KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
In this review we are going to benchmark the AMD FX-8120 Black Edition at reference clock speeds and when overclocked to 4.2 GHz. We will be comparing it to a similarly specified i5-2500K based system which is detailed below. A 2500 is priced around £170 inc vat in the UK today – this is one of Intel's most popular mid range processors in the enthusiast sector. The FX-8120 is priced around £135 inc vat in the UK today. AMD motherboards are still generally quite expensive however, so the overall cost of ownership can tend to balance out.
All Intel Core i5 processors overclock to 4.2ghz easily enough, even the Core i5 2300, so it is almost irrelevant which Intel Core i5 we use for comparison in an overclocked state today.
We used a Noctua NH-D14 to cool the AMD FX-8120 Black Edition and a Phanteks PH-TC14PE to cool the i5-2500K.
Test System
Processor: AMD FX-8120 Black Edition (reference speeds and 4.2ghz)
Motherboard: Asus M5A99X EVO
Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-3
Memory: 8 GB G.Skill @ 1600 MHz 9-9-9-24
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6950
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750W
System Drive: Intel 520 Series 2400 GB
Monitor: Viewsonic VX2260WM
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Motherboard (for Max OC): ASRock 990FX Fatal1ty
Graphics Card (for Max OC): AMD Radeon HD 6670
Comparison System
Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K (reference speeds and 4.2ghz)
Motherboard: Biostar TZ77XE4
Cooler: Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-3
Memory: 8 GB G.Skill @ 1600 MHz 9-9-9-24
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6950
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750W
System Drive: Intel 520 Series 2400 GB
Monitor: Viewsonic VX2260WM
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Software:
PCMark 7
3DMark 11
SiSoft Sandra 2012 SP3
Cinebench R11.5
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6.5
VLC Media Player
Performance Monitor
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Super Pi 1.5 Mod
CPUID Hardware Monitor
CPU-Z
DiRT 3
Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City
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…