AMD FX-4130 Black Edition Processor Review

Mid last year, AMD announced that they were going to be giving their FX line of CPUs a little boost of energy and a little face lift to rekindle their budget appeal and performance for the entry level markets. The FX line of CPUs, also known as Bulldozer, has always filled in the gap between entry level processing power and top performance with chips that are able to give performance on a budget.

As part of this regeneration, AMD have targeted their 4-core lineup of chips and one of these in particular is the FX-4100, a quad-core 3.6GHz chip that still retails for a wallet friendly ~£70-80, although we do have to take in consideration that this older model is now end-of-line. In order to keep this chip alive and to boost its energy, AMD have upped its core clock speed by 200MHz taking it up to 3.8GHz and boosting to 3.9GHz when it feels like doing so. Other changes to the package include a far improved stock cooler which AMD claim will allow for better overclocking from the totally unlocked Black Edition chip over its older brother.

On top of the higher clock and better cooler, AMD claim that users should see a gain in performance of 3-9% in general day to day computing which for a chip of roughly the same price is a welcome sight. Given the FX-4130 is here to replace the FX-4100 we have tested the older chip alongside this one to give up-to-date test results and a far better comparison to see how much of a difference there is to be had at stock clock speeds.

To test this chip we will run all of our tests at stock speeds, then overclock the chip as far as it will allow and then run the tests again.

Test system:

• Asus Crosshair V Formula
• AMD FX-4130
• Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz 16GB
• Corsair H80
• Corsair HX1050
• Kingston V+100 128GB SSD
• Lian Li T60

We would like to thank Asus, Corsair, Kingston and Lian Li for supplying us with our test system components.

Many different software applications are also used to gain the broadest spectrum of results, which allows for the fairest testing possible.

Software used:

• 3DMark 11
• AIDA64
• Cinebench R11.5
• CPU-Z
• PCMark 7
• SuperPI

Before we get onto the process of putting the CPU through its paces in the benchmark suites, its worth seeing how far the FX-4130 can be pushed when it comes to overclocking and with an Asus ROG board to hand we got the clocking hat on and into BIOS to see how far the FX-4130 will go.

Keeping the voltage at the stock level to start and solely increasing the multiplier to start, 4.4GHz was quickly achieved with a multiplier of 22x and a bus speed of 200MHz. The chip showed that it had more to give and this time we needed to ramp up the voltage to over the 1.5V mark with a bit of load-line calibration to keep the voltage stable under full load. With this extra voltage we found that the chip was able to boot with no fuss all the way up to 4.8GHz, but with a little extra push and a bit extra on the bus speed we were able to get one run at just over 4.9GHz. Considering we were only able to get a single run out of the chip at 4.915GHz, we settled for the more stable 4.8GHz overclock, which in its own right is very impressive at 26% gain.

There is a bit more potential in the FX-4130 when it comes to overclocking and 5GHz is certainly within reach but what we have to account is that getting to this speed will require either a top end board, far superior cooling or a mixture of both, which diverges from the budget appeal that this chip is built for.

Cinebench R11.5

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

Straight away we can see that the FX-4130 over the 4100 has got a far better result with a 38% increase in points.

Super PI

Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point—up to a maximum of 32 million. It uses Gauss–Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of the program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute pi to 232 digits.

Moving into SuperPI, the newer 4130 at stock speeds is able to complete a 32M calculation nearly 2 minutes faster than before whilst overclocking it to 4.8GHz slashes an extra five minutes more.

3DMark 11

3DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tessellation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online.

Gaming performance between the two chips is very close with a very small margin showing the two samples apart. Overclocking does add a little extra to the stock performance, but only a little at best.

AIDA64

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

We know that AMD chips are not inherently the best for memory bandwidth and the lack of L3 cache does cripple the chips against the offerings from Intel, we do find the 4130 and 4100 chips fairly close in terms of bandwidth, but sadly we find that overclocking the 4130 cripples that bandwidth a little further with copy speeds whilst read and write do see a slight gain.

PCMark 7

PCMark 7 provides a set of 7 suites for measuring different aspects of PC performance with a high degree of accuracy. Overall system performance is measured by the PCMark Suite. The Lightweight Suite measures the capabilities of entry level systems and mobility platforms unable to run the full PCMark suite. Common use performance is measured by the Entertainment, Creativity and Productivity scenario suites. Component performance is measured by the Computation and Storage hardware suites. The Storage suite is ideal for testing SSDs and external hard drives in addition to the system drive.

In overall system performance in PCMark 7, we find a 3.1% gain in performance, right in the 3-9% window that AMD claim the chip will give. Overclocking to 4.8GHz will see the chip performing in the region of FX-8150 territory.

Power Consumption

To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the system takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment.

Given the slightly faster clock speeds we do expect to see slightly higher power consumption and there is only a slight one at that, but overclocking see the power usage rocket to over 400W at full load, and 240W at idle, over double to what the system uses with the CPU at stock speeds.

Bulldozer has been a chip that has had end users a little divided for a while as it doesn’t offer up blazing performance and granted this is the case, but what they do offer up is performance on a budget. The choice to refresh the existing line of FX chips with improved models that offer slightly higher clocks and improved coolers is a welcome sign to the entry-level market and for basic home/office users or those that are generally on a tight budget we can’t but not recommend the FX line of chips. Its not just the chips that are cheap, the boards to go with them are also significantly cheaper, meaning that you can either save more money, or the money that can be saved on the core two components can be put to other uses such as storage, graphics or a better quality PSU.

Across all the tests we can see that the FX-4130 has done as AMD stated it would, giving the little bit extra over the older generation FX-4100, and given it is retailing for around the same price point, overclocks a bit better than before and comes with a far superior stock cooler, then all in all its a great deal.

Large number of the FX-4130 CPUs are rumoured to be able to hit 5GHz with ease, unfortunately this wasn’t the case with our particular sample, but this is the joys of the silicon lottery, you just don’t know until you try it. Either way though achieving a 25+% overclock is great in terms of free extra performance. OK so this was done with a high end board and cooler and it did mean that the power consumption rocketed, but even overclocking to a more modest 4.4 or 4.5GHz on the stock cooler will act as an added bonus, after all we all like extra performance for free.

Bottom line, AMD have rekindled the entry level FX line of CPUs and given them a new leash of life, the still highly competitive price point and good performance for that price, makes the FX-4130 a great budget ship for not too demanding environments.