpierre said:
I personally use the 8150 after working with it I would like to say go with the 8120 as it uses a lower voltage and can most likely reach 8150 speeds on close to if not stock voltage and that leaves you a nice chunk of room for overclocking temp and voltage wise.
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I also have the 8150, and hit my comfortable o/c of 4.73ghz a couple days ago. I think I may have it overvolted a little bit (CPU-Z will occasionally show 1.5V on the core voltage), but my next step is working that down to a reasonable voltage spot. I have hit close to 5ghz on the board I have, but the voltage was way too high for my tastes.
 
As having the fx 8120 and the 6200 it all comes down to what are you doing.

With Handbreak I get all 8 cores maxed out for encoding.
Games play fine on both.
FX8120 did need better cooling stock fan was very load ( hyper212plus).
Really comes down to price and what you are using it for.
If you can get the better just for future proof.

pc: FX8120/GTX650ti/16gigs ddr3/2x 1tb seagates/liteon blueray burner/750 corsair ps
......FX6200/GTC460ti/8 gig ddr3/1 tb wd/asus dvd durner/550watt corsair ps
 
I appreciate all the input guys - seriously, thank you! I'm gonna go ahead and grab the 8120 since it's such a great price. It's pretty much no risk for me at $189. Plus if I need to I can sell it to a buddy of mine who just picked up an AM3+ board.

While we're on the subject - can any of you who own the 8120 comment on how the stock hs/f fares with it? I recently picked up the Cooler Master Hyper N520 and it does wonders for my current CPU so I'll likely just use it for the 8120.
 
I am having a great experience with my 8120 in games and other stuff. Very stable, more stable then my Q6600 ever was. Remember most games rarely use more then 2 cores even rarer over 4 cores. So if a game is using four cores it is using ~1/2 the 8120 processor capability while on like a 2500K it is using 100% of the cores. Games that use 100% of BD cores like BF3 actually perform very good on it. Now if you do other stuff that will use those cores and/or multitask, this processor multitasks better then any other processor I've ever used/tested hands down.

I also have an AMD 960T unlocked to a six core, it does not compare to the 8120 in performance and with the 8120 less then $200 it is a good buy for what you get.

If you plan on OCing even moderately, you will need a much better HSF. My stock 8120 HSF had issues at anything over 3.8ghz. I can go up to 5ghz stable before heat issues drive me back down, been running at 4.7ghz for everyday stuff for the last couple of months, smooth as butter.
 
Thanks for the info! So you don't think the Hyper N520 will allow for decent overclocking? It seems to keep my current CPU nice and cool. It's an unlocked Phenom II X3 3.0GHz chip. It runs as a Phenom II X4 @ 3.6GHz with the voltage at 1.4. Temperatures never seem to break 45c at the most intense with this cooler.

For the 8120 I'm shooting for at least 3.6GHz, hoping to hit 4GHz stable. What are the general temperatures like with the 8120 (both stock and overclocked)?
 
For gaming you won't see a big increase in going to the 8120 from a Phenom II x4 at 3.6ghz. With the 10% IPC (roughly) you'd need to overclock that 8120 by ~400mhz just to match the Phenom II x4 at gaming. Without a heavy overclock you'd actually be looking at a downgrade outside of a couple games (Civ5/Metro2033/BF3, and the gains won't be significant).

If I were you I'd save the money and wait for Piledriver.

Go through this AT thread and try to read most of it. Starts out with a bit of misinformation but there's some good solid info in there with regards to what we'll see in Trinity/Vishera and they appear to be worth the wait. Paying ~$200 for a sidegrade isn't worth it.
 
stop!theradio said:
Thanks for the info! So you don't think the Hyper N520 will allow for decent overclocking? It seems to keep my current CPU nice and cool. It's an unlocked Phenom II X3 3.0GHz chip. It runs as a Phenom II X4 @ 3.6GHz with the voltage at 1.4. Temperatures never seem to break 45c at the most intense with this cooler.

