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AMD FX 8320 analysis

ALXAndy

ALXAndy

ALXAndy

Soldato
Joined
23 Apr 2010
Posts
12,053
Location
West Sussex
Hey guys. So I've been meaning to do this for ages but pretty much everything that could get in the way got in the way.

It's been a lot of work and I've collected an enormous mass of data.

So why is this an analysis and not a review? well firstly I have not included any other processors as put simply, I don't have them. This is not going to be a "who can pee the highest" sort of write up any way so all that matters here is the subject matter itself; the AMD FX 8320 8 core CPU.

There are two ways in which to use one. You can go cheap, and be limited in your clock speeds or you can go the opposite and spend a pretty penny on the sort of motherboard you would need for extreme clock speeds. In this write up I will be demonstrating both, thus leaving nothing to chance. I will even be showing you exactly how I based my testing on the numerous clock speeds used and how they were achieved.

How I tested.

This is going to differ to many of your usual review type write ups. I always tend to do things differently (that'll be the Aspie in me !) but I will do my best to explain my methods.

Firstly let's cover our system specs.

When I mention 4.3ghz I will be referring to this machine -

AMD FX 8320 clocked to 4.3ghz
Asus M5A97 R2.0 (4+2 power stages)
4GB Geil Extreme memory
GTX 670 SLI

Cost for board and CPU - £172 (est)

When I mention either 4.6 or 5ghz I will be referring to this machine -

AMD FX 8320 clocked to either 4.6ghz or 5ghz
Asus Crosshair V Formula Z motherboard
8GB Mushkin memory
Radeon HD 7990.

Cost for board and CPU £272 (est)

In 3Dmark I will use the following terms.

P = performance mode and or score
X = Extreme mode and or score

Our clock speeds

4.3ghz



4.6ghz



5ghz



So without any further ado, let's get benching.. First up is the rather old 3Dmark Vantage.

Performance



And Extreme



3Dmark 11 Performance



3Dmark 11 Extreme



3Dmark Firestrike Performance



3Dmark Firestrike Extreme



Unigene Valley Benchmark Extreme HD



Unigene Heaven 4.0



Cinebench R15



Now onto the games. Battlefield 4, using this level here.





Crysis 3 using this level (follow Psycho)





Metro Last Light inbuilt benchmark



Tomb Raider inbuilt benchmark



Hitman : Absolution max settings 8XMSAA



Bios settings on 4.3ghz PC





Bios settings on 4.6ghz PC 2





And 5ghz





Peace out :)
 
Well done Andy, good work. Must have taken a lot of time.

I will post some of my BF4 results here so people have some comparisons if you don't mind. Also can I ask whether your 7990 was at stock speeds and what stock boost did you get on it?
 
alex_123_fra said:
Well done Andy, good work. Must have taken a lot of time.

I will post some of my BF4 results here so people have some comparisons if you don't mind. Also can I ask whether your 7990 was at stock speeds and what stock boost did you get on it?
Click to expand...

Stock. I tend not to overclock my graphics cards if I'm honest. I guess when it doesn't cut it any more I may be tempted into giving it a shove, but I always tend to go total overkill to feel somewhat safe with forthcoming titles..

Yeah it's an awful, awful lot of data. Just inputting it to the charts took over four hours :eek:
 
Mathematics said:
Fantastic mate, just what I was after! What sort of temps are you getting underload. what did you use to stress-test?

Cheers.
Click to expand...

I use LinX, five runs. To be completely frank? if it makes it through that, it's stable.

Temps are 59c in LinX on the 4.3ghz rig (using a Scythe Ninja). At 4.6ghz the other rig tops out high 40s low 50s. At 5ghz I see temps of around 61c, right on the limit of stability.

I'm now running it at 4.7ghz @ 1.42v. Temps are high 40s load.
 
Great work Andy, havn't got my 8320 installed yet, want to run a few tests myself with my existing setup for comparison. Interesting though that my 2500K @ 4.2ghz with xfire 7950 stock clocks on Heaven 4 has an almost identical score to your run above although I am aware Heaven is gpu dependent. You have certainly given me useful info for when I have my 8320 setup ready. :D
 
rolypolyman said:
Interesting though that my 2500K @ 4.2ghz with xfire 7950 stock clocks on Heaven 4 has an almost identical score to your run above although I am aware Heaven is gpu dependent. You have certainly given me useful info for when I have my 8320 setup ready. :D
Click to expand...

Yeah, Heaven just basically needs a modern CPU to run and is otherwise GPU limited. There are a few games that are similar too though, like Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite.

Must have taken a lot of effort, good work Andy.
 
BTW I forgot to mention.. In some games you'll note I didn't use all of the different clocks. The reason? take a look at this. This is Tomb Raider during the benchmark.



The moral of this story? don't listen to people who tell you to spend ridiculous amounts of money on over priced CPUs.

1. You will sometimes only need a CPU inserted for the sake of it. Spend the money on GPUs.
2. The game will actually use the CPU and all of the cores so a FX 6300 will be more than adequate.
 
Metro was exactly the same. Around 25% use on core one, the rest just sat there like boobies in a trance at around 18%.

I can not emphasise enough how important GPU grunt is.
 
ALXAndy, how easy was it to get the CPU to 5ghz with the ROG board?

im really really considering this setup from my i5 760, also im running a 7990, is there any bottlenecks anywhere?

i dont suppose you have company of heroes 2 that you could do a bench on with the 5ghz FX and 7990?
 
ALXAndy said:
Metro was exactly the same. Around 25% use on core one, the rest just sat there like boobies in a trance at around 18%.

I can not emphasise enough how important GPU grunt is.
Click to expand...

Metro along with some others needs >4 cores or HT to maintain a decent framerate, even if overall % usage is very low. With multithreaded games they can be very sensitive to core availability.
 
beasty6 said:
ALXAndy, how easy was it to get the CPU to 5ghz with the ROG board?

im really really considering this setup from my i5 760, also im running a 7990, is there any bottlenecks anywhere?

i dont suppose you have company of heroes 2 that you could do a bench on with the 5ghz FX and 7990?
Click to expand...

Its very easy too get 5GHz with the rog board had my pc 10 days and running

5ghz 24/7 Temps low 50's
 
beasty6 said:
ALXAndy, how easy was it to get the CPU to 5ghz with the ROG board?

im really really considering this setup from my i5 760, also im running a 7990, is there any bottlenecks anywhere?

i dont suppose you have company of heroes 2 that you could do a bench on with the 5ghz FX and 7990?
Click to expand...

Don't have the game downloaded but am pretty sure I own it. I won't be able to get it down until December though when the internet is finally installed.

With that board I actually hit 5ghz by mistake. I enabled level up 2 and forgot to reboot (F10) to let it apply the settings. I then ramped up the multi thinking I was aiming for 4.6 but when I got into Windows I was running 5ghz lol.. It's painfully easy :) you will soon learn your CPUs limit. Later ones seem to clock like demons I would imagine because of Centurion. AMD have ramped up their quality process. Seriously the CHVFZ is so easy to clock it's almost cheating. I've since tinkered dropping the volts down but for the most part it does all of the important stuff for you.

As for bottlenecks? do the results of the gaming benchmarks seem reasonable to you?

Let's cut the crap for a moment. I ran the latest games at the most punishing of settings and the 8320 came out singing every time. So whether it's a bottleneck?

I would just answer with "It's enough".
 
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