AMD FX-8150 8-Core CPU Review: Bulldozer Is Here


Test Systems and SiSoft SANDRA

Test System Configuration Notes: When configuring our test systems for this article, we first entered their respective system BIOSes / UEFI and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High performance Defaults". We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set the memory frequency to DDR3-1600 or DDR-1333. The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows 7 Ultimate x64 was installed.


AMD FX-8150 Installed In The Asus CrossHair V Formula

When the Windows installation was complete, we updated the OS, and installed the drivers necessary for our components. Auto-Updating and Windows Defender were then disabled and we installed all of our benchmarking software, performed a disk clean-up, defragged the hard drives, and ran the tests.

HotHardware's Test Systems
Intel and AMD - Head To Head

System 1:
AMD A8-3850
(2.9GHz - Quad-Core)

Asus F1A75-V Pro
(AMD A75 Chipset)

2x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866
(@ 1600MHz)

Radeon HD 6550D IGP
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio

WD150 "Raptor" HD
10,000 RPM SATA

Windows 7 x64

System 2:
Intel Core i3-2120
(3.3GGHz - Dual-Core)
Intel Core i5-2500K
(3.3GHz - Quad-Core)
Intel Core i5-2600K
(3.3GHz - Quad-Core)

Asus P8Z68-A Pro
(Z68 Express Chipset)

2x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866
(@ 1600MHz)

GeForce GTX 280 
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio

WD150 "Raptor" HD
10,000 RPM SATA

Windows 7 x64

System 3:
AMD Phenom II X4 980
(3.7GHz Quad-Core)
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
(3.3GHz Six-Core)
AMD Phenom II X4 980
(3.6GHz Eight-Core)

Asus CrossHair V Formula
(AMD 990FX Chipset)

2x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866
(@ 1600MHz)

GeForce GTX 280
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio

WD150 "Raptor" HD
10,000 RPM SATA

Windows 7 x64

Preliminary Testing with SiSoft SANDRA 2011
Synthetic Benchmarks

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA 2011, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran four of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA 2011 suite with AMD's FX-8150 (CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cache and Memory, and Memory Bandwidth). All of the scores reported below were taken with the CPU running at its default settings, with Turbo enabled, and with 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM running in dual-channel mode on the Asus CrossHair V Formula motherboard.


Processor Arithmetic
 


Processor Multimedia
 


Memory Bandwidth


Cache and Memory

SANDRA's Processor Arithmetic benchmark puts the new FX-8150 on near equal footing with the Intel Core i5-2500 in ALU performance, but the FX outpaces the i5 in the FPU test, but about 20%. Things play out differently in the Processor Multi-Media benchmark, however. In the Multi-Media test, the FX outpaces the Core i5-2500 and Core i7-2600 easily in the Integer test, but falls well behind in the floating-point test. The Memory Bandwidth benchmark shows the AMD FX-8150 (when paired to DDR3-1600 RAM), offering up about 18GB/s of peak bandwidth, which is competitive with other platforms featuring dual memory channels. In the Cache and Memory benchmark tough, the FX-8150 falters somewhat and trails other platforms until the data set hits the 1MB mark and the FX is able to pull ahead by a small margin.

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