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AMD FX 8120, acceptable gaming performance?

jp7152

jp7152

jp7152

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Joined
14 Oct 2003
Posts
1,650
Sorry for the long back story :)

My two previous CPUs, i7 990x and i5 2500k have been sold, making way for the 3960x in the big beast and ivy bridge for my gaming pc when it's available.

I had a bulldozer on launch day but the chip was faulty and I never got to test it much at the time.

So moving on I wanted something to play with in the meanwhile. I found a Q6600 and ran it for an afternoon with a 7970, however it was too slow for games so I sold it on the members market.

Then I decided to re try the bulldozer as I had wanted to at least give one a go after the chip not working last time. I got a retail 8120 and paired it with an M5A99X EVO and stuck with the same watercooling as the i2500k and 990x had using a Koolance CPU 370. I ran with 1x 1920x1200 monitor on one 7970 @ 1050/1575.

After installing it last week I fully installed the system with updates then clocked it to 4.5ghz and upped the voltage but left everything else standard to see what it would be like. I did notice the boot times were very slow before the overclock but seemed to improve after, may have been drivers.

So far I've been quite surprised as there seems to be very little difference in experience in games between the systems.

The games I have tried so far are BF3 64 player mutliplayer, Project cars, World of Tanks, Dirt 3, Saints Row 3, Skyrm, GTA 4 and Crysis 2.

Out of these games the two I've noticed differences on the 8120 are World of Tanks which is mainly single threaded and on some maps is very poor compared to the intel CPUs. The other game is Project cars where with maximum opponents it doesn't seem as smooth.

The 990x was smooth all the games tested at stock speeds

The i2500k gave higher framerates than the 990x in World of tanks and Dirt 3 but needed an overclock to be remain completely smooth in 64 player battlefield.

So my vague analysis is that

For 60fps+ gaming on a single screen in most games the 8120 is fine.

And

A: A bulldozer is probably not the best choice
but
B: It'll probably be fine anyway

I know the chip is out classed by the i2500k, however if you've got an AMD board that supports bulldozer and have something other than a phenom x6 it might not be a bad upgrade. Granted it might be bad value to build a new AMD system now, but as an upgrade it's OK :)

thoughts on my rabble ?
 
It's acceptable, but it's not worth the purchase unless you're coming from like an Anthlon II X2 and have a board that'd take it and can get it cheap.
 
Problem with the Q6600 is it has a fairly slow default clockspeed (2.4ghz) so really needs to be overclocked when paired with a 7970 otherwise it represents quick a bottleneck (especially in games that aren't well threaded).
 
Here is a review compares stock Sandy Bridge, Bulldozer and Nahalem (bloomfield) CPUs in a range of games using a HD 7970 graphics card. As you can see, the Bulldozer generally does OK (certainly acceptable for gaming) but at the same time it only tends to do as well or worse than the i7 920 (a CPU that came out in 2008).

Therefore, the real problem with Bulldozer isn't the absolute performance of the CPU, but the relative performance. If you are putting together a new core for a gaming system then other options (like the i5 2500K + z68 board) are much better - so bulldozer isn't regarded very highly.

However, if you have a board that supports it and you run a low-end CPU (like an X2) then it isn't a bad upgrade option - though I would personally go for a Phenom II X6 over an FX-8 if the system was mainly for playing games.

Edit: Fixed link
 
Last edited:
jp7152 said:
Sorry for the long back story :)

My two previous CPUs, i7 990x and i5 2500k have been sold, making way for the 3960x in the big beast and ivy bridge for my gaming pc when it's available.

I had a bulldozer on launch day but the chip was faulty and I never got to test it much at the time.

So moving on I wanted something to play with in the meanwhile. I found a Q6600 and ran it for an afternoon with a 7970, however it was too slow for games so I sold it on the members market.

Then I decided to re try the bulldozer as I had wanted to at least give one a go after the chip not working last time. I got a retail 8120 and paired it with an M5A99X EVO and stuck with the same watercooling as the i2500k and 990x had using a Koolance CPU 370. I ran with 1x 1920x1200 monitor on one 7970 @ 1050/1575.

After installing it last week I fully installed the system with updates then clocked it to 4.5ghz and upped the voltage but left everything else standard to see what it would be like. I did notice the boot times were very slow before the overclock but seemed to improve after, may have been drivers.

So far I've been quite surprised as there seems to be very little difference in experience in games between the systems.

The games I have tried so far are BF3 64 player mutliplayer, Project cars, World of Tanks, Dirt 3, Saints Row 3, Skyrm, GTA 4 and Crysis 2.

Out of these games the two I've noticed differences on the 8120 are World of Tanks which is mainly single threaded and on some maps is very poor compared to the intel CPUs. The other game is Project cars where with maximum opponents it doesn't seem as smooth.

The 990x was smooth all the games tested at stock speeds

The i2500k gave higher framerates than the 990x in World of tanks and Dirt 3 but needed an overclock to be remain completely smooth in 64 player battlefield.

