FX 8120

[mmj_uk]

below listed from the OCUK Forum holy grail site (Anandtech):

CB11.5 single threaded test = beaten by 2500K.
CB11.5 multi-threaded test = defeats 2500K
x264 first pass performance = beaten by 2500K.
x264 second pass performance = defeats 2500K.
7-Zip benchmark = defeats 2500K.
AES-128 benchmark = defeats 2500K.

faster than 2500K four times out of six, pretty relevant considering the sort of test it performs better than the 2500K in, those that are multi-threaded.

Cherry picking the few applications (primarily encoding) where Bulldozer doesn't perform poorly is misleading though. In a lot of multithreaded applications a 2500K will destroy Bulldozer, it's only the ones (encoding) that 100% max out all available cores that Bulldozer is remotely competitive which I suppose is why yourself and other Bulldozer fans focus so much on it.

At the end of the day very few people will buy a CPU primarily for encoding and if they do spend all day encoding then they'd be better off with SB-E, most people buy them for gaming and general usage in which case a 2500K is considerably better.

P.S. Another new member whose first post is trying to promote Bulldozer? is there anyone apart Gashman on more than 100 posts who talks positively of Bulldozer?

 

[cmndr_andi]

its more annoying when people are talking down about this chip even though they have never tried it

Don't worry, the chip doesn't have feelings.

As for people not trying it, to be fair to people - if you want to fully test the chip you need to buy one (and a compatible motherboard). So instead most people (myself included) will look at a large number of in-depth reviews from reputable hardware review websites and draw our conclusions from that.

As has been mentioned, for gaming this CPU is not bad and i'm sure you are right that it plays most modern games perfectly well with a decent graphics card. The reason why people don't recommend it (or actively steer people away from it) is because you can get something better at gaming for similar money. The people asking are usually building a gaming PC, don't already have an AM3+ compatible board and can afford an i5 2500K+ Z68. In these circumstances the intel option is much better than AMD.

If the person is instead building a PC for something other than gaming (ideally something heavily multithreaded) and/or they already own a AM3+ compatible board then the recommendations may be different.

 

[Stas823]

Cherry picking the few applications (primarily encoding) where Bulldozer doesn't perform poorly is misleading though. In a lot of multithreaded applications a 2500K will destroy Bulldozer, it's only the ones (encoding) that 100% max out all available cores that Bulldozer is remotely competitive which I suppose is why yourself and other Bulldozer fans focus so much on it.

At the end of the day very few people will buy a CPU primarily for encoding and if they do spend all day encoding then they'd be better off with SB-E, most people buy them for gaming and general usage in which case a 2500K is considerably better.

P.S. Another new member whose first post is trying to promote Bulldozer? is there anyone apart Gashman on more than 100 posts who talks positively of Bulldozer?

well im sorry that my first post wasnt an intel praise which seems to be the main focus of the cpu sections of this website

 

[Combat squirrel]

Hmmm random post, it's not so much talk/opinion about BD more, fact, so it's not biased talk just discussing the observation of fact, this making sense now?.

Saying that I'll poss pickup a BD as I mainly video edit and use photoshop... Unfortunatly I photoshop more than I video edit so not sure if it worth it over my x6 at 4ghz.

You have a h100 in sig and BD at 4ghz, try cranking that upto 4.5-4.8 ghz, should make it.

 

[MaxP779]

What I dont get is why everyone gets a bee in their bonnet about the FX Chips as soon as they are mentioned.

I use my FX8150 for a lot of gaming and i'm not seeing any of this lousy performance, to be honest if i had any other chip that did perfom any better while im playing BF3 for example, id either have to take up not blinking to see the extra frames or look over benchmarks after playing to reassure myself that its better.

As far as i can tell the general concensus is if you say bulldozer is a crappy chip, your chasing numbers and statistics and slating a perfectly fine CPU. Aslong as there is a comparison to be made something will always be deemed as the underdog and not worth anyones time which is where Bulldozer enters the ring. I know its marked as a disapointment based on its expectations prior to its release but i put one in my PC and its fine im certainly not disapointed.

My opinion is certainly not one of a hardcore PC enthusiast so bare that in mind.

While currently it will run some games fine, in the future with a new GTX 780 or AMD 8000 series bulldozer will hold those GPUs back where a sandy bridge will not. Its forward thinking, a pentium G8xx will run most games today just fine except BF3 multiplayer, in the future it will be a huge bottleneck, just like bulldozer will be.

 

[MNA24]

While currently it will run some games fine, in the future with a new GTX 780 or AMD 8000 series bulldozer will hold those GPUs back where a sandy bridge will not. Its forward thinking, a pentium G8xx will run most games today just fine except BF3 multiplayer, in the future it will be a huge bottleneck, just like bulldozer will be.

Very true, but this will be inevitable. I will most likely be upgrading my CPU when i come grab a pair of GTX 780 to be honest, hopefully the next set of AMD CPUs wont be a load of "faildozers".

 

[Stas823]

Please before completely disregarding this CPU atleast test it YOURSELF

 

[OptimaLnrg]

Is there a particular reason you're so concerned with what everyone else thinks of your processor?

 

[Wucked]

well im sorry that my first post wasnt an intel praise which seems to be the main focus of the cpu sections of this website

You ask a question, get a straight answer, and then get all defensive because you happen to have one? If you're happy with it then be happy. There are outspoken fans of both AMD and Intel here, but please don't fling wide sweeping accusations of fanboyism at the entire website, especially when the facts are so clear.