For the 8120 I'm shooting for at least 3.6GHz, hoping to hit 4GHz stable. What are the general temperatures like with the 8120 (both stock and overclocked)?
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The stock cooler with stock voltage will get you to 3.8. Aftermarket cooler and stock voltage will get you to 4.0. Aftermarket cooler, voltage stability on, and stock voltage allows you to OC a few other settings and 4.2. Raising the stock voltage gets you to 4.5 and beyond but the cooling better be up to task. I can get to 4.2 on stock voltage and aftermarket H80 cooler, while leaving all the power saving features turned on. I think that's the best setup for me. I can easily hit 4.5+ but I have to start cutting off power saving features and my PC runs 24/7 so I'm not too happy with that.
 
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pelo said:
For gaming you won't see a big increase in going to the 8120 from a Phenom II x4 at 3.6ghz. With the 10% IPC (roughly) you'd need to overclock that 8120 by ~400mhz just to match the Phenom II x4 at gaming. Without a heavy overclock you'd actually be looking at a downgrade outside of a couple games (Civ5/Metro2033/BF3, and the gains won't be significant).

If I were you I'd save the money and wait for Piledriver.

Go through this AT thread and try to read most of it. Starts out with a bit of misinformation but there's some good solid info in there with regards to what we'll see in Trinity/Vishera and they appear to be worth the wait. Paying ~$200 for a sidegrade isn't worth it.
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I agree with you to a point. Personally this late into the BD cycle I would wait for Piledriver also. I have a nice X4 system that I built for my nephew here in the room with me to compare BD to X4.

The difference between my PC and his PC is the same feeling that I got when I went from a dual core to a quad. The system is much snappier, tabbing out of games is seamless unless the game is poorly coded, and I can encode video and play games at a much higher frame rate than he can.

For example when playing BF3 I can tab out of it which places it in a window. Doing so is as fast as clicking the open tab feature on Chrome or Firefox. So I can answer a buddy playing SWTOR that is beeping me on Facebook to login over there. And if I see someone running across my field of view in BF3 I can instantly switch to it which seamlessly puts it back into fullscreen and kill them. Then tab back out and finish my conversation.

By contrast my nephew's X4 hangs up when he tries to do the same in SWTOR. Sometimes it hangs so bad he has to restart. He said that he might get another job to upgrade soon. Which isn't a bad thing since he needs one!

Do I wish it benchmarked better? Heck yea! Do I wish it didn't use as much power? No doubt! Am I disappointed in how my PC runs? No, everything works great!

:)
 
pelo said:
For gaming you won't see a big increase in going to the 8120 from a Phenom II x4 at 3.6ghz. With the 10% IPC (roughly) you'd need to overclock that 8120 by ~400mhz just to match the Phenom II x4 at gaming. Without a heavy overclock you'd actually be looking at a downgrade outside of a couple games (Civ5/Metro2033/BF3, and the gains won't be significant).

If I were you I'd save the money and wait for Piledriver.

Go through this AT thread and try to read most of it. Starts out with a bit of misinformation but there's some good solid info in there with regards to what we'll see in Trinity/Vishera and they appear to be worth the wait. Paying ~$200 for a sidegrade isn't worth it.
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Thanks! I've stated before that my CPU is actually a Phenom II X3 @ 3.0GHz - it's just unlocked to X4 and overclocked to 3.6GHz at a voltage of 1.4. I get the infamous cache hierarchy error sometimes with the CPU unlocked, too, so in all respects the 8120 will actually be a pretty decent upgrade for me.
 
So I've just found out that I won't be able to pick up a new chip until June. This changes things. Is there any solid release date for piledriver yet, or is there only rumors about it?
 
the stock cooler is ok but was very loud. I repaced mine within 4 weeks to a coolermaster 212evo plus from the egg for under 30$. I really like the new one way better. The supports for the cooler is just ok.
 
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