So my vague analysis is that

For 60fps+ gaming on a single screen in most games the 8120 is fine.

And

A: A bulldozer is probably not the best choice
but
B: It'll probably be fine anyway

I know the chip is out classed by the i2500k, however if you've got an AMD board that supports bulldozer and have something other than a phenom x6 it might not be a bad upgrade. Granted it might be bad value to build a new AMD system now, but as an upgrade it's OK :)

thoughts on my rabble ?
Click to expand...

Very interesting post, thanks for taking the time to share!
 
=cmndr_andi;21495486
I would personally go for a Phenom II X6 over an FX-8 if the system was mainly for playing games.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what I did recently. Got one of the last 1090t's I could find, rather than taking an fx 6 or 8 core. Came from a fairly low ath 64 3200+. :D
 
Anything good to be said for BD in gaming is due to the fact that games just don't require a top of the line CPU anymore. I chose a 960T for my friend's build 6 months ago and he's very happy.

It's still a piece of crap though.
 
jp7152 said:
Didn't overclock it but on Mutliplayer BF3 with 7970 it was extremely choppy
Click to expand...

It was bound to be choppy experience.

My [email protected] bottlenecks my 5850 stock speed in BF3 at high settings.

Imo Q6600 is only good as a partner for 460,470, 5830, 5850. Any graphics card higher than these and you should be looking at better CPU aswell.

I would't be surprised if [email protected] (stock) only allowed 7970 usage to be around 40-45% during the game.
 
Lordgrayone said:
+1

and i upgraded from a 1090t which was clocked @ 4ghz
the bulldozer is faster but not by much :(
Click to expand...

+1 to this, went from 1055T at 4.0GHz to this 8120 at 4.0GHz, doesn't feel slower but doesn't feel much faster either, though feels 'smoother' for some bizarre reason like it handles lots of different applications running at the same time very well.

clocks like hell as well and doesn't get 'too' hot, but you would be hard pressed to find any real difference between most modern, multi-core processors in normal activities to be quite honest, most of the complaints come from poor benchmark scores in a number of applications, keep in mind however that performance in other applications is quite strong. to sum it up that is the biggest problem for me with Bulldozer as it is, its performance is not consistent, sometimes one gets fantastic performance, others its quite mediocre.

though for the current price of 8120, can't see it being the worse deal in the world to be fair, but at similar prices the 2500K is the safer of the two options unless one is an anti-Intel type. ;)
 
cmndr_andi said:
Here is a review compares stock Sandy Bridge, Bulldozer and Nahalem (bloomfield) CPUs in a range of games using a HD 7970 graphics card.
Click to expand...

Link goes to OCUK screen :)

I do agree with your post though and wonder if the 8120 had been priced on launch as it is today (if stock had been available too) then maybe it would be viewed differently

It seems like AMD promoted it as being very fast and very excellent and made it quite expensive at the same time

Later they say they are no longer aiming to compete in the high end market

If they'd had the ability to make enough of them and make them cheaply enough (do they now? I'm not sure how much it costs to make one but I expect lots.) Perhaps they could have been launched as a decent mid range chip rather than as a poor 'high end' chip
 
Apologies, here is the correct link.

I agree that AMD's launch strategy was wrong for the Bulldozer. Before the launch we were all expecting (based very much on AMD's performance boasts) a very powerful CPU that would be a big step past the Phenom II generation. When this didn't happen and something completely different arrived (at a rather high price point) then many people simply wrote it off. If it was priced at the same position the 8120 is currently at (plus the rebate) then it would have been looked at much more favourably - since it's direct competitors would be the non-K series i5 CPUs. So for people who like to overclock or do very heavily threaded stuff it would be a better option if they aren't willing to spend the extra on a i5 2500K.
 
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gurusan said:
Anything good to be said for BD in gaming is due to the fact that games just don't require a top of the line CPU anymore. I chose a 960T for my friend's build 6 months ago and he's very happy.

It's still a piece of crap though.
Click to expand...

No way is it a piece of crap. Just because it isn't top of the line, doesn't mean it's a piece of crap.
 
It has to go down as one of the worst CPU launches ever though, 6 months after launch and 8150 stock is still as rare as rocking horse poo, it seems like even AMD have given up on trying to sell their flagship 8150.
 
mmj_uk said:
It has to go down as one of the worst CPU launches ever though, 6 months after launch and 8150 stock is still as rare as rocking horse poo, it seems like even AMD have given up on trying to sell their flagship 8150.
Click to expand...

I think there wasn't enough to go around as they were selling out fairly quickly around 1-2 months ago, you could blame that on limited production but the side spin on that is I'm still waiting for my £20 cash back I was informed due to overwhelming demand from the offer it has been delayed further which could show the hidden popularity with the CPU or maybe not lol....

Either way its a nice chip, I'm pleased with it.
 
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