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Overall we are left with generally positive impressions of the AMD FX-8120 Black Edition processor. We were able to achieve a reasonable overclock of 4.2 GHz without even having to adjust the CPU voltage. This resulted in a decent boost in performance throughout our set of benchmarks, letting the FX-8120 rival the i5-2500K at stock settings in a number of tests.
It was disappointing that we couldn't push the chip further than 4.2 GHz without encountering stability issues in some benchmarks, even with plenty of voltage applied. By comparison, our Core i5 2500k could easily hit 4.7ghz with a voltage increase.
That said, we achieved an impressive 5.1 GHz maximum overclock with the FX-8120 in our ASRock 990FX Fatal1ty motherboard, although this wasn't 100% stable under load. While we achieved a verification, we wouldn't use these settings on a daily basis. With only one FX-8120 at hand it may be possible that we received a weak sample for review.
For verification, we attempted to overclock the FX-8120 with an ASRock 990FX Fatal1ty motherboard which costs over £50 more. It offers everything an enthusiast user could want, including Quad SLI and CrossfireX support. Complete stability was still limited at 4.2ghz.
We are quite impressed with what the Asus M5A99X EVO motherboard offers and it pairs well with the FX-8120 processor.
This does raise another minor concern for us because we do feel that AMD need to start working with their partners to drop the prices of their motherboards. In recent months high quality Intel motherboards are available for £80 in the UK today.
We have managed to get the Core i5 2500k overclocked to 4.8ghz with this Gigabyte motherboard, offering a very cheap entry level point. The problem is compounded further by the fact that this product costs £20 less than the M5A99X Evo, which we tested today paired up with the FX8120.
The AMD FX-8120 Black Edition can be yours for a price of £135 from OCUK which makes it about £20 cheaper than the AMD FX-8150 and Intel i5-2500K.
Even though it offers better performance than the i5-2500K in a number of multi-threaded applications that can harness the power of all eight cores, most applications will perform at a lower level. The i5-2500K offers more overclocking headroom and much better performance in many other tests, so is a better choice for the enthusiast audience.
We would like to see the price falling to around £110 before we could recommend buying the FX-8120.
We would definitely recommend the Asus M5A99X EVO to anyone looking for a well featured 990X motherboard for an FX-8120 or FX-8150 CPU. It can be yours for £100 from Overclockers UK.
KitGuru says: The price of the FX-8120 is still a little expensive but offers good performance in multi-threaded applications.
I wouldnt touch AMD for a processor/motherboard combo. They arent bad chips but Intel are competitvely priced and faster. AMD should drop prices by 20%.
amd is running a uk cashback deal on the fx and a series at the moment. they’re calling it “more cores – more cashback” or something really similar.
10£ for a quad core, 15 for hexa, and 20 for octo. this would bring the price to 115£. furthermore, im pretty damn sure that you should be able to find a better deal on it than 135£, and the cashback is directly from amd, so i doubt the choice of retailer will matter much.
Yeah it was posted yesterday http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/kgnewsbot/amd-to-give-money-back-for-buying-fx-and-apu-processors/
its still not enough.
And the deal doesnt help americans. im pissed off , I bought a FX8150 a few weeks ago and it should be $15 less already. they are too expensive but im an AMD loyalist, although that might change soon if they look after customers like this.
I like their processors, they are good value for money
horribly inefficient. twice the physical cores for less performance at the same price, with higher power consumption. its a win !
@WarrenUK
You are wrong here. First of all, AMD has 2x the integer core count . Where FX8120 loses to 2500K is in FP intensive workloads. No surprise there since FX has ONE FP unit per core pair,thus 4 FP units in “octo” core chip. Each of these units is on par (execution resources wise) as each of 2500K cores(Which have unified scheduler for integer and fp ops).
So to sum up:
FX8120 : 3.1Ghz stock clock,3.4Ghz all core turbo,4.2Ghz single core turbo. 8 integer cores,4 FP units each of which is 256bits wide(1×256 or 2x128bit depending on ISA).If AVX is used AMD can execute 4x256bit AVX ops.If FMA4 is used it can double the effective throughput putting it on par with 2500K’s AVX256bit throughput(only in this case).
2500K : 3.3Ghz stock clock,3.5?Ghz all core turbo,3.7Ghz single core turbo,4 integer cores;4 FP cores each of which can do 1x128bit ADD and 1x128bit MUL so 256bits wide in SSE code. If AVX is used intel 2500K can execute 4x2x256bits of FP ops in theory.
I hope you see now why FX8xxx series perform like this in some(not all!) FP/SSE heavy workloads. They just have 2x less FP resources than they have integer cores. This is AMD’s design choice since server workloads are mostly integer heavy and those who need FP performance for their HPC server will do a recompile for FMA4/3 path and achieve better performance this way. Desktop users can’t do anything tho,they will have to wait for Steamroller core for more FP performance ;).
Overall,given above limitations FX has,it(FX8120) performs pretty well for its price versus “fat core” design such is 2500K. Not a bad showing when you consider lower stock clock FX has.
The background picture is makes it looks like the items on the top(AMD in this case) have lower performance.
is there any laptops having “fx” series amd processors??if you are having any info about this then please text me via email: [email protected]..
thank you..
aguante amd loco…