No one is making subjective statements about it, there's no need to. Its pretty clear from all the benchmarks that Bulldozer under performs, and not just compared to Intel's current offerings, but in some cases also compared to AMD's previous generation CPU's, Phenom's. The chip you have is a perfectly capable gaming chip, its just not as good as many people hoped it would be.

 

[cmndr_andi]

Please before completely disregarding this CPU atleast test it YOURSELF

But that's completely impractical (both for CPUs and pretty much everything else).

Most people don't have the time or money to test all the different CPU options, so they rely on a number of in-depth reviews done by reputable reviewers - then take those results and decide what to buy. This means you can look for the results of tests which line up with your expected usage and you only buy/build one system.

 

[Stas823]

Fair enough but to completely disregarding something just because someone said its bad without testing yourself is just ridiculous
Also thanks to all people who said more than it just sucks

 

[Bluntwrapped]

BD aint all bad, it's AMD's fault they've received the negative feedback they have. AMD spent so long messing around trying to get things right even their loyal customers lost patience and went Intel. In most cases, competence of the developer is more important than performance of the chip itself. People aren't going to buy a product from a company that doesn't fill us with confidence. IMO AMD have tarnished their reputation with all the speculation and claims leading up to the launch of BD, most of which was complete nonsense in a bid to slow Intel's sales.

In the time spent developing BD Intel had SB on the market for almost a year. I was waiting for the BD myself and was raging when the first set of benchmarks came in. I'm all up for seeing development of new architecture but when it offers little or no benefit over the competition you kinda have to wonder why it took so long and why they bothered in the first place?

It's like trying to fix something that doesn't need fixed. Or redesigning the wheel just for sake of it.

 

[Freddie1980]

A CPU makes no difference to your FPS as long as it is providing enough power to escape being CPU limited in the game in question or bottlenecking your GPU.

This does not make the 8120 a good CPU. It makes it a sufficient CPU that gets trounced by far superior offerings.

Also if you look at the lower res benchmarks it shows that a Sandy Bridge based system is less likely to offer a bottleneck to newer, faster video cards in years to come.

 

[MaxP779]

Fair enough but to completely disregarding something just because someone said its bad without testing yourself is just ridiculous
Also thanks to all people who said more than it just sucks

Heh come on man... When all the reviewers say it sucks and theres little to prove otherwise it paints a pretty clear picture.

Plus buying a CPU to "test it yourself" is lunacy. I would need a new CPU/mobo and a graphics card as well to illustrate the differences because my ageing 5850 will ensure a 2500k performs similarly to an 8120 or whatever. Also i would need to actually install these things into my case, then run benchmarks, then switch it all out for the other platform to bench that as well not to mention windows probably kicking up a fuss about changing chipsets, then once ive figured out which is best for me ill have to RMA the stuff i dont want and go through all that hassle lol... Not practical at all. Hence why we have reviews

 

[Zuban]

I was all ready to get a bulldozer, i had a 1090t x6 already, bought a new 990fx mobo and was planning to get bulldozer and build a second machine with my old mobo and 1090t, when bulldozer was released, it was clear that it offered little or nothing over the x6. I do mostly 3d rendering, and the 8150's peformance here was near identical to the x6, so there was little point in changing. Add to that the inconsistent performance of bulldozer from application to application compared to the x6 which although an older design offered more consistent performance across a range of apps, i actually found myself looking for another x6 and not a bulldozer.

The poor single threaded performance also put me off, although 3d rendering engines are multithreaded, a lot of the other more basic modelling functions etc are still single threaded, so a bulldozer would have in fact been a step backwards overall from an x6, and this is one of the area's that make a sandybridge based cpu a much more appealing proposition because of there excellent single threaded performance, even if its multitheaded performance is similar. Overall I use a mix of software, both multithreaded and singlethreaded, so both are important, and a cpu that is strong in one and weak in the other limits its use to only a few niche applications.

In the end though i upgraded to a sb-e lol. I think bulldozer is ok, i wouldnt buy one in its current form, and i felt at launch it was too expensive for its performance relative to the intel cpu's, with the cashback offer though its price isnt to bad, there are still too many reasons why the intel is better though to seriously consider a bulldozer.

 

[Martini1991]

See how your 8 core bulldozer fares on rome total war near the end of the game @ stock.
Yes, it's crap

 

[MNA24]

See how your 8 core bulldozer fares on rome total war near the end of the game @ stock.
Yes, it's crap

You have done this?

 

[Martini1991]

You have done this?

Well, you can bring a sandy rig to its knees with Rome Total War since it uses a single core, your Zambezi cores pale in comparison, it's just fact.
Zambezi's not bad, but it's not exactly good, it's more of the same.
Why "upgrade" or buy into it when there's been better options previously?

 

[MNA24]

I went from a Phenom II x 4 955 to the FX8150, it was an upgrade in my eyes. Luckily the "Total War" series isnt my cup of tea so i wont have to experience the informed spontanious combustion of my FX8150 will encounter when getting to the end of the game.

 

[Martini1991]

I went from a Phenom II x 4 955 to the FX8150, it was an upgrade in my eyes. Luckily the "Total War" series isnt my cup of tea so i wont have to experience the informed spontanious combustion of my FX8150 will encounter when getting to the end of the game.

Placebo/Biased.

You want it to be an upgrade, those who won't/haven't bought it, are going to be less biased, especially those that wanted to buy it (I'm one of